Time to be honest

Let’s be honest to admit that we have not been able to handle the pandemic as effectively as we should have and perhaps could have. While citing reasons may produce long list of responses that were found missing, if we try to get to the roots, we may come to just one conclusion. More than anything else it was a failure of character. Character of those responsible for policy making that is the political class. But the bureaucratic machinery was also equally responsible for not applying their mind, the job they are supposed to do. It was also the failure of character of the common people who acted irresponsible enough to let Corona flourish the second time. What an irony. We knew what was required. Yet, we did what was not required. The point is that this is not the first time a pandemic like this has dealt a bloody blow. When are we going to learn? Maybe not as long as we are not honest to admit our mistakes, learn from them and let those who know the job do it. This is a typical Indian scenario. We always find the wrong man for the right place. You need nothing else to invite a disaster. And so, it was. Saying that the common man erred may pass on some portion of the blame to the scapegoat but that does not absolve the political class of their sin. Governance was more important than forming governments but people preferred the latter. It took a higher judiciary to point out how callous some institutions have become. If people are honest to admit mistakes and learn from them things could improve in the future. But hoping this is a tall order. The chaos that has set in reminds of an old Gandhian quote — When wealth is lost nothing is lost, when health is lost something is lost, but when character is lost everything is lost. The point he wanted to emphasise was that character is the all-important attribute. Character can help regain health and wealth even if we lose these. But the present times have no room for character, as wealth and health occupy the front seat. The results are there to see. We still can make up for the lost ground if we pick up the moral courage to own our mistakes. But for that there is need to shed the ego, the king size ego that always tells us that we are infallible. As the political class continues to pat its own back, situation is going from bad to worse. Time for some soul searching. Gandhiji had talked about seven social sins in his weekly newspaper Young India on October 22, 1925. It would be worthwhile recollecting them, which were — Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice and Politics without principles. While all those sins are responsible for the present-day situation, it may be prudent to identify the deadliest of the sins talked by Gandhi 95 years ago. It is politics without principles that has become the biggest curse of the present times. It is politics that is at the helm of everything. Though many definitions of politics are there power is Central to all of them. It is obsession with power that is the root cause of all evil. While thinking of principled politics may sound utopian only that can lead us out of the morass we are in.

Faith & hope: Best antidotes

People are talking again, same people, same things. We are as clueless as we were during the previous surge of Corona. Masks, social distancing, sanitisers and lockdown are our mainstay. As to the medicines no one knows which one is working and for whom. Admittedly we have not grown any wiser despite spending billions. Vaccinations of course have come as a big source of sustenance but there are doubting Thomases also to see the darker side. Amid all this, we need to settle down for something more authentic. As the kerfuffle continues, two things seem to be our best refuge. Faith and hope. They are our powerful antidotes today to inoculate against Corona. Highly scientific brains may have reasons to raise questions about the efficacy of these two constructs. But there is ample scientific evidence to suggest that faith healing works and even die-hard medical practitioners will agree to this. Faith drives hope, and hope drives life. True, evidence-based research may not be readily available to prove this, but there is need to understand that absence of proof is no proof of absence. Moreover, copious anecdotal evidences can be cited to establish that faith and hope do work. The fact of the matter is that even the best of the medicines works only if the patient believes they can work. Ample psychological studies are there to corroborate that placebo effects are a reality. Call it miracle or call it will power, but it works. As a deluge of data is being dished out to show how deadly the coronavirus is and how helpless humanity is, there are rays of hope in this otherwise sombre atmosphere. While case fatality rates are being boldly displayed to point out how life threatening is the coronavirus, recovery rates are not shown as prominently. If only this data is displayed honestly, we would realise how unfounded our angst is about the possibility of dying, or the entire humanity coming to an end. A simple recapitulation of the catastrophic incidents of the past century will show how the present challenges match with those. The first world war was responsible for killing 22 million people. Then followed the Spanish flu, a close cousin of the present variant, which had killed 50 million people. 15 million in India alone. Remember, antibiotics were not discovered then. Then came the great depression that ruined economies like a House of cards. This was followed by the second World war, killing over 60 million people. Then the Korean war, the Vietnam war and what not. Humanity survived all that and grew around three times since then. We certainly are far better off but for the fact that we are highly ill-informed. No, there is no dearth of information. Quite the contrary. But there is plenty of negative information that has struck a bloody blow to our faith and hope and bogged us down with forces of Thanatos, the death urges. Look at the figures of April 25. Total number of confirmed cases is 147,096,661 and total number of deaths 3,223,558, that is around 2%. Ironically, one estimate says that around 9 million people die every year of hunger and hunger related diseases. Not that we don’t do anything about Corona. But we need not lose hope. More people are dying out of fear of Corona rather than the actual infection. Time to rekindle hope and faith by tweaking the headlines. Headline management can go a long way in arresting the present surge.