COVID-19: Do low numbers prove that thalis, diyas and lockdown have worked? 

Every time the Prime Minister begins his prime-time monologue on radio and TV, one finds him preening at the relatively low number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the country. While over 50,000 deaths have been reported by the United States and over a million cases, India in contrast has recorded just around one thousand deaths due to the deadly virus.

The total number of the infected in official records is also much lower than the nightmarish figures once projected. It is not at all unusual for the Prime Minister therefore to pat his own back, which he does in any case at the slightest of pretexts. But even experts claim to be baffled at India bucking the trend. With its creaking public health infrastructure, its economy in shambles and its ballooning number of the poor and the unemployed, India was seen poised for a disaster. Late recognition of the threat posed by the pandemic and the plethora of confusing and contradictory instructions issued by the Government indicated we were stumbling from one pothole to another.

But the numbers have enabled the government make the claim that it has handled the crisis well. Official statistics, whether it is of rainfall or population, migrants or the unemployed, have always been dodgy. This Government has added to it a certain disdain for numbers and has made no secret of its eagerness to dress them up. One does not, therefore, know for sure if the numbers are credible and whether, once the lockdown is lifted, the infection will spread like wild fire.

But for the time being, there is no harm in accepting that the ill-thought out, hasty and stringent lockdown has served its purpose of slowing the spread of the virus. Most cities have in fact recorded fewer deaths during this period. Media reports spoke of funeral services contemplating reduction in manpower because of the dwindling number of deaths. Medical journals and experts have been busy speculating whether the low numbers are because of India’s relatively much younger population. It has also been suggested in passing that Indians, used to the common flu, malaria and various other infections, have the kind of immunity that people elsewhere may not have had.

But whatever be the explanation for the low numbers, we have little reason to feel smug or satisfied. The pandemic is a timely warning for setting our house in order. It has exposed so many hypes as so much of hot air. The Swachh Bharat Mission trumpeted its success in building toilets, despite audit reports pointing out that many had no access to water and many were just not functional. It took a virus for the government to concede that city slums like Dharavi in Mumbai have poorly maintained community toilets, not quite designed to protect people from a contagion.

Similarly, private hospitals have been caught with their pants down, putting a question mark on the government’s zeal for privatising healthcare. It has exposed the inadequacies of disaster management, which has been found wanting in providing functional quarantine centres even in the cities. The plight of frontline medical personnel, paid poorly and protected even less, seem to have caught attention for the first time. Which is why the Government must wake up and smell the smoke. There is plenty of smoke. And where there is smoke, there must be fire.