A dose of vaccine against falsehoods

 

It is impossible to overlook the fact that a State which was showing reasonable progress in vaccination and reporting minuscule wastage suddenly screeched to a grinding halt in mid-May

Today as India battles the corona virus pandemic, the old saying "adversity uncovers the real nature of your friends and foes" is being put to test. If there was ever a time to forget ideological and political differences and use co-operative federalism to protect our citizens, this was it. Yet many politicians chose human suffering as a laboratory for their debauched politics. Through their malevolent toolkits and through their controversial actions, they weakened a nation's fight against a common enemy. For every Opposition leader like Naveen Patnaik who chose to walk on the path of statesmanship, we got a Mamata Banerjee who chose to stoke her pitiful ego over common good. Rajasthan unfortunately saw a man at the helm of affairs who peddled untruths to hide his Government's lackadaisical attitude in the fight againstCovid. This article is a fact checking exercise against their claims.

One of the most contentious issues that the Chief Minister and his fellow leaders had against the Centre was the availability of oxygen. Starting fromApril 22 till the better part of May, the Chief Minister, the health Minister and Rajasthan's Congress unit chief levelled allegations of step-motherly treatment towards non-BJP ruled states in oxygen allocation. On April 29 and 30 the  ChiefMinister gave media bites on the issue, but the truth was something different.

Data clearly shows that on April 29, non-BJP states like Maharashtra, Chattisgarh, Kerala, Punjab and Tamil Nadu were allocated more oxygen than demanded, with Rajasthan getting exactly 205 MT of oxygen that it had demanded for. Further on May 14 when the Chief Minister expressed his unwillingness in lifting oxygen from sanctioned plants in eastern India and demanded for an increase in allocation from Gujarat's Jamnagar plant, the Centre covered up for his inefficiency and swiftly increased the allocation from the plant from 70 MT to 120 MT, while increasing overall allocation of oxygen from 330 MT to 380 MT. These are just two of the many instances when the Chief Minister was purposefully using lies to hide his ineptitude in handling the corona crisis.

Similarly, on the issue of ventilators, the state's Congress unit went all out against the Centre, and on May 14, 15 and 17 levelled allegations and went as far as calling them "kabad" and "kachra". A simple fact-check shows that 1500 ventilators sent to Rajasthan under PM Cares Fund were lying unused since the last 10 months. While the Centre provides ventilators, installation and maintenance is the work of the State governments. Despite knowing fully well their mistake, the Congress party still had the temerity to call indigenously built and ingeniously designed ventilators as "Kabads". If the Central government could provide a ventilator worth Rs 4 lakh, what stopped the Gehlot government from spending Rs 300 to operationalise and maintainthem?Even the Rajasthan High court while replying to a PIL on ventilator related deaths in Sirohi sought clarifications from the State government on why 1500 ventilators were not put to use.

Another shocking case of apathy came to light when it was discovered that the State government had given the ventilators sanctioned under PM Cares Fund

to private hospitals which were charging a princely sum of Rs. 35-40,000 per day from patients. Numerous ventilators that were leased out to private hospitals were listed down as faulty to cover this fraud. The State government's assertion of faulty ventilators has to be viewed with clinical suspicion and the truth shall soon be uncovered after proper audit by the Uniongovernment.

After oxygen andventilators, the state Government's tirade against the Uniongovernment didnot stop even for vaccines. India had a reputation of being a laggard in vaccination policy before 2014.  For example, polio vaccination in India started in 1979, a quarter century after it was launched in USA, and India was declared polio free only in 2014, after a full 26 years. In contrast India became one among an elite club of 12 countries which has been able to develop their own vaccine within one year. Yet, Rahul Gandhi and his triumvirate of Chief Ministerslaunched a malicious campaign against domestic producers and the Centre.

What could one expect from the Congress party which had side-stepped Bharat Biotech's vaccine for encephalitis and Rota Virus for Chinese vaccines, effectively handing our vaccine security to foreign, particularly Chinese,companies. This government, post-2014, put vaccine security at the centre of the universal immunisation program.

At the end of May, nearly 1.75 Crore doses were still available with the states. Vaccination is going to gather considerable speed in the month of June as more than 12 crore doses will be made available. Vaccine administration in Rajasthan however tells a different story. During the subsequent weeks of May 15-21 and 22-28, when the vaccine administration in India grew by 26 per cent, Rajasthan saw a decline of 27 per cent. The reasons behind the decline has to be viewed suspiciously citing the disturbing news of 500 vials of vaccines being discovered in the trash bins of 35 centers in Rajasthan. The wastage of vaccines in some parts of Rajasthan like Churu (39.7 per cent), Hanumangarh (26.40 per cent), Bharatpur (17.13 per cent),etcis criminally high.

It is impossible to overlook the fact that a state which was showing reasonable progress in vaccination and reporting miniscule wastage suddenly screeched to a grinding halt in mid-May. Knowing that vaccination is our only shield against a third wave, vaccine wastage done unknowingly is an unpardonable mistake, but if done knowingly is downright seditious in nature. The article doesn't insinuate anyone but as a principled member of the political fraternity, one cannot be blind to the political machinations being played at the cost of human lives.


(The author is Minister for Jal Shakti, Government of India. The views expressed are personal.)

Source: https://www.dailypioneer.com/2021/columnists/a-dose-of-vaccine-against-falsehoods.html

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