Fumbling along
Ahmedabad, said: “Given the circumstances they are doing what they can, but it is not at all adequate and there is a lot of chaos.” Chhara said his uncle was put in a COVID isolation ward in a hospital even though he tested negative. “It was absolute hell for the family. We did not even know how to contact our uncle as he was being shunted around wards within the civil hospital.”
Gujarat with its several big, medium and small industries is highly globalised and Ahmedabad sees a considerable amount of international travel. In addition to people travelling for business, there is considerable traffic of the Gujarati diaspora visiting the home State; many Gujaratis also take foreign holidays. There is a theory that the L strain of the virus, which is considered very strong, entered the State directly through business travellers from China. The theory has been debunked by a few scientists but is still debated. There is a possibility that travel between Mumbai and Gujarat could have added to the problem.
Hirway, who has written extensively on Gujarat’s development, said there were three main factors for the spread: Ahmedabad’s insufficient and casual attitude towards testing at the start; the city’s congested ghettos; and the high vulnerability of the poorer sections such as the daily-wage migrants. “Gujarat is very different from other States. There is a huge informal workforce that is highly vulnerable with no access to health care. Gujarat is going the wrong way. It may show economic growth but at the cost of other things,” she said.
The red zone in Ahmedabad is within the walled city where the minority Muslim population lives. There are large families packed in small homes, which does not work in favour of distancing norms and lockdown compliance. Statistics show that the largest number of cases are in the central zones of Ahmedabad, where poor people, Muslims and Dalits live.
Sanjeev Kumar, a senior researcher at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) who tracks Gujarat’s economic and social development, said that the alarming condition of public health and inadequate spending on the social sector were now extracting a price. Using Government of India data, he said Gujarat had 0.33 hospital beds for every 1,000 of the population against the national average of 0.55. According to the World Health Organisation, India had 0.70 hospital beds per 1,000 of the population in 2011. Gujarat was ranked 17 among the 18 largest States by the Reserve Banks of India in terms of social sector spending. In 1999- 2000, Gujarat was spending 4.39 per cent of its total State expenditure on health, but by 2009-10 this came down to 0.77 per cent, said Sanjeev Kumar.
Gujarat’s low recovery rate of 11 per cent is also a clear reflection of its poor health infrastructure. Once the virus started spreading, managing the crisis was entirely the responsibility of the State. Sanjeev Kumar said that this was where Gujarat fell short.
PLIGHT OF THE MARGINALISED
Gujarat is also grappling with the migrants issue. Reports say 94 per cent of the workforce falls under the unorganised category. At least half of the migrants are from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The lockdown left thousands of them stranded with no resources. Twice in Surat migrants clashed with the police demanding they be sent back home, episodes which highlighted their miserable condition.
Rupesh Solanki, a wholesale fabric dealer, said: “Many are daily-wage earners who work in the hundreds of textile units across Surat district. They live in poor conditions and have barely anything as most earnings go back to the village. It is tragic to see them just sitting hopelessly on the roads.”
The State government has finally made arrangements to send them home. On May 4, 21,500 migrants from Surat were sent home by train. More are expected to get back to their native villages after getting a medical clean chit. Unfortunately, the Railways are charging Rs.700 for each ticket. Nasim Akhtar, a handicraft worker from Bihar who is stuck in Ahmedabad, said: “I have not got my salary and have barely Rs.400 left with me. I could not afford the ticket.”
A lockdown within a lockdown, consistent denial of the emergence of new clusters of infections until the number of in the State blew up, and absence of forward
planning factoring in the worst-case scenarios marked Tamil Nadu’s response to the COVID pandemic in April and early May.
Yet spokespersons of the ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) continued with their refrain since early April that no one can be prepared for a pandemic of this scale and that the government was doing all that it could. Facts on the ground speak otherwise.
The State government’s response from the beginning has been to look to the Centre for responses. For instance, as the first phase of the lockdown was coming to an end in mid-april, many in the State were eagerly waiting for the Tamil Nadu government to make an announcement early enough on what lies ahead. Some States had already announced plans to continue with the lockdown. But it was just a day before that phase ended that the State government announced that the lockdown would continue until April 30. It added a rider: this will be subject to what the Central government decided on the issue. Soon after, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced an extension of the lockdown.
This overdependence on the Centre for all decisions has resulted in not having a concrete plan for different case-load scenarios that would pan out. The second is the Chief Minister’s reluctance to take charge of a unified response despite the Health Minister, C. Vijayabhaskar, known for his media management skills, repeatedly misreading the severity of the pandemic.
Although the 1.2 lakh employees of Tamil Nadu’s health care delivery system are working tirelessly across the State, they are let down by the poor decision-making. The only act with foresight the government seems to have done is the requisitioning of all convention halls, educational institutions and some hotels to be converted into isolation centres when needed. Barring this, and the deployment of a few efficient officers in some places, the government’s lack of planning is glaring.
To add to the confusion and mismanagement, much like the Central government’s 4,000 plus orders, the Tamil Nadu government has released multiple orders on a variety of subjects. In some cases clarifications followed the orders too.
For instance, much confusion prevailed over the government’s decision to open retail liquor vending outlets. It announced on May 5 that all retail outlets would be open from May 7. Following protests from the opposition, the government amended the order saying that all the outlets except in Chennai, where the number of cases is high, would be open on May 7. Then came a whole new set of rules as to which age group can buy alcohol at what time, and so on. Another “rule” was that at a time only five people could buy alcohol.
On May 6, the northern region’s Inspector General of Police passed an order warning that anyone travelling from Chennai to buy alcohol in the neighbouring districts would be arrested.
Above all, in an order on May 6, the Madras High Court too gave the government directions regarding delivery of online orders of liquor and said that the outlets should give two bottles of alcohol to anyone making an online digital payment. It further said that only one bottle of 750 ml should be given to a person making a payment at the counter and that person could only buy two bottles in a week. Reports coming in from different parts of the State indicated that none of these orders or instructions was being followed.
KOYAMBEDU CLUSTER
Meanwhile, every day since April 30, the number of (161 cases) has been going up in Tamil Nadu. It was 203 on May 1, and 231 on May 2. The next day (May 3) saw a total of 266 new positive cases. On May 4, there was a spike in the number of cases to 527. May 5 saw the numbers remaining high at 508 new cases. On May 6, the number rose to an alarming 771, taking the total positive count in the State to 4,829, and deaths to 35. The government claimed that this was because the rate of testing was high