THURSDAY, APRIL 25, 2024
Sujay Gupta
Just when we thought that governance witnessed during the worst health crisis that Goa has ever had fallen to its depths, we reached another nadir to show pathetic and pitiable Goa has become. A road transport official was suspended on charges of stopping an oxygen tanker carrying cylinders at the Mollem check post.
This incident may not quite make it to the front pages cramped with stories of deaths during the dark hours, but if you step back and let it sink in, you shall see the depths to which the polity has fallen.
The only thing that is keeping Goa alive today is the humaneness of its people. And they do have Goan or non-Goan tags. But they are just human people from villages in Arpora, Vagator, Anjuna, Taleigao, Nuvem, Betalbatim, Utorda and the list goes on and on traversing the length and breadth of Goa. Some are cooking, others are delivering cylinders and medicines. Still, others have a mini-army transporting food to the Goa medical College and the South Goa District Hospital (SGDH). One young man takes the food packets to GMC, one for the relatives of patients there and another lot for the SGDH. Another team of volunteers meets him at GMC at noon and carries back the packets meant for SGDH relatives. Day after day. Risking their well-being and possibly their lives, and not for votes or posts. And if they ever talk about their work on social media it is only to get more people on board and perhaps some more funding to augment their own depleted savings. And yes, none of them are barons, or big-ticket businessmen sitting on crores. And yes, they are not politicians either. You know who they are. Simple human beings.
Politicians on the other hand have hardly surprised anyone. And perhaps the bribe-taking arms of the government too. Asking for a bribe to let a tanker, any tanker pass-through is a default button. To behave any different would need a reset button.
Let us, for the purpose of this column, in the many that will surely be written on how the political class has failed us, begin with ruling party MLAs. Barring the omnipresence of the warring duo of the Chief Minister and the Health Minister, who else has shown up?
Perhaps a missing person report should be filled at Quepem and Pernem to look for two gentlemen who are called Deputy Chief Ministers of Goa, messer’s Babu Kavlekar and Babu Ajgaonkar.
With utmost humility and genuflection at the altar of their high positions, derived by means which we shouldn’t go into in these times, may we ask where are they? The two Babu’s may have missed an unwritten term of reference when they signed up for this job (it IS a job) that they are Deputy Chief Ministers of the State of Goa, and not just MLAs with the high perks of office meant to serve only their political pocket boroughs. Are they doing even that? But that’s not the moot point here. Both of them are the second in command after Dr Pramod Swant. Why haven’t we heard or seen them even sitting next to the CM on the COVID crisis management? Of course, we are jumping the gun here. Is there a ministerial group looking at the disaster management coordination, each of them manning different war rooms on different aspects of the crisis? And in an ideal world which Goa is very far from, the CM and his two deputies should be the troika at the helm of this war room.
But what we see instead is the Chief Minister doing what a councillor or MLA should be doing, criss-crossing between the South Goa hospital, the GMC and the Mapusa hospital spending more than half a day physically meeting officials. His deputies and his other senior ministers who should have divided this workload have literally vanished from any decision planning process involving the entire state.
The Pramod Sawant administration has failed as much by not envisaging the second spike and preparing for this, as it has failed in not putting together a war-like effort in handling this statewide crisis.
Any good administrator will tell you that if the fire is widespread localise it first. Don’t let it spread. Somehow small fires in different places are easier to control locally than a raging one that consumes all. There are scores of COVID patients, many of whom become just bodies by the next day, who are on the floor of the GMC. These people should have been in beds in the Primary or Urban Health Centres. It is the absolute overloading of GMC because rural health infrastructure has not been augmented, which has had a huge spillover effect on everything including oxygen supplies. This is the big fire.
The crisis of Governance goes beyond the missing Deputy CMs and their escort vehicles and security. Here is a common-sense primer on how most departments could have jointly worked to give breathing space to frontline health and COVID warriors:
Public Distribution and Civil Supplies: A steady supply of basic ration to major hospitals and health centres with clean temporary kitchens set up to provide nutritious food to patients and their families
Transport department: The government had to tell the High court after 50-plus people are dying in Goa each day with one-third of the deaths due to lack of oxygen in one hospital, GMC, that “8 trained and experienced tractor drivers from Kolhapur along with high powered tractors for ferrying oxygen trolleys has been arranged”
a) 60-plus years after Liberation, is the state of Goa actually saying that it does not have tractor drivers to ferry oxygen trolleys? Couldn’t the Transport and Health department jointly ensured that people did not die because they were no trained tractor drivers to oxygen cylinders to reach hospitals on time. Has it come to that?
b) The Transport department could have used its new air-conditioned fleet of buses to ferry people from designated spots to testing, health care centres and hospitals. Instead, the government actually shuts down public transport when people need to do distress travel and may not have transport
Education Department: It could have effectively utilised schools, classrooms and playgrounds for two purposes. As mass COVID testing centres in villages, to reduce the massive lines in the Urban health centres and district hospitals
The Tourism Department: Could have opened up their tourist hostels and all their hotels have COVID care centres and recovery homes free of charge
IT Department: Could have made the front end of the user experience of COVID related apps for the public fast, and user-friendly. A state dreaming of being an IT hub could have used the knowledge resources of IT professions to create real-time data on bed, vaccine and COVID care resting centre availability and even allow online booking or even a simple SMS based text booking system. On another note it is sheer irony that your food ordered on the Swiggy app always reaches faster than an ambulance or oxygen cylinder.
Goa has failed to plan. Which is why it has planned to fail. The takeaway from the last three weeks in Goa is that we are in the hands of a system that is totally ill-equipped to handle a crisis of this nature. And rather than even beginning to understand how colossal its failure is, voices from within the government and some pro-government doctors appearing on National television have gone to the extent of attempting to normalise these deaths by saying that if there is an oxygen shortfall some casualties may happen.
Words fail after this.
Sujay Gupta is the Consulting Editor Herald Publications and tweets @sujaygupta0832
