Sudden spike

this. Since early April, Maharashtra has been asking for rail services to help migrant labourers return to their home States, but the Centre has denied this, resulting in terrible human suffering and huge pressures on the State. With the highest number of virus cases in the country, the State clearly requires more funds.

Nationalist Congress Party leader Sharad Pawar wrote to the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister saying Maharashtra required an additional grant of Rs.1 lakh crore in 2020-21 to help revive the economy. Earlier Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar had asked for a Rs.25,000 crore package and early disbursement of GST (goods and services tax) dues of over Rs.16,000 crore.

IFSC IN GANDHINAGAR

Instead of facilitating an inflow of funds, the Centre chose to take away a big economic opportunity. On May 3, Sharad Pawar slammed the Centre for its decision to set up an International Financial Service Centre (IFSC) in Gandhinagar, Gujarat. His anger stemmed from the fact that although Maharashtra gives the highest contribution to government securities, the IFSC was given to Gujarat. In a letter to the Prime Minister, Pawar said out of the Rs.26,000,00 crore funds that the Centre receives from States, Maharashtra contributes Rs.5,95,000 crore compared with Gujarat’s Rs.1,40,000 crore.

Pawar’s letter states: “It will not only cause financial damage to the country but also bring international discredit to it by undermining the importance of Mumbai, which has been recognised as world’s top ten centres of commerce in terms of global financial flow generating 6.16 per cent of India’s GDP and accounting for 25 per cent of industrial output and 70 per cent of capital transactions to country’s economy.”

The letter further states: “I request the Centre to reconsider the decision to shift IFSC in Gujarat and relocate it in Mumbai on merit basis and I expect the Prime Minister will take a rational, judicious decision keeping aside the State politics and consider it as an issue of utmost national importance.”

As of May 5, Gujarat’s tally stood at 5,804 Covidpositive patients and 319 deaths. On May 2, the State recorded a sharp spike with 374 new cases in 24 hours. On May 3, there were 28 deaths in a single day. The State’s largest city, Ahmedabad, is a “hotspot as” and the worst affected urban centre in the State with 4,076 cases and 234 deaths as of May 5, according to Gujarat’s Health and Family Welfare Department. Far from flattening, the curve seems to be rising at a rate far above the national average.

Gujarat’s failure in containing the virus exposes some harsh realities on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home turf. Why is this supposedly prosperous State hit so hard? Among the factors identified by experts, the most pertinent perhaps is an increased economic and health vulnerability of the population, notwithstanding Gujarat’s claims of a high growth rate. Indira Hirway, director and professor of economics at the Centre for Development Alternatives in Ahmedabad, said: “There is a difference in growth and development. The State places negligible emphasis on social development. The pandemic has proved how unprotected people here are.”

Data published by the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry in early May calculates Gujarat’s death rate at a frightening 22.6 per cent against the national average of 10.8 per cent. Italy had seen a 26 per cent death rate at the peak of the curve. Gujarat’s fatality rate is at 5.4 per cent against Maharashtra’s 4.2 per cent and Delhi’s 1.6 per cent and the national average (as of early May) of 3.3 per cent.

Ahmedabad Municipal Commissioner Vijay Nehra told media persons that cases were doubling every four days on an average through most of April, a rate at which the State might have ended up with 50,000 cases by May 15. The rate of doubling of cases had been brought down to nine days, but it was still too early to feel relief, he said.

Nehra said the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) was using a “proactive approach” called EPIC, involving “Enhanced Testing, Intensive Surveillance, Proactive Detection and Corona Checkposts”. The city has eight designated COVID hospitals and six quarantine centres. The State has a total of 19 COVID hospitals which have a total capacity of 2,200 beds. The AMC says 31 private hospitals across districts have been recruited for COVID treatment.

Dakxin Chhara, a documentary film-maker based in