A Break That India Needs

25 July 2021
Not very much in terms of how the state of play is, yet, when you are hoping that flux will reveal a pathfinder, and you end up nearly a year later with more of the dreaded flux, your worst case scenarios fructifying in unedifying manner, it would seem that an ageless civilisational nation, that is India today, has been laid low. From all matrices, lists, and rankings, on indices from nutrition in children to bureaucratic efficiency, we appear to have slipped, not to mention how in the face of this pandemic shut down on school, our very demographic hope, of school going children, can end up groping in the dark, cut off by lack of smart devices, lack of internet coverage and simply the lack of resources…the picture would be far more bleak than I can paint on this canvas of a blog, yet hope continues to strike a chord.

From all accounts on ground, we can say, that if one forgives the optics and media hysterics, the government machinery has recouped from the devastation of the second wave that visited mainly north India. When reports of oxygen shortage and shortage of essential medicines came through, beyond the wall of friendly media coverage, a social media monitored by trolls and help lines to source essentials from beds to oxygen came up to the fore, some how, India managed to stay well on her feet. We know that internally, a more realistic idea of ground reality is gaining finally, about our vaccination programme, our hospital set up and health infrastructure and essentially a sense has been knocked into the establishment which unfortunately continues to be led by judicial activism. From yaatraa to festival, the ruling of HCs and SC have told populists and religious minded to lay off.

Now that we know the greater efficiency of the Delta strain…The Chinese have studied it in a province and published their results. A blog on NPR website carried a more general write up based on this research, which summarised, not surmised, that the Delta is 1000 times more replicating, it can occupy not just the nasopharynx but also further lower down the respiratory tract. So in practical terms, the RT PCR will now be detecting the virus much earlier after the infection in a host as also with much ease, due to the replication rate and the infectivity of the variant in the host. Why should this alarm India? Because, she is India’s daughter, this delta, and she was first picked up last October. It means that our agencies were generally caught not off guard, but missing in action, from October to now. Remember in July, after the first wave in India of this Delta strain in March to June, China within the first 60 days of its outbreak in their Gaungzhou province from 21 May 21, published their results for 167 cases on 7 July 21, a research that is text book science, following a single index case. Their research establishes how the clinical cycle is demonstrably reduced by 2 days, from 6 to 4 when the PCR can pick up the infection of the delta strain clearly. How come India’s vaunted ICMR has not disclosed a study of similar nature? With her resources and highly trained technical manpower, India’s medical sciences could have benefited from a fillip of such information, if the same had been made available as guidance to her vast network of medical workers, in accelerating their clinical anticipated timelines to the delta variant and could technically have avoided patients gasping for air outside hospitals. To some extent even the deaths could have been avoided. This is a ‘shoelace scenario’ if ever there was one.
What Indian media and her medical sciences needs is to be able to work this pandemic without its politicisation, something which many countries have failed to do with disastrous consequences, from Israel to UK to USA. Yet a country whose resources and abilities are better known to its cadre of professional bureaucrats should have anticipated and advised for this divorce, at least after the first wave that ended officially last October. The sorry part is how after the Pegasus revelation, that Dr Kang was targeted, we have a reality, where this embeded bureaucracy and network of specialists, has been empowered under this government to such an extent that they have become arbiters at a different level. Virtually the new Vidhatas of India, with all kinds of information control at their disposal, but sadly, even as Dr Harsh Vardhan was shown the door, remain ensconced to this day.

If our health matters are in such tatters, just take a look at our foreign affairs with Afghanistan. The strategic policy of our government is with Mr Doval as NSA since 2014 and subsequently joined by Mr Jaishankar who is a professional bureaucrat, a FS who became MEA under Mr Modi. There are two diverse views on Afghanistan, one which says India tried to hunt hounds and run with hares and another that says India was never a serious contender in Afghanistan, simply happy to play a bit role here and there, particularly with infrastructure efforts! Of course, what Andrew Korybko is suggesting is actually the PV Narasimha Rao approach of pragmatism in foreign policy, which was shown to be a mix of geopolitics and economics, where India would espouse those causes which would not create military or economic hardship to India. Of course, his conclusion is that US dumped India, that in the new Quad with US-Afghanistan-Pakistan-Uzbekistan as a economic railroad access offering initiative, with its natural recognition of Pakistan’s ‘role in Afghanistan’ is evidence of why India should be vary about using US to counter China! Actually, the situation is more nuanced. India has been half hearted in her efforts to become regionally relevant, with SAARC and other regional trade fora like BIMSTEC having failed to deliver. There is a Chinese led initiative in South Asia for Poverty Alleviation and Cooperative Development Centre based in Chongqing, which includes Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan besides Pakistan for now. Of course, The Hindu carried an interview with Bangladeshi foreign minister, in which Mr AK Abdul Momen mentioned categorically that this new grouping must not be seen as one excluding India, and India was more than welcome to join it. Still, the reality is, India is the only South Asian power that is not part of Beijing’s BRI and hence it is not going to be easy, particularly in the face of recent reverses on the borders with China in Ladakh, as well as the domestic health and economic situation to actually cut ice with China and agree to partner the Chongqing initiative.

If these regional shape shifters were not a focus, consider how President Xi visited Tibet officially. The pomp was equal to one that once Tibet would have accorded a Chinese Emperor or His Representative, including the line up of monks and lamas outside the monastery in Lhasa. The local Tibetan Buddhist Association was out in full festivity to welcome Mr Xi. The visit was covered in local Chinese media only after it was over. Yet, the significance of a visit, first in 3 decades by a Chinese ruler, that too in backdrop of what is broadly China’s new strategy in the Himalayan Buddhist Belt, mainly to gain ascendency over India, was not without the symbolic visit to the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan residence- the Potala Palace. It is clear, that President Xi is preparing for Dalai Lama XV, the successor to the current incumbent HH Tenzin Gyatso. The entire visit was carefully staged, allowing President Xi to spend personal time interacting with key elements of Chinese Tibetan administration and local Buddhist representatives, whom the CCP bets will deliver for China and Tibet in the decades to come. And the Dalai is expressing vulnerability, seeking for the first time, an appointment with the Indian PM is not unrelated to these unfolding events.

So in a year when India was trying to avoid trade with China, we ended up with offering her a trade surplus beyond her wildest imaginations. A year when we thought we could play the Tibet card, we ended up scampering for a reaction. A year when we thought we could offer aid to the world, we accepted aid from across the world, not just ventilators, medicines, but even medical comforts! So has India’s luck bottomed out? Will India get a lucky break?
What India needs is self belief. What India needs in not denial but acceptance of reality. What India needs is a heavy dose of pragmatism. India has the intellectual depth and civilisational chutzpah to chart a much needed course correction. And of course a lucky break with this wildly mutating pandemic virus! India must hang in there…for this haul is simply too long. It is not over, until it is over!