Bengal fights Coronavirus
West Bengal, one of the densely populated states of India, with nearly 100 million population and population to land share ratio of 2.8, is fighting to combat COVID-19. The battle against such a serious crisis has to be fought on multiple fronts with clear strategic visions. The ideal objectives should be to (i) halt the spread of disease; (ii) minimise case fatality rate (CFR); (iii) starvation deaths do not occur by ensuring proper food distribution; (iv) guest migrant workers who have migrated to West Bengal are safe and secure and, if they desire to leave, arrange for their return back home in a dignified manner with proper transport and safety gears; (v) arrange for the return in a planned way of those originally from West Bengal, who had migrated to other states; (vi) extend financial support and offer viable job opportunities to everyone willing to work; (vii) counter constant propaganda by communal forces and a section of the Central government departments; (viii) arrange for fund to run the operational and budgetary expenses in the face of non-cooperation from the central government; (ix) ensure existing health care system remains resilient in the face of the extreme challenges posed by the pandemic; (x) minimise cost of treating Coronavirus infected persons by offering the required medical services to noncoronavirus patients.
As it is difficult, rather impossible, to make primary survey during the
lockdown period, an attempt has been made here to evaluate these 10 strategic parameters to assess the performance of West Bengal in its fight against the Coronavirus.
After few initial hitches due to the non-availability of test kits and proper medical gears, including personal protection equipment and masks, for the health care service providers, Bengal has been able to keep the spread of the virus limited to a few districts through a planned lockdown and area-specific containment strategy. Police, municipalities, and health department have worked in tandem to implement physical distancing with a human face. This strategy has resulted in a steady decline of the positive cases to total test ratio from a high
level of more than 5 per cent to 3.11 per cent (against the national average of 4.24 per cent) at the end of the Lockdown 3.0.
CFR in Bengal is still very high, though it has declined from a high rate of 10.54 per cent on May 4 to 8.89 per cent on May 17. There could be two possible reasons for high CFR. One, Bengal has been infected by a relatively more dangerous strain A2A which has devastated Europe. The European connection of the first few infected cases in Kolkata might have brought this strain into Bengal. Second, delayed arrivals of test kits adversely affected the treatment of infected patients in the initial stages, which aggravated the crisis.
On March 21, Bengal government announced free ration, till September 2020 — 5 kg food grain per head per month for the 7.9 crore people who used to get subsidised ration through
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(ii)
(iii)
the public distribution system. Later this programme was extended to cover all citizens of the state. Temporary ration cards have been issued to the non-card holders. Though the scheme initially encountered some problems in managing the distribution by using the existing infrastructure, the situation has improved over time. Stringent administrative and political measures were taken to ensure that the food grains reach the intended beneficiaries without undue delay. In addition, the daily wage earners, labourers, and workers of the State are entitled to receive Rs 1,000 during the lockdown period.
According to a statement issued by the Chief Minister, over 2 lakh migrant labourers and stranded people from 16 Indian states are being housed in 711 camps across the state. “They are being directly taken care of by state government along with a few NGOS. This arrangement started since 1st April will continue until the need remains”, she said.
(iv)
(v)
In a letter, dated March 26, the WB CM had appealed to 18 CMS to take care of labourers from Bengal who
Strange as it may appear, with reference to the reorganisation of states on linguistic lines, Ambedkar and Gandhi were closer in their positions than Nehru and Patel, whose views on the subject underwent a major change in the aftermath of Independence. Ambedkar had, in fact, written a monograph Thoughts on Linguistic States in 1955 in which he not only comments on the work of the Commission (SRC report) but also discusses the limits of linguism, were stranded in their states owing to the 21-day lockdown declared by the Centre. This was followed by lists of areas where workers from Bengal were camping in their states of domicile. A group of young volunteers tracked the migrants using social media networks and constantly provided the state government with updated data on the plight of thousands of migrants. The stranded migrants are now being brought back by the state government to their respective homes. All expenses towards travel, foods, quarantine and personal safety gears are being borne by the Government of West Bengal.
