Be grateful for ideas, don’t cast them in partisan light
The abject failure of the Union government in anticipating, and preparing the nation for, the second wave of the pandemic Covid-19 seems to have unsettled the ruling dispensation with its leading lights jeering at every criticism, instead of offering an answer. The practical suggestions former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had listed in his letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi were met with an uncharacteristically scornful reply by health minister Harsh Vardhan. And now the letter BJP president J.P. Nadda has written to Congress president Sonia Gandhi in reply to the Congress Working Committee's criticism that the Centre has abdicated its role in fighting the pandemic is another example.
As the principal Opposition party, the Congress would be failing in its job if it does not call out the lapses of the government and force it to correct its course. The government needs to answer it but the BJP has chosen to do the job, seeing it as a political issue. It hardly is.
The BJP president's letter essentially questions the credentials of the questioner, instead of rebutting the points in a way that behoves the ruling party. To the criticism about the shortage of vaccines, Mr Nadda says state governments had demanded decentralisation of the vaccination programme. This is specious because it is not the entry of the states in the market that has created the shortage; it's the complete lack of planning by the Centre, which went to the town about launching the "world's largest inoculation drive", that has created the present situation where the states are forced to wind up their vaccination camps for shortage of doses. The shortage was felt even before the third phase of vaccination, to be taken up by the states, started. The states never wanted to pay twice or four times the price the Centre pays the vaccine manufacturers for each dose; nor did they ask for organising a competition with one another and the private sector for vaccines. Now several states, including those ruled by the BJP, are forced to float global tenders for sourcing the vaccine.
The BJP president says the Opposition parties were less appreciative of the achievements of Indian scientists in developing the vaccine. Everyone will join Mr Nadda when he says the vaccine that is made in India should be a matter of national pride but his overplaying the nationalistic cap will be unacceptable. True, there were sceptics even in the scientific community when the authorities concerned cleared the India-made vaccine for emergency use without waiting for the scientific process to get completed. Mr Nadda gives a partisan tilt to the call for adherence to the scientific process. This is unfair.
The Congress' criticism that India is witnessing a "grave calamity" was in fact shared by Mr Nadda's former colleague in the Union council of ministers, Santosh Gangwar, who put it on record in his letter to Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath. Mr Gangwar was only reflecting what millions of Covid-19 patients and their dear ones have been feeling. The BJP must realise that shooting the messenger hardly helps solve issues.
Everyone will join Mr Nadda when he says the vaccine that is
made in India should be a matter of national
pride but his overplaying the nationalistic cap will be
unacceptable