As the worse of coronavirus pandemic appears to be squarely behind us, author Priyam Gandhi-Modi has written a book which dissects India’s covid management under leadership of Prime Minister Modi. The two years of pandemic saw the best and worst of humanity with the fear of unknown lurking just round the corner. There was migrant crisis where the Centre arranged for Shramik Express trains to help the migrants go home.
Soon, the vaccine was rolled out in January 2021. Senior citizens and healthcare workers and other frontline workers were vaccinated.
Subsequently things got better but only to get worse. India was soon gripped in second wave of the pandemic in April-May 2021 which saw one of the worst oxygen crisis in India. There were calls of hospitals running out of oxygen while patients were being admitted. By then, on request of various non-BJP ruled states, the Centre had given them the powers to take decisions as they deem fit as health is a state subject.
However, when things again appeared out of hand, the Centre stepped in. The book by Gandhi-Mody talks about the many challenges thrown at PM Modi during the covid crisis. Here is an excerpt of the book where it talks about the acute oxygen crisis that hit the national capital.
A Nation To Protect – Leading India Through The Covid Crisis by Priyam Gandhi-Mody
Excerpt of the book published with permission:
It is abundantly clear that officially the Delhi government had only raised a demand of 590 MT of oxygen, which the Centre had allocated. Despite that, perhaps only to shift the blame at the mismanagement of the oxygen, Delhi government went to Court saying that an oxygen shortage in the city was due to the Centre’s refusal to allocate oxygen which they had demanded. An ingenious plan which worked to their advantage as the media lapped up the story.
Videos of desolate folks running from pillar to post craving for oxygen in addition to the victim card which the Delhi government played seemed to have done wonders to shift the blame on the Centre for the oxygen shortage in the national capital. The Delhi High Court came down on the Centre and ordered it to supply 700 MT of oxygen to the Delhi government daily and warned of contempt proceedings if it failed to do so. To slightly rewind the situation, officers from the Centre were in touch with officers from the state governments of high-risk states right from the first week of April.
The Centre would ask for estimates of requirement of oxygen for the next five, 10 or 15 days and plan allocation accordingly. But the Delta virus was a new beast, something which the world had not previously seen. The requirement of oxygen grew exponentially, which even the states themselves had not accounted for. With the exponential increase, previous calculations came undone. This led to the worst of politics being played out.
Questions were raised on oxygen allocation as if no mechanism of officers was ever in place on this issue. Human psychology is such that we often need someone we can blame. Would it be right to blame states for not anticipating the future requirement of oxygen? Would it be right to blame the Centre for planning according to the requirements sent by states? This was a once-in-a-century crisis caused by an extremely unpredictable virus. Some even blamed the Centre for over-centralizing control in the pandemic and states having to request the Centre for its share of oxygen.
But let us look at the counter scenario. Imagine if the Centre had said it would empower all states to manage their own oxygen. In such a hypothetical case, only some states would have managed to organize their own supplies while others would have had no source. Equitable or need-based distribution would be out of the question.
As soon as the allocation increased, Delhi came up with a new issue; that tankers carrying oxygen to Delhi were being blocked in UP and Haryana. On 22 April, in a press conference, Deputy Chief Minister of New Delhi Manish Sisodia noted that ‘jungle raj’ by the governments of UP and Haryana (both BJP-ruled states) was why Delhi was not receiving timely oxygen.
He blamed them for blocking and hoarding oxygen which was meant for Delhi. One of Delhi’s primary vendors for oxygen supply was Linde India, whose plant is based in Faridabad, Haryana. Sisodia’s charges were that the Haryana government was not letting the vendor release the tankers to come to Delhi. However, when media folks spoke with the collector of Faridabad, Dr Garima Mittal, she strongly negated Sisodia’s accusations, ‘I do not know where this news is coming from.
Everything is fine. I don’t know about the specific case of the hospital, but there is no issue here. All the tankers are leaving the state, there’s no issue at all. Nobody has been stopped. There is absolutely smooth movement as has been going on. Oxygen supply will be as usual.’ Only a few hours after her response, Sisodia once again tweeted that supply had been restored.
You can buy a copy of the book here.
