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Crime against humanity: Arundhati Roy slams Modi govt's handling of COVID in India

The author-cum-activist calls the Central govt a “crisis-generating machine”

57-arundhati-roy Arundhati Roy

"The system hasn’t collapsed. The government has failed. Perhaps “failed” is an inaccurate word, because what we are witnessing is not criminal negligence, but an outright crime against humanity," writes celebrated author Arundhati Roy in a widely-shared column that rips apart the Narendra Modi government for its colossal failure in handling the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Roy reminds how the Modi government took pride when India seemed to have come out of the pandemic's first wave last year relatively unscathed. In her scathing column in The Guardian, Roy reproduced PM Modi's speech at the World Economic Forum in January this year in which he did not have words of compassion but "gloating boast" about India’s infrastructure and Covid-preparedness. "Modi the magician takes a bow for saving humanity by containing the coronavirus effectively. Now that it turns out that he has not contained it, can we complain about being viewed as though we are radioactive? That other countries’ borders are being closed to us and flights are being cancelled? That we’re being sealed in with our virus and our prime minister, along with all the sickness, the anti-science, the hatred and the idiocy that he, his party and its brand of politics represent?" she asks. 

The Booker Prize-winning Indian novelist lambasts the Modi government for its failure to anticipate the second wave. The Modi government and its friends' celebrations were premature with a lack of understanding of the general nature of a pandemic. "This one was predicted, although its virulence has taken even scientists and virologists by surprise. So where is the Covid-specific infrastructure and the “people’s movement” against the virus that Modi boasted about in his speech?" Roy asks.

Instead of ramping up its preparedness, the government's priorities were elsewhere—on winning the West Bengal assembly elections, building a new Central Vista for the "new Hindu India" and passing new farm bills that are "corporatising agriculture". "In the India that is, people are expected to vote as Hindus, but die as disposables," she doesn’t mince words.

Roy also brings to attention that various governments in the federal nation resort to threatening those who complain against the system and lack of facilities. "Healthcare is a fundamental right. The private sector will not cater to starving, sick, dying people who don’t have money. This massive privatisation of India’s healthcare is a crime," she argues. 

She narrates the harrowing experience of a young Delhiite desperately trying to take care of his parents—his mother was COVID positive and father, who soon succumbed to “blood pressure induced by a psychiatric meltdown induced by utter helplessness”. "In this wave of the pandemic, it’s the young who are falling, who are filling the intensive care units. When young people die, the older among us lose a little of our will to live."

Roy questions the lack of transparency of the PMCARES fund, set up by the PM himself last year at the start of the pandemic. "Try not to wonder why the PM Cares Fund – the opaque organisation that has recently replaced the more public Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund, and which uses public money and government infrastructure but functions like a private trust with zero public accountability – has suddenly moved in to address the oxygen crisis. Will Modi own shares in our air-supply now?"

"The crisis-generating machine that we call our government is incapable of leading us out of this disaster. Not least because one man makes all the decisions in this government, and that man is dangerous – and not very bright." Roy argues stressing on the importance of a collective decision-making process that needs to be put in place. 

India cannot be isolated. It needs help, she says appealing to the international community before concluding her long-form piece. 

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