Reckless Covid Negligence

The cries for help grew louder with each passing day in the last few weeks. Some sought help with ICU beds, some just a hospital bed, some for Remdesivir, some for FabiFlue, some for vaccines, some for oxygen; the list is endless. Out of nowhere some states in India were plunged into another, more devastating, round of Covid. Last few weeks India has been averaging around 3 lakh cases per day and over 1000 deaths. And as if this tragedy wasn’t enough, an oxygen accident killed 22 patients in a Nashik hospital. And in another incident, a fire killed 13 patients in a Virar hospital.  Telling you the story in text will not explain it as much as a graph and it will be hard to explain why the Covid cases suddenly shot up so dramatically in February and March 2021 and continues to play havoc:

The most affected states are clearly Maharashtra and Delhi – both ruled by corrupt parties who do nothing but whine and blame others or indulge in self-aggrandisment. Of course, in all of this, the Centre has not exactly covered itself in glory. The Health Minister, in particular, had no clue what was going on and he was in his world of empty blabber as most of his party-men were busy campaigning for Bengal, TN and other states. The reckless and carefree manner of election campaign by all parties makes them all criminally guilty of violating norms and subjecting people to mass-danger. But BJP being the biggest party spread across multiple states will naturally take a greater beating for it. Incompetent fool that he is, Dr Harsh Vardhan grandly declared in early March that India was in the “endgame” with Covid:

That was literally throwing caution to the winds. And when the Health Minister makes such ill-informed statements, it is natural that others will lower their guard and be a lot more carefree. This is exactly what happened. It is not just that, long before the current round of Covid invasion, the PM and many of his ministers were making idiotic statements like India was better off, there were lower deaths compared to our population size and so on. Little did it occur to all those who made such statements that the entire Covid disaster cannot be measured against the whole population. It has to be measured by the population of the states that are affected. Lower deaths and cases are not some “competitive advantage” that can be bragged about in a pandemic. Modi either indulges in excessive fear-mongering or in excessive chest-thumping. And we are currently paying the price for such negligence:

Not only were Modi & Co too quick to declare victory against Covid but his penchant for pats from the West has also reduced the negotiating power of India. When former President Trump snapped his fingers a bit angrily, Modi quickly ordered supplies of Hydroxychloroquine to the US and a couple of more countries. Trump later banned export of raw material for vaccines to India and the ban stays till date. Another request from India has been declined.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel also laments India’s rise as a pharma giant and supplier. Modi must now learn that he has no friends among these racists who want to keep India down. Since October-November 2020, Modi and his ministers were constantly playing down Covid as if the threat was over or at least reduced to insignificance. In six months, there have been more statements on downplaying Covid than in keeping the warnings up. Although, some states like Maharashtra, Delhi were indeed warned of continued threats but they weren’t bothered and Modi didn’t follow up with any action:

So, what exactly caused all this problem? Today oxygen tanks are being moved by rail and air. Two dozen mobile oxygen plants are being air-lifted from Germany. There is panic across many states and some hospitals are starving for oxygen. Hopefully, this too will pass whether solved or not. But the temptation to lower the guard started in November and it started with nothing but the greed of winning elections. The BJP has developed itself into a well-oiled election winning machine and the one last frontier that it wanted to conquer was Bengal. There were a few more states going to polls – Assam, TN, Kerala, Puducherry but Bengal is the glittering prize that the BJP desperately wanted to win. The moment things settled down a bit, all caution was thrown the wind from November 2020 the BJP had embarked on its election campaign. The elections were to held in March-April but BJP wanted to be miles ahead in the race and months ahead in the campaign:

Not only was PM Modi campaigning heavily in Bengal and other states, his entire retinue of ministers also descended on Bengal. Every Tom, Vadakkan and Hairy from the BJP was in Bengal campaigning. There is no doubt that Bengal is an important election for the BJP and the country but the manner in which PM and others threw Covid-caution to winds simply tells the story of their own reckless behaviour. Even as Covid cases were rising in some more states as were deaths, the GOI remained oblivious to the situation. They kept campaigning till the fourth phase of Bengal elections and suspended campaign only when EC also banned it. By then cases had gone up beyond 3 lakhs a day and deaths were averaging 2000 a day.

Even if you take up the total cases of around 16 million in India and about 5 million new ones in this second phase the number is not that great when compared to the population but the medical infrastructure is already creaking and breaking down. There is the regular moronic problem of migrants. First time around last year, we could sympathise with them. We could sense their situation of uncertainty and wanting to rush home but they seem to want to indulge in this reckless cattle-like behaviour each time there is a temporary problem. No state has called for a full lockdown or stoppage of all work, yet the migrants are again running helter-skelter creating havoc. The first action to stop the spread of Covid has to be stop transportation of people – road, rail and air. The maximum transmission happens when people are floating around. None of that has been controlled and, therefore, the problems are going to mount. Some states that aren’t currently showing many cases may show up in the next couple of months.

