Criminal, wasteful spending

Between 3 and 5 am on Tuesday, purportedly as per Brahma muhurtam (anointed auspicious time), the state government of Telangana began demolition of existing Secretariat buildings and released a design of a palatial replacement resembling the palace of Versailles to cost over `400 crores.

The focus on demolishing an existing building, which according to most experts had a structural strength and life for another 30 to 40 years at the very least, during a week when coronavirus cases have been increasingly at an alarming rate of over 1,800 a day, with a total official tally of over 28,000 cases and a new lockdown was to be announced is in congruence with the maverick style of chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao.

Shortage of oxygen, crippled hospital infrastructure, collapsed management of containment zones, low testing inviting the chiding of the high court, restless hospital staff, a pandemic spreading to villages and increasing number of deaths would push a lesser leader to think it would be a great priority over a new building as a gift to posterity to mark his legacy, or align astrological for forces to his overvaulting ambition.

Even as the state government is conspicuous in a phantomlike absence, leaving the governor to rise to the occasion to manage the fight against Covid, people are reacting with disbelief at this surreal situation, not too unlike the Shakespearean observation on Denmark.

In Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi too is striving similarly with a legacy-marking architectural creation, grandiose, immortal and wrongly timed. Not long ago, in Tamil Nadu, proving that no political party has a monopoly on wasting public money, while M. Karunanidhi spent over `1,200 crores on a new Assembly building, his arch-nemesis J. Jayalalithaa converted it into a multi-speciality hospital.

Surely people’s lives should matter more. Alas, they don’t.