Delhi’s COVID-19 journey so far: A telltale saga of Shah’s brilliance and Kejriwal’s massive blunders

COVID-19 is here to stay and although the recovery rate is constantly improving in India, the daily spikes are only getting bigger taking the total to well over 11 lakh.

The silver lining, however, is Delhi that after being among the top five contributors to coronavirus cases in India seems to be doing slightly better. At least for now. 

According to fresh data, the total number of COVID-19 cases in Delhi presently stands at around 1.25 lakh with around 3600 deaths. But significantly the number of active cases in the national capital has dropped below 19,000. More than a lakh of those affected by the virus have recuperated, thereby catapulting the overall recovery rate to around 84 per cent. 

So if the current situation were to be summarised, it would be safe to say that Delhi has managed to pull off a minor victory but is nowhere close to being out of the woods yet. 

Ideally, the Aam Aadmi Party government, with Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal at the helm of affairs, would like to wear the victory crown. But the bitter truth is that the Delhi administration has been found wanting in its handling of the pandemic - so much so that in desperation the Deputy CM of Delhi Manish Sisodia had prophesied a doomsday scenario that by the end of July the city would have more than five and a half lakh coronavirus cases. It is the twilight of July already and for Delhi to reach that number vis-a-vis the current tally, it will need to outperform the rest of the world. Looks highly improbable. 

Clearly, the Kejriwal government had developed a defeatist attitude in the COVID battle, leaving Delhi on tenterhooks until the MHA stepped in and took charge of the proceedings. The performance of the AAP government was so abysmal that even the anti-Modi leftist media could not stop itself from being critical of the Delhi CM and his brigade. 

How Amit Shah’s intervention turned the tables on COVID-19 in Delhi 

Amit Shah’s intervention in Delhi came at a time when the city was grappling with the onslaught of COVID-19. An outrageous decision by the Kejriwal government to reserve Delhi hospital beds only for Delhi residents, which was later revoked by Lt Governor Anil Baijal, prompted Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take control via the Ministry of Home Affairs. 

With cases peaking around the mid of June, when Amit Shah chaired a meeting of all stakeholders of Delhi, Kejriwal welcomed the intervention. Such was their cluelessness about tacking the pandemic situation in Delhi that AAP which normally gets critical of the Centre at the drop of a hat happily agreed to let the Home Minister take over the charge of the capital. 

One of the most crucial steps taken after Shah’s intervention was the ramping up of COVID-19 testing in Delhi. Whereas halfway through June from the start of April around 3 lakh people were tested, the number of tests done daily was increased to 20,000 and as many as 2.5 lakh people were tested in the latter half of June. 

Significantly, the cost of testing in private labs was brought down from Rs 4,500 to Rs 2,400. Paul Committee which was created under the chairmanship of Dr. V.K. Paul, a member of the Niti Ayog, capped the treatment cost of corona patients in private hospitals between Rs 8000 and Rs 18,000. 

A huge shortcoming in Kejriwal’s blueprint was the lack of aggressive contact-tracing. It led to a steep climb in COVID positive detections between May and June. But under Amit Shah, serological surveillance was set up to keep a track of the spread of the virus. It served as a shot in the arm in the crucial exercise of contact-tracing. 

After June 14, more than 20,000 beds for COVID-19 patients were added to the infrastructure that comprised of less than 10,000 beds. 500 railway coaches were turned into 8000 beds. The Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) stepped in as the nodal agency to take over the COVID-19 care centre at the Radha Soami Satsang Beas in the Chattarpur area of New Delhi. ITBP team converted the Ashram into a 10,000-bed facility. Moreover, the medical staff of the armed forces in DRDO managed over 1000 beds. Additionally, 500 oxygen cylinders and ventilators and 10,000 oximeters were arranged by the MHA. 

Delhi government’s COVID blunders - a flashback! 

In the first week of May when the coronavirus cases in Delhi were just under 5000, a super optimistic Arvind Kejriwal had made tall claims about the city being ready to open up and the government having the requisite resource to deal with the pandemic. But the bubble burst soon as Delhi’s COVID tally went beyond 50,000 by the second week of June. What went wrong?… Pretty much everything. 

What looked like a promising start in the corona battle for the AAP government despite the Tablighi Markaz event and the Anand Vihar blemish, it soon turned into a sad saga of public health and governance lapses. 

