Election fever

August 20 was marked by an unprecedented rise in the number of cases and casualties. On August 19, the State government announced the detection of 5,156 new cases in the preceding 24 hours—the highest single-day spike recorded in the State until then. On August 18, Uttar Pradesh recorded the highest number of deaths in a single day (77). On the eve of the Assembly session, the total number of cases was 1,67,510.

The opposition, especially the Samajwadi Party (S.P.), went all out to draw public attention to these distressing figures. Protesters were out on the streets even before the session started officially on August 20. S.P. leaders and legislators, many of them wearing PPE kits in a symbolic gesture meant to indicate the seriousness of the situation, marched through the streets of Lucknow, demanding more proactive action by the government to control the pandemic and address economic hardships caused by it. The S.P. leadership pointed out that farmers and agricultural labourers were in deep distress and lacked even the means of subsistence. The protesters also called attention to the short supply of fertilizers and demanded that the State government ensure supply of urea and other fertilizers and that the Union and State governments continue with the cash transfer scheme for the poor. Proceedings of the Assembly were stalled several times on account of the protests on August 20.

By the evening of August 20, the State government apparently agreed to hold special discussions on the COVID situation on either August 21 or 24. State Health and Home Department authorities, however, indicated to Frontline that the ruling party would cite statistics in the Assembly session to defend the government’s handling of the COVID crisis. The highest single-day recoveries on August 19 (5,520) was by all indications a major weapon in the government’s arsenal. This number exceeded the number of new cases detected on that day. The government was also gearing up to emphasise that a total of 1,15,227 people had recovered and been discharged from hospitals. On August 19, the active number of cases was under 50,000, at 49,645. The State’s case fatality rate (CFR) was also steadily coming down and was 1.57 per cent as of August 19, marginally below the national average of 1.97 per cent.

AFFECTED POLITICIANS

Yet, sections of Health and Home Ministry officials admitted that the government’s response to the pandemic, especially that of the political leadership, was characterised by a sort of casualness and failed to address the different aspects of the pandemic’s impact, including in the medical and social sectors. Some officials pointed out that political leaders had also been afflicted with COVID, which reflected the overall drift in handling the situation. As many as nine State ministers had tested positive, and two of them—kamal Rani Varun on August 2 and the former cricketer Chetan Chauhan on August 16—succumbed to the virus. On August 19, Atul Garg, Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare, tested positive.

Mahant Nritya Gopal Das, chief of the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Nyas, the trust formed to oversee the construction of the Ram temple at Ayodhya, contracted the infection. So did Pravin Nishad, BJP MP from Sant Kabirnagar, and Manvendra Singh, BJP MLA from Dadraul. The case of Mahant Nritya Gopal Das created a stir because he had presided over the bhumi pujan (ground-breaking ceremony) for the Ayodhya Ram temple on August 5, which was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) sarsangachalak Mohan Rao Bhagwat. Many political, social, and religious leaders from different parts of northern India had attended the function. According to some officials in the State Health and Home departments, although all those who had come in contact with the Mahant needed to be screened, they had no clue about whether anything was being done about it at all. These officials felt that the political leadership was quite indifferent to the public health-related ramifications of the Ayodhya event.

S.P. president Akhilesh Yadav said that this casualness had marked the government’s handling of the crisis throughout. “It has failed to address every single aspect of COVID-19 and its impact, be it public health, economic hardships, agrarian crisis and the plight of the migrant labour. The government has been stumbling from one inept response to another, all the while trying to cover it up by using sectarian and communal politics,” he told Frontline.

However, the government has laid down some regulations for the Assembly session. Legislators above 60 (and there are some 60 of them in the 403-member Assembly) have been prohibited from physical attendance. Legislators have also been asked to get their drivers tested for COVID-19. The MLAS are not allowed to carry briefcases or bags inside the Assembly campus. Special Whatsapp groups have been formed for members to communicate with the Assembly Secretariat. All MLAS have been sent a special digital link which they can use to participate online in the Assembly discussions. The live pictures of those participating virtually would be shown on a screen inside the Assembly.

BIHAR has had to deal with a double whammy in the past two weeks: increasing COVID cases and a devastating flood. Neighbouring Jharkhand has, in addition to the exponential rise in COVID cases, the serious issue of rehabilitation of lakhs of migrant workers who returned to the State from other parts of India during the lockdown to handle. But the public discourse in both the States has been revolving around the circumstances of the death of Sushant Singh Rajput, the Bollywood actor

who hailed from Bihar. In the past one month, Bihar saw a fourfold increase in the number of COVID cases: from 26,379 on July 19 to 1,12,759 on August 20. The number of deaths too rose from 179 to 568 in this period. But senior State government officials attribute the spike in numbers to increased testing. Bihar has done over 20 lakh tests so far, they say, with the number of tests crossing one lakh in 24 hours in the past few weeks.

“This has helped us in early isolation of infected persons and their treatment. Our strategy has worked, as is evident from the high recovery rate,” said a Health Department official. According to figures released by the Health Department, 84,578 patients have recovered so far, and there are 27,532 active cases. Officials also say the positivity rate has reduced since the first half of July, from around 13 per cent on July 15 to 2.89 per cent now. The recovery rate at present is 73 per cent.

But the opposition refutes all these claims, saying the numbers cited are misleading, considering the density of population. “In a State with over 13 crore people, if you have conducted 20 lakh tests in all, is this good enough? Besides, most of these tests are rapid antigen tests, which even the ICMR [Indian Council of Medical Research] says is not accurate. The number of RT-PCR tests, which are accurate, is dismal,” said Prof. Manoj Kumar Jha of the Rashtriya Janata Dal.

According to him, even if the high recovery and low death rate figures are correct, the problem on the ground remains serious because facilities for institutional care, which should have been augmented during the lockdown, remain abysmally poor. “Our [Bihar] government thought that the lockdown was a vaccine that would finish corona on its own. They did nothing to create facilities to handle the situation even though it was anticipated that cases would increase after migrant labourers started returning. What to speak of the common man, even for well-connected people getting a bed in a hospital is next to impossible,” he said. Many in Patna corroborated this view.

In Bihar, floods in 16 districts have compounded the problem. With almost all major rivers in spate, people have been forced to abandon their houses and live in crowded shelters, increasing the risk of infection manifold. “Protection from COVID demands social distancing, but floods have created a situation in which social distancing is anathema. You can imagine the plight of the people,” said Jha.

In the midst of all this is the likelihood of elections being announced any day. The Assembly elections in Bihar are due in November. Though all major opposition parties have appealed to the Election Commission to postpone the election in view of the pandemic and the floods, the E.C. has given no indication so far. In fact, senior E.C. officials told reporters that the situation was likely to improve by November and so elections could be held with precautions. Apparently, there are reports that the Commission could even employ out-of-the-box ideas like going for ballot papers or mobile election booths