Foolishly enough, as with other cases of blockades and agitations, the Supreme Court and Delhi High Court are also hearing petitions on oxygen supplies. One has to wonder what the courts know or can do. They only interfere and act as a hindrance to the govt which is already struggling to cope with the demands. When a crisis faces in India, the entire system not only breaks down, there are many cooks who jump to spoil the broth too.

To summarise, this second round of Covid has come about due to recklessness of both, the Centre and some States. Both have let their guard down and allowed the pandemic to grow again. The only way to put a halt to the spread is to stop movement of people temporarily. At least for a week all transport must be stopped. But the govt doesn’t seem to be inclined on that. The unreserved compartments in trains are like hell and are gateways to the spread of Covid. There is going to be no miracle, no saviour – it is simply going to be a long-drawn fight. Everyone just has to be prepared for it.

 

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The Uttarakhand Warning

The news of the BJP govt in Uttarakhand (UK) reversing its decision to takeover 51 temples came on April 9. That is 3 days after the elections in Tamil Nadu were over. Maybe they should have announced it a week before the TN elections as the party promised to remove govt interference in temples in TN too. Of course, the party was vague about the promise and PM Narendra Modi himself did not shout about it in any of his speeches. So, there is enough doubt that it was just an election stunt as BJP is not expected to wield any power in TN and, worse, it would end up in nothing if DMK returned to power. However, one must give credit to the BJP that they managed to create some noise about “Temple freedoms” and wanting to be the “saviour” and also get some associates to blow their blaring trumpets:

That’s right! The BJP technically has no stake in Tamil Nadu other than a token presence so they can promise anything. They can even promise life-size Rihanna dolls and it wouldn’t have made any difference. But there are other charlatans parading as “spiritual gurus” who suddenly started off on a free-temples campaign. Notably, Jaggi Vasudev who styles himself as “Sadhguru” started a campaign around November-December 2020 with gentle tweets and interviews about temples. This guy is not exactly a “Hindu guru” but an amalgam of all the ingredients of “Bhel Puri” from every religion and some of his own concoction. Now, even given all that, there is nothing wrong if one is campaigning to free temples but this extra-ordinary timing with TN elections and considering the fact that this JV abuses Hindu icons made everyone raise eyebrows.

Someone put out a video of JV where he speaks in a very flippant manner about the relationship between Krishna and Yashoda and alludes to the relationship as “Ras-Leela” and the mother being unable to adjust to the sudden physical growth of Krishna. And these moronic comments to earlier comments on Yoga having nothing to do with Hinduism or Shivratri not being Hindu – it reflects a sick mind that neither understands Hinduism nor scientific concepts. JV stupidly asserts “If Yoga is Hindu, then Gravity is Christian”. Obviously, it’s a dumb statement without a decent understanding of the two. I have explained JV’s ignorance of “invention” and “discovery” in a whole thread on Twitter.

Everyone who knows a bit about JV suspects he fears the return of DMK to power for some reason and there might be investigations into his suspected land scams and encroachment of forest lands in Coimbatore. Therefore, they suspected his sudden love for temples when he trashes and distorts Hindu practices and values and particularly his love for only TN temples. Prior to February 23 this year, JV made no tweets specifically about TN temples. He was just in time to act as the sidekick of BJP in its election campaign:

Interestingly, JV marks his #TNTemple tweets to superstar Rajinikanth also. Maybe he hopes Rajini will whisper into the ears of both party leaders and put in a good word for JV. Hindus from various parts of the country have been sporadically vocal about freedom for their temples from govt control and abuse. Some of the richest temples in India are victims of loot by the govt. In addition to the loot, the temples are corrupted by employing Non-Hindu personnel who don’t have any devotion to the temple or its deity. Naturally, when JV’s abuse of Hindu icons was brought up, his Nazi-like moronic foot-soldiers started abusing Hindus who were questioning the motives of this sudden temple charade. Mind you, JV is not campaigning for “Hindu” temples but specifically for “TN temples” as great, divine assets of Tamil and Dravidian culture. Now, the problem is the TN campaign will fizzle out like a “Seasonal Cocktail” but since UK reversed its temple-takeover decision, the charlatan and his sidekicks were desperate to claim some victory from somewhere:

