‘Mirror Mirror On The Wall ...’

Context: The key fault-lines visible during the handling of the pandemic must be addressed

Some key fault lines that must be addressed

• Inability of the government to deliver: in providing security to the citizens and delivering on their right to health and education.
  • This should call for improving the mechanisms of delivery rather than abdicating responsibility and handing over the baton to the private corporate sector.
  • On the contrary, the most rapidly growing and most profitable sectors in the Indian economy are private security, private education, and private health care.
• Government decision making should be evidence-based: and subject to independent and critical evaluation.
  • There should be carefully designed pilot projects to determine feasibility. There must be independent evaluation after implementation to inculcate learnings for the future
  • Creating public awareness must be part and parcel of project planning.
• Avoid creating an arbitrage economy that favours “rents” rather than reward risk-taking and entrepreneurship.
  • This is widespread in the Indian economy, and we witness its ugly consequences in the desperate search for oxygen, hospital beds, and critical medicines.
  • Before imposing controls and regulations, the state must ensure that it has in place the administrative machinery and processes to implement them effectively.
• There is no substitute for knowledge, expertise, and professionalism.
  • We have blundered into this crisis by ignoring warnings from experts.
  • We have created an environment where the role of the professional is to validate a political preference.
  • We have allowed a steady regression into obscurantism instead of promoting the “scientific temper.”