In addition to supplying free food grains to the needy till September, the WB Government announced that financial assistance would be provided to the workers from the state trapped in different parts of the country. The government has released a mobile App called ‘SNEHAR PARAS’ so that stranded workers can apply for assistance. Accordingly, Rs 1,000 was transferred directly into their bank accounts to meet their immediate needs. The irrigation department has also announced
(vi)
possible solutions, the issue of administrative and economic viability as well as protection and safeguard of minorities. There is a chapter on Hyderabad as the possible second capital of India to remove the tension between the North and the South, besides maps and statistical appendices on
linguistic families, population of various cities and provinces, budgetary position of states and the Centre, data on castes et al. Very briefly, he argues that ‘one stateone language is not the same as one language-one state’. He took the SRC to task for recommending one state each with a population of six and four crore, four with the population between two to four crore and eight with a population between one to two crore and three with a population less than a crore. This was in his view, a ‘consolidation of the North and the Balkanisation of the south’. To buttress his argument, he quoted the dissenting note of KM Pannikar ‘the consequence of the present imbalance, caused by the denial of the federal principle of equality of units, has been to create feelings of distrust and resentment in all the states outside Uttar Pradesh. Not only in the Southern states but also in Punjab, Bengal and elsewhere, the view was generally expressed before the Commission that the present structure of government
led to the dominance of UP in all India matters… that it will be a danger to our unity if such feelings are allowed to exist and remedies that large sections of the semi-skilled workers would be absorbed in different operational projects, Moreover; the government has launched a scheme to utilise 50,000 acres of barren land in six districts for income-generating activities like horticulture and pisciculture.
Fake news and political propaganda against the state are the two additional challenges the administration has been facing along with the Coronavirus crisis.
Like many other states, West Bengal also has not received its due share of GST and other receivables from the Central Government. Moreover, the State Government is also grappling with the restrictions on its borrowing capacity. However, despite the paucity of funds, the WB Government has not discontinued any of the social welfare schemes it runs.
(vii)
(viii)
(ix)
The onus of treating Corona and non-corona patients during the last couple of months has primarily rested on the government hospitals in view of the refusal of most of the private hospitals to admit or treat patients. Though public health services have not yet collapsed as witnessed in some other states, these hospitals are becoming COVID hotspots. The WB government has not succeeded in involving private health providers in a more constructive way.
The most important issue at this stage is to assess the opportunity cost of treating Coronavirus-infected persons by not offering the required medical services to non-coronavirus patients. This needs to be incorporated while assessing any state’s performance in combating the Coronavirus pandemic.
As a few lakh migrants would return to Bengal from red zones of West and North India, Coronavirus cases are likely to shoot up in the coming weeks. In addition, Amphan has already made the situation more complicated for the administration. A separate ‘communitybased COVID-19 primary care facilities’ may well be developed involving 43,000 government-aided clubs and local physicians. Past experiences suggest that community participation helps in combatting famines, natural calamities and pandemics. The writer is an academic
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are not sought and found now, will also not be denied.’
Indeed, in the aftermath of the Partition, ‘danger to unity’ of the country was a very real threat. It appeared that India needed a strong Centre and anything that came in this way should be ignored.
This brought Nehru, Patel and even C Rajagopalachari together to check the ‘fissiparous forces’. Patel needed all his influence in the Constituent Assembly to reverse the position which Congress had been taking from 1917, with the formation of the Andhra circle in that year, and the Sindh circle in 1918. After the Nagpur Congress of 1920, the provincial Congress committees had been organised by linguistic zones in Karnataka, Orissa, Maharashtra, and Bengal et al. Significantly, these were not in sync with the administrative divisions of British India. It needs to be mentioned here that even though Nehru was the Prime Minister, the majority of the Congress members were aligned with Sardar and if he had not extended his support on this issue, there was a very real danger of a house divided. Nehru had Patel’s support for his November 27, 1947 speech in which he responded to NG Ranga that, compared to issues like security and economic development, language issues sank into insignificance. In his work ‘Nehru and the language politics of India’, Robert D King remarks that ‘Nehru, by ensuring his (Pattabhi Sitaramayya’s) appointment to the Committee along with Patel, whom Nehru could trust absolutely on this issues, if not others (emphasis added), was not about to leave recommendations on the suddenly explosive topic of linguistic provinces in hands he could not control’
The writer is a Research Scholar at BITS Pilani, Hyderabad
However, this did not hold true for Gandhi. The Mahatma was steadfast in his views about the salience of language in the public
life of the nation. He was clear that the states of the new nation should be defined on the basis of language. In his prayer meeting on October 10, 1947, when the post Partition trauma was at its height, he said “I do believe that we should hurry up with the reorganisation of linguistic provinces... there may be an illusion for the time being that different languages stand for different cultures, but there is also a possibility that with the creation of linguistic provinces, it may disappear. I shall write something (about it) if I get the time...i am not unaware that a class of people have been saying the linguistic provinces are wrong. In my opinion, this class delights in creating obstacles…” Just days before his death (January 25, 1948), he said, “The Congress had decided some 20 years ago that there should be as many provinces as there are major languages … moreover, if linguistic provinces are formed it will also give a fillip to regional languages.
Alas, he was shot dead on January 30 and the issue of linguistic reorganisation of states was put on the backburner, but such was the force of popular will that the demand resurrected in the very first year of the Republic!
The writer is the Director of LBSNAA and Honorary Curator, Valley of Words: Literature and
Arts Festival, Dehradun