Why are Indians still worried after Lockdown 3.0?

The promise of a Rs 20 lakh Crore package to tide over the present crisis, a rush of policy changes and laws diluted and tweaked in recent days have done little to reduce anxiety levels. From migrants to the middle class, Indians are worried about the present and anxious about the future.

They are worried because of rising doubts about the Centre’s capacity to deal with the crisis. This Government has seldom taken people into confidence, repeatedly catching them by surprise by giving them four-hour notices before Demonetisation and the lockdown.

But people by and large put their trust in the Government and did what they were told to do. They banged pans and pots, lit lamps, clapped and stayed at home. Those who could afford donated money, looked after people they could and a large section of the middle-class dutifully downloaded the contact tracing app, Arogya Setu.

But if Indians are still anxious, it is largely because they are finding it increasingly difficult to trust what the Government tells them.

After the first lockdown of 21 days, which the PM had said would be sufficient to win the war, he congratulated Indians (he was actually congratulating himself) for having beaten the virus. The Solicitor General of India told the Supreme Court that no migrant was on the street despite evidence to the contrary.

The Chief Economic Advisor said on TV that there was no rural distress because people had not withdrawn money from PMJDY (Jan Dhan Yojana) accounts.Now Union Minister Piyush Goyal has claimed the Government has not allowed anyone to starve despite hundreds of NGOs struggling to feed the hungry.

The Government had confidently declared that after the second lockdown period ended on May 3, the number of new cases would start dropping and after May 16, no new cases of COVID-19 would be reported. With Lockdown 3.0 ending today, Health ministry officials are now sheepishly admitting that the number of cases will possibly peak in June or July and that we must learn to live with the coronavirus

On March 25, total COVID-19 cases hovered around 500, but as Lockdown 4.0 begins, the number of cases has spiraled to well beyond 85 thousand. Even as the figures themselves are contested and widely suspected to be a case of under-reporting, in view of limited number of tests and the protocol not allowing tests of asymptomatic carriers and people with other serious ailments, there is neither clarity nor any explanation about why so many cases have surfaced after the first lockdown ended on April 15, when total number of cases were said to be just 11,000.

People are confused because they were told that the incubation period of the coronavirus was 14 days--during which symptoms would manifest. But after 53 days of the lockdown, there is no clarity or explanation why the number of cases has continued to rise. Nor is there any clarity about the road ahead.

One disturbing information after another surfaced during this time. The leaked minutes of a meeting held at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences suggested that scientists had opposed a ‘China style lockdown’. Their suggestion was brushed aside.

Then came the revelation that private hospitals had been allowed to conduct tests for COVID-19 and charge Rs 4,400 per test. Soon thereafter surfaced reports that test kits imported from China at a landing cost of Rs 245 hadbeen sold to ICMR for Rs 600. As if that was not enough, ICMR admitted that the test kits were found to be defective and advised state governments, which had already been supplied the kits, not to use them.

That was not all. We now know that Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP), which issued weekly alerts on epidemics and diseases, was asked to stop issuing the alerts in February. IDSP had been doing this for several years since it was set up in 2004. There is no explanation yet why this was stopped after the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared COVID-19 as a pandemic on January 30.

What comes as the proverbial last straw is the information that during this period the central government did not think it necessary to consult scientists, doctors and administrators who have previous experience of successfully combating pandemics. That these experts were not even deemed suitable for advisory positions reflects poorly on the government.

What is equally unnerving is the union government’s uniform and persistent attempts to blame everyone else. Migrant workers, it says, defied the lockdown and were not prepared to wait for their turn to be transported. It blamed Tablighi Jamaat for spreading the virus but ignored other similar congregations or the ‘Namaste Trump’ eventin Ahmedabad or BJP’s own rallies in Bhopal.

State governments, it says, failed to contain the virus and enforce the lockdown. But it treats opposition ruled states and BJP ruled states differently. The Union Home Minister’s warnings to West Bengal and Maharashtra are communicated to pliable media. But when it comes to Gujarat, the Home Minister directs the AIIMS director to be flown to Ahmedabad in a special Air Force plane to advise doctors there. The Railway Minister blames the opposition ruled states for not granting necessary permission for running special trains, a charge the states have vigorously denied.

The union government also refuses to acknowledge that states are bankrupt and have not been paid even their share in the GST collection with the centre. The opposition, it has incessantly complained, did not cooperate with the government in dealing with the crisis.

A Government running away from its responsibility and blaming others does not inspire much confidence.

It is difficult not to worry. Even Lockdown 4.0 seems now unlikely to change the reality much.