In COVID Storm, The Key Principles Driven Home

Context: An overview of key fallouts in India’s approach to pandemic management.

Key fallouts in India’s approach to pandemic management

• Focus on health coverage rather than health care: Policy approach prioritising insurance (E.g. Ayushman Bharat) over investing in public healthcare facilities resulted in woefully low spending on healthcare.
  • On the contrary, the debate over universalising healthcare over universal health coverage has been settled in favour of healthcare. For e.g.
    • The landmark UK’s National Health Service Act in 1946, which revolutionised health care in the UK by delinking it from a person’s income and recognised that public health could not be left to market forces.
    • High-level expert group by Planning Commission in 2011 concluded that “progressive strengthening of public facilities” is the only way to reach medical services to the population as a whole.
    • Kerala healthcare model: Kerala started investing heavily in public health care in 1950s, demonstrated primary health care was labour-intensive, generating its own virtuous cycle of trained personnel.
• Prioritising faith over science: Silencing of rationalists as ‘western’ and ‘alien’ to ‘Indian ethos’.
  • Public allocations for science fallen: Adding promotion of unscientific claims like ancient Hindus invented stem-cell science.
  • No scientific accountability: No group with respected scientists or public health experts to challenge government diktats or test decisions taken government against scientific principles.
    • E.g. Thali banging, candle lighting, abrupt lockdowns, the conduct of Kumbh Mela etc.
• Data hesitancy over data integrity: Data hesitancy has remained a feature of the government.
  • This has led to data denial over tests and deaths (mortality data reported many times lower), leading to misunderstanding of disease and mishandling of situation stemming from inaccurate predictions.
• Misplaced economics ignoring the poor: Deriding “Povertarianism”, talking of “freebies” cannot be a replacement to sound welfarism which must prioritise majority of Indians who need social security.
  • Azim Premji University report talks of 230 million Indians slipping below breadline during pandemic.
  • Understanding “good economics” as what helps its majority, the poorest and vulnerable, must be a principle rather than a matter of embarrassment.
• Misconducts allowing a free run of virus: For E.g. Promoting large unprotected crowds in desperation to win elections such as in West Bengal.

Conclusion: The least good that might be hoped for, at an unimaginably high cost, is for COVID-19 to cure us of the basic distortion in our public and political culture, which has been on a speed pill for the last seven years.