Pandemic and political virus

Tuesday 4th May, 2021

The worst that could happen to any country, burdened with a bunch of irresponsible politicians thirsting for power, is having to go to the polls during a pandemic. Sri Lanka had to do so last year, and the result was a disastrous surge of Covid-19 infections a few weeks later. That situation came about owing to massive election rallies and other such events where health regulations were blatantly flouted by politicians and their supporters alike.

India has also had elections recently in some states, where political parties, their leaders and supporters did not behave responsibly. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s electoral gamble has not paid off. Instead of scaling down his election campaigns on account of the ever-deepening national health crisis and setting an example to others, he chose to make the BJP juggernaut go full throttle in a bid to score an impressive win. He must be really disappointed.

All eyes were on the West Bengal Assembly polls, where PM Modi’s party got trounced by his worst critic, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. Modi must be finding it difficult to stomach defeat, given the colossal amounts of funds, time and energy that went into the BJP election campaign there. Interestingly, although her party, Trinamool Congress, won comfortably, Mamata has lost her seat. Political analysts say she could continue to be the Chief Minister, but will have to face a by-election in six months. However, the fact remains that she has sent the BJP and her bete noire reeling.

Now that the polls are over, the sobering reality must be dawning on PM Modi and his government. Daily cases of Covid-19 have topped 300,000 for 10 straight days or so, in India, with thousands of people dying, daily, many without proper medical care and oxygen. Modi came to power promising the Indians the moon, but his government is now all at sea, unable to help the people the way it should. Whoever would have thought India would be dependent on foreign assistance to overcome a health crisis, on PM Modi’s watch? There are heart-rending appeals from Indians on social media. Some of them are even calling for Modi’s resignation. The BJP government’s efforts to have such posts blocked have come a cropper. The Indian Supreme Court has defended the hapless citizens’ freedom of expression; it declared, on Friday, that no state should clamp down on information if citizens communicated their Covid-related grievances on social media, and promised tough action against those who violated that right. Blessed is a country that has such intrepid judges capable of standing up to powerful rulers and ensuring that people’s rights are respected.

There is no way the BJP and PM Modi can absolve themselves of the blame for the worsening pandemic situation in India. The same goes for their rivals including the Congress and its leaders. They jostled for power, throwing caution to the wind, while people were gasping for oxygen and firewood stocks running out due to an unprecedented number of cremations.

On 27 April, the Madras High Court lashed out at the Election Commission of India (ECI) for the latter’s failure to ensure that the Covid-19 protocol was maintained during election campaigns, and went on to state that the ECI ‘should be put on murder charges for being the most irresponsible institution.’ This harsh remark came close on the heels of the Calcutta High Court lambasting the ECI for not doing enough to make political parties adhere to the Covid-19 protocol. This kind of judicial reaction seems to reflect the public mood. The ECI has moved the Supreme Court against the Madras HC’s remark, which, however, has struck a responsive chord with not only the Indians in agony but also their counterparts elsewhere, especially in this country, where politicians’ irresponsible conduct has endangered the lives of people. The Election Commission of Sri Lanka, in spite of its rhetoric, failed to make the political parties fall in line in the run-up to last year’s general election.

How electioneering boosted the spread of the pandemic may have gone unnoticed in this country probably because not enough random PCR tests were conducted to gauge the social transmission of Covid-19, but the correlation between irresponsible electioneering and the transmission of the virus has become clear in India; it was also seen in the US during the last presidential election.

What really facilitates the spread of the pandemic in any country is its rulers’ callous disregard for public health concerns as well as the sheer stupidity of its citizenry.