Our Take
Can management of any disaster like the one posed by the recurrence of COVID-19 pandemic for the second time go hand in hand with mass events like Kumbh Fair at Haridwar and elections in West Bengal? One may add village Panchayat elections that are on in Uttar Pradesh to the list and it makes it look like a season of a virtual carnival sweeping large parts of the country in utter disregard to the pandemic. Signs of huge risks are already becoming palpable both in Haridwar and Bengal. And as for UP, a lockdown has been announced by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for Sundays, beginning April 18. Yogi is himself convalescing after being tested positive for Corona virus and so are a few senior State officials as Lucknow reels under the Corona wave. At Kumbh a head priest of one of the important saintly orders, or Akhara, has succumbed to COVID virus. Such incidents have made social media platforms rife with demands for calling off not only Kumbh Mela but also bringing down the remaining phases of Bengal polls to single day polling. Thus far such pleas have gone unheeded though Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and a former Chief Election Commissioner SY Qureshi have lent their voice to the outcry against having a full blown campaign until the last phase of polls in Bengal slated for April 29 amid the raging Corona wave. Despite this, the Election Commission remains unmoved and the Union Home Minister, Amit Shah, in an interview to a national daily, has maintained that the Constitution does not have any provision to put off polls which are to be held in any case before the tenure of the Assembly expires.
These are, indeed, well known positions or rather established norms. But the fact is that a natural calamity like the current corona crisis is not going to be guided either by the man-made norms and conventions or fantasies of a congregation of hermits. It is a kind of life-or-death question being faced by lakhs of people falling sick on a daily basis. The projections show that both the positivity rate of the viral infection and the toll it can take are likely to go up manifold in the days and weeks to come. So the extraordinary crisis calls for an out of box solution. Yet, those who matter have thus far only been hoping against hope with the result that the signs of panic among the people are attaining alarming levels. This is likely to only worsen with time since the health staff and infrastructure is getting overstretched and may soon not be able to cope up with the growing crisis. This is also the case with the police personnel who have been working overtime to carry out tasks like ensuring lockdown and enforcing Corona curfew. So it is high-time that our political leadership takes feedback from these sections, who are taking on the crisis upfront, and moves to ensure citizens safety from the growing scourge of the virus.
