ON JUNE 18, a day before Chennai and neighbouring Kancheepuram, Tiruvallur and Chengalpattu districts went into lockdown, the Tamil Nadu government announced that it was withdrawing an earlier order amending the English spelling of 1,018 cities, towns and villages in the state. The order had drawn widespread criticism, and the railways and India Post had not been consulted on the new names.
This was not the first policy U-turn the government had made amid the Covid-19 crisis. On June 9, Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami cancelled the class 10 board exams, even as the advocate general was arguing in the Madras High Court that the exams ought to be held in mid-June, before the number of infections begins to peak. On June 12, when journalists asked Palaniswami whether the government was planning to lock down Chennai to contain the virus, he asked them not to believe in such “rumours”. Three days later, though, he declared the lockdown.
Later, when journalists asked him about rumours that Higher Education Minister K.P. Anbalagan had tested positive, Palaniswami looked irked. “He himself has said that he is not infected. What more do you need?” he shot back. On June 20, though, Anbalagan told THE WEEK that he had indeed been infected and was being treated at a private hospital in Chennai.
Anbalagan was one of the five ministers overseeing relief work in the Greater Chennai Corporation. After he tested positive, half a dozen ministers who had come into contact with him rushed to get themselves tested. Apparently, all ministers are worried that they have been exposed to the virus. A 56-year-old private secretary in the chief minister’s office, B.J. Damodharan, died of Covid-19 on June 17, a day before Anbalagan was infected. At least seven people in the chief minister’s offices have been infected.
Palaniswami himself has twice undergone tests; the results were negative. He maintains that there is no community spread of Covid-19 in the state. “If you and I get infected, only then can it be called community spread,” he told a journalist. “As of now, there is no community spread; things are under control.”
The government, however, seems to be groping in the dark. It had appointed 12 teams of IAS and IPS officers in April to review Covid-19 programmes across the state and recommend changes. But, except for the medical experts team, none of the groups have submitted any report.
The government had also constituted a team under IAS officer J. Radhakrishnan to exclusively handle Covid-19 operations in Chennai. But the five IPS officers in this team have not been handling any Covid-related work. On June 6, the government appointed Pankaj Kumar Bansal, IAS, as special coordinator to oversee initiatives in high-risk zones like Chennai, over and above what it had asked Radhakrishnan’s team to do.
On June 12, Radhakrishnan replaced Beela Rajesh as health secretary, after it was alleged that the health department was underreporting casualties. “At least 200 deaths were not reported by the Chennai corporation,” said Jayaram Venkatesan, convener of the NGO Arappor Iyakkam. “The family of the deceased were given mortuary cards at the hospitals where the deaths happened. But [the deaths] were not added to the corporation’s record.”
The government set up a committee to look into the matter, and the chief secretary issued a strongly worded order to Chennai corporation commissioner G. Prakash to take immediate measures to control the disease in Chennai. It was an unusual order, as corporation commissioners report only to the municipal administration secretary and Prakash is close to Municipal Administration Minister S.P. Velumani, who is referred to as the “shadow Chief Minister” in the ruling AIADMK.
Earlier, on June 1, IAS officer S. Nagarajan was removed as director of the Tamil Nadu Health Systems Project, which was established in 2005 to reform the health care sector. Such bureaucratic reshuffles, however, have not improved the ground situation and the numbers continue to rise in Chennai and other districts.
“The chief minister is not able to take any stern action,” said DMK president and opposition leader M.K. Stalin. “This is because he does not have control over his own cabinet. The ministers should shed their egos and work together to eradicate the virus.”
The government says 60,000 people in Tamil Nadu have contracted the virus and more than 750 have died. Though it has maintained that only the elderly and people who have existing health conditions were at high risk, 30 per cent of the dead were under 50 and had no comorbidities.
Stalin said the government should stop fudging figures and reveal the actual numbers of patients and deaths. “The government has an indifferent attitude in handling the pandemic,” said DMK spokesperson A. Saravanan. “The chief minister denying that his own colleague has tested positive is proof that the government is not transparent. The government is just fumbling about in the dark.”
Palaniswami says no decision has been taken to extend the lockdown in Chennai. He wants everyone to wear masks and stay indoors for now. “The complete lockdown is like a speed-breaker,” he said. “We have implemented it so that people stay indoors. This lockdown is not to trouble anyone, but to stop the spread of the virus.”