An Idealism Injection

Context: If our politics continue as usual over the next few months, the devastation to our lives will be immeasurable. We need temporary reconciliation, a national action plan.

Challenges to our political setup amid a pandemic

• Marked by communalism, polarisation, petulance, authoritarianism, aggression.
• Lack of cooperation with the states as the fight about Covid becomes a fight over petulant one-upmanship as we are, for example, seeing between Delhi Government and the Centre.
• Use of the rhetoric of “depoliticization” to silence the critics:
  • The insidious practice of bureaucrats now having to be like public spokespersons for the central government has destroyed the credibility of the bureaucracy but also made interstate coordination more difficult.

Key objectives to fight COVID

• Creation of a national action plan: for the next two to three years, with tangible and realistic targets on everything from vaccination procurement and pricing to preparedness for future waves.
  • The plan must be made and owned by all the state chief ministers and the central government together.
  • Must also take hard decisions about financial allocations and building up the public health infrastructure.
• Recognizing the scarcity and rationing of vaccines: It is important that the rationing be done fairly, according to principles that make sense from a public health point of view.
  • The more such rationing decisions are collective decisions, the more confidence in their fairness.
• Activation of parliamentary select committees as tools of accountability: Allowing a parliamentary committee to ask why the ICMR was so slow in sharing data, for example, is not a bad thing; and the fact that they know they are now answering only to the executive will increase confidence in the system.
• Depoliticize bureaucracy: Bureaucrats should report to respective CMs and parliament rather than serving one master.
  • “Depoliticised” means creating structures of decision-making where the incentives to cooperate are strengthened and achieving results becomes more important than embarrassing opponents.
• Commitment towards prioritizing pandemic: Not just in an administrative sense but also psychological and political sense, where we can convey that the death and suffering are not tacked on to the usual pathologies of politics.
  • This will require an almost heroic forbearance to show that different sinews of power are pulling in one direction, at least on the pandemic.
  • For e.g. It is remarkable that even the United States, which used to be recalcitrant on granting IPR waivers, is seriously moving in that direction.

Conclusion: No part of India can win unless the whole of India wins. Vasudhaiva kutumbakam for the world, but Matsya Nyaya at home, where the bigger fish eats the smaller fish, is not exactly a coherent moral outlook.