THE JUDGES

Alok Rai: “Most of the debates are around the medical infrastructure like oxygen, beds, ventilators etc. This discussion focused on a preventive system which is refreshing. It spoke about the need to educate and take care of physical and psychological well being. A comprehensive perspective of rural India was needed which was missed in this discussion.

I would have liked if the learning was divided into three aspects: at an individual level, institutional level and society level. This is my summarisation and views for what we have seen.

Thus, I would like to say we did learn but did we learn enough.”

Praveer Sinha: “The discussion was divided into two aspects -- one at the individual level and another at the community level.

Individuals are becoming more caring and responsible. This is the biggest learning of the pandemic. During the discussion, it was pointed out how the government of today could not address the changing requirements of the communities. It is not just governments but bureaucrats and multilateral agencies (at the global level) have failed. In some cases, there was some learning among governments, but in most cases, they did not learn. When we plan such a disaster the learning that is already there from previous (similar) disasters should be used.”

Harit Nagpal: “Last year when the pandemic started, experts predicted the cases will go up to 400 million if India does not act on time. We stopped all forms of movement. We chose life over livelihood. But we learned nothing from our positive experience and negative experience of others.

In February, when the cases were rising in some districts in Maharashtra, we did not implement anything that we had learnt in the first wave. This year we may have saved livelihood, but lost lives.

When the third wave strikes, our actions hopefully will be guided by combining learning of the previous two waves.”