The second wave or surge does not give any idea of what the country is going through. It is a purge where no one knows how long he will live. This is the commentary of the normal living ones, the ones infected with COVID-19 have a different story. From the testing to the end for those who are unlucky, it is a journey which no one could have ever imagined till the onset of this purge. The fear is palpable and unlike a genocide which has reasons behind it, however crooked it might be, here there is no reason. A country which has welfare programs for everybody from universal health insurance to widow pension to as good as free rice / meals. The budget estimates of revenue expenditure on social security and welfare of all governments combined is 1.6 trillion rupees.

The same masses have to organize wood themselves to do the cremation of their near and dear in a condition which has no parallel in peacetime devoid of any natural disaster. If one image that has already been etched in the human mind now, are of the unending funeral pyres. This would be the defining image of our times. Image that is being repeated everyday and is a blot on our democracy. The search for oxygen does not seem to end. The patients keep dying because of lack of oxygen, while the country has extra oxygen. The TV debates and the real images do not match. When human beings are being cleansed with eerie regularity, cleansing social media becomes inconsequential.

A governance mechanism which has taken life out of medical / paramedical professionals / hospital managements cannot be the one which can battle a pandemic. The ruling team of whichever governments, which have brought us here, cannot be the ones who can take us back to the starting point. Are terms banana republic and soft state euphemism for the nature of governments which run the country today. For all who are battling for their lives, their near and dear ones and people are making the medical infrastructure run, the state has ceased to exist. You are left to fend for yourself in the darkest hour of your life.

It is not of your creation is more tragic. Courts have been coming heavily on governments and election commission, we don’t have to do that dirty job. The last phase of W Bengal election was forgotten, while it stil two days away On the 2nd of May 2021, whosoever wins is immaterial, the people of India have already lost their war. Do we even now, look for world class experts; epidemiologists, vaccine roll out experts, data scientists etc who can give the government a peep into the near future. Or are we happy with the pliable ones. What is the plan ahead? None. Human life has no value. The TV debates amply prove that we have not only lost the COVID-19 plot, but more dangerously the democratic plot.

WHAT CAN BE PLANNED WHEN THE WARNING SIGNALS WERE DELIBERATELY DROWNED IN THE POLITICAL CACOPHONY.