Nazi-like footsies of JV grandly claim that he hasn’t staked any credit for the turnaround in UK. But these morons don’t read the language of his tweet and the congratulatory messages Bollywood blabbermouths are showering on him. JV grandly thanks his 3cr (whoever they are) for UK but the charlatan that he is, he never once tweeted about UK temples. When the UK govt made the decision to takeover temples there was no protest by JV, not even a mild one. JV did not even yelp like a little puppy about the temples being taken over but grandly sends out a message as if he and his gang had anything to with it. No, for the morons who behave like Nazi footsies of JV, one doesn’t have to expressly state “I take credit, I am glad I achieved this”. It is IMPLICIT in the message and the tone of the message. Only dumb fools would claim otherwise. There were others, like former CBI cop M Nageswara Rao, also dancing over this as if this was some accomplishment of his but the real credit is due to the priests of UK who protested and agitated:

One particular priest, Santosh Trivedi, was on a shirtless protest at Kedarnath in the cold weather for 10 days. None of these fake gurus or other “Professional Election Temple warriors” had any decency to credit the fighting priests directly. It would be obvious to anyone that the temple takeover in UK was one of the dumbest decisions of BJP and severely at odds with its grand promise to free temples from govt control Tamil Nadu. The BJP manifesto for TN included this promise and one wonders how they are going to be able to do anything about temples in TN even if they win all the 20 seats they contested in TN. Such daring promises are usually made when the party is sure of losing elections. Pappu makes such promises in states where Congress stands very little or zero chance of winning (Like making everything from ships to chips in Bundelkhand, Barmer etc). A prospective winner is careful in making promises, a sure-shot loser can promise the moon:

Winners are busy doing business and winning, losers run to the media. Predictably, when the charlatan JV was blasted for all the abuse he showered on Hindu icons he rushed to the current BJP pimps Timesnow and Republic to save his bottom. In my books, these frequent TV-hugging fake-gurus are anyway charlatans who pay PR money in the initial stages through agencies to promote themselves. But when JV appeared on RepublicTV he again grandly abused Brahmins as corrupt, promoting caste-prejudices in this day and age. There is no problem if those are his opinions but he uses these as justification for his free-temple nonsense and a NAC like body to be created to manage temples. In short, a Sonia-type body will manage temples with charlatans of a political colour:

While the BJP grandly promised to free temples in TN, the promise came from all their useless foot-soldiers like JP Nadda, CT Ravi or Tejasvi Surya and some others. Modi himself did not utter anything about temples of TN. He visited some TN temples to “emotionally appease” blind Hindus just as he has been cave-meditation, puja and disco-bhajans. The blind Hindus go ga-ga over such temple visits as if Modi has done the gods or the devotees some great favour. In fact, Modi does absolutely NOTHING for Hindus but keeps them emotionally idiotic. In return, many of them worship them as a god. Someone calls him Avatar of Vishnu; someone calls him Ishwar – that is how low the brainless ones can fall. All of Modi’s drama is not different from vote-bank mix that Congress has followed for ages – a potent mix of Dalit-OBC-SC-ST-Muslim:

Modi doesn’t get mass Muslim votes but he hopes that there will just be enough Muslims who will compensate for the loss of the negligible Upper Caste Hindu votes he keeps losing. Look at Modi’s personal Gods – MK Gandhi – anti-Hindu, Mujibur Rehman – anti-Hindu, “Butcher of Calcutta, who Modi lies by calling “hero for all Indians”, Jyotirao Phule – a strong anti-Hindu jerk, calls AMU a den of anti-Hindus a “Mini India”. Modi claims “Mohammad’s teachings can take the world forward” when Islamists are the most regressive lot in the world. Modi nurtures a strong contempt for upper caste Hindus.  In case you didn’t observe, the ones most agitating for temple-freedoms are UC Hindus and that is why Modi doesn’t give a damn about them or the freedom of temples. So, why reverse the UK decision? The answer is simple. The temples in UK are among the most favourites for Yatras by Hindus, UK is a religious and heritage destination, the Kumbh Melas there generate huge revenues. And most of all, elections in UK are coming up in March 2022.

There’s a hilarious story from Karnataka that should also explain the temple-chors of BJP. Three Muslim men Nawaz, Rahim and Taufeeq had urinated in a temple and dropped condoms in the Hundi of the temple. One of the criminals, Nawaz, died and while dying he told the other that the wrath of Lord Shiva had killed him. The other two got rattled and scared and went to the police and confessed their sin. I guess that’s what happened to idiots of BJP too. The guy who decided to steal temples in UK (Trivendra Rawat) lost his job and I guess the party feared a backlash in the upcoming elections less than a year away. UK is a WARNING for BJP – their anti-Hindu conduct and fooling of Hindus has reached a stage that will invariably invite some divine retribution by voters if they don’t immediately correct course. Modi will not last forever, Hindus will.

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