This was to be a longer post, but the paucity of time means I’ll have to split it into multiple posts. In the past 24-hours, India topped the chart of the most number of new COVID-19 cases. That too, after what is now commonly accepted as differing degrees of COVID-19 related deaths across all states.
I am fairly certain that India will be one of the last countries to get the pandemic under control and our best-case-scenario is early 2021 for this. Considering that we were one of the last big countries to get hit by it, it should give us a good idea of how badly we have fared at doing this.
The reasons are not too difficult to understand, but the most important one is the absolute lack of a coordinated response to the pandemic, directed by the center. We are now into nearly month five of this and answers to important questions are not available or unclear. And that does not bode well for us at all.
For a country that has sold the story of a grand resurgence and massive stature on the global playing field, this is a shattering indictment of what it is actually capable of. The institutional response is wishy-washy, the people are more irresponsible than not, the lack of leadership that unifies everyone is absolutely missing from the scene.
Un-surprsigingly, it is also an amalgamation of the various ailments of the last 7-years into a single story where reality has long diverged from our inner narrative. As long as the latter holds more sway, we our path to getting out of this mess will get longer.