Delhi’s COVID positivity saw a marked rise in June. As the daily testing was increased, the positivity rate shot up and the number of per day positive cases rose to a whopping 3000. By the end of June, the total number of COVID-19 cases in Delhi was close to 90,000, the highest among the country’s megacities.

The fact of the matter is that Delhi exceeded Mumbai’s COVID-19 count only because the Delhi administration failed to use the 2-month lockdown period to consolidate its action-plan and ramp-up facilities. There was no intent at all. The AAP government could not ensure a substantial arrangement of beds, deliver enough PPE and COVID testing kits, and left a lot to be desired about the migrant crisis. 

Arguably the biggest blunder Kejriwal committed was that of not making contact-tracing a priority. The strategy of creating small containment zones without doing door to door search failed miserably. This was further aggravated by the lack of follow-up on those placed under home-quarantine. Delhi government’s complacency level was so high that the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) had to make physical verification of home isolation cases mandatory to ensure that quarantine norms were being complied with. 

Unlike cities such as Mumbai and Ahmedabad, Delhi has a sizeable workforce of more than 3000 ASHA Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) trained and equipped to perform field-level functions. Hence, it is baffling as to why the importance of contact-tracing and physical verification was royally overlooked, something that Shah took extremely seriously. 

As a result of all the botch-ups mentioned above, the pandemic situation in Delhi deteriorated, leaving Arvind Kejriwal and his team exposed. It entangled the AAP government in its web of hyperbole. Turned out that the CM’s claim of the availability of 30,000 beds, being monetarily ready to buy PPE kits in bulk numbers and having enough resource to take care of lakhs of poor migrants was only a stunt to grab eye-balls when in reality Delhi was far from being ready to tackle a health emergency.

The freebie-politics of AAP had dented Delhi’s financial reserves so deep that the same government that once boasted about providing everything free of cost had to resort to the opening of liquor shops to keep its economy afloat. What transpired afterwards was chaos outside liquor outlets in various parts of the city. SOPs were flouted and social distancing went for a toss. There was a sudden surge in the number of COVID positive cases during this period. 

No less than the highest court of the country gave the Delhi government a wrap on the knuckles for being insensitive in handling the dead with dignity. The Supreme Court issued a notice and went hard on the LNJP hospital, demanding an explanation as to why testing had gone down and what the hospital was doing to set aright the deplorable condition of its wards. The government also received flak for introducing a revised guideline of only testing those contacts of corona patients who were symptomatic. However, this was against the ICMR protocol of testing asymptomatic contacts of COVID-19 patients. The LG of Delhi had to step in again to ensure that ICMR guidelines were not violated. 

Amid the chaos, there were reports in May of fudging the COVID-19 data as a huge discrepancy was found between the lesser number of COVID deaths claimed by the Delhi Audit Committee (DAC) set up by the Delhi Government as against the much higher number of deaths mentioned by the three municipal corporations of Delhi. Although a petition filed by the All India Lawyers’ Union, demanding the scrapping of the DAC for furnishing inaccurate data and publishing the death dolly daily, was refused by the Delhi HC - it was enough to indicate that things were spiralling out of control in Delhi. 

Cut to the present time and it appears that Delhi can afford to breathe a sigh of relief and the credit goes to Amit Shah and the Home Ministry officials for indulging at the right time and pulling Delhi out of the clutches of a catastrophe. Otherwise, the people of Delhi were left very little to except from the Kejriwal government. 

The war against COVID-19 is nowhere close to over but the resurgent case study of Delhi gives a renewed hope. 

The shocking death of the Zadoo cousins under suspicious circumstances is otherwise a reflection of administrative shortcomings in J&K. Resumption of political process the only solution.

The recent tragic death of the two Kashmiri Pandit adults Vimal Zadoo (42) and Vipin Zadoo (35) in Jammu earlier sent shockwaves through the Pandit community. 

While the killing of Sarpanch Ajay Pandita in Kashmir by Islamic terrorists is still fresh in public memory, the appalling demise of the Zadoo cousins, albeit under entirely different yet horrific circumstances, has added to the grief and agony of a community that carries a history-laden with religious persecution and governmental apathy. 

Goes beyond the wildest of imaginations that two men, out to help their cousin perform the last rites of his elderly father who had passed away due to COVID-19, would never come back home alive. This is a tragedy of the highest degree. But is it tragedy alone?… Not quite!

As per media reports, the Zadoo cousins allegedly died due to heatstroke and dehydration after the authorities that had organised the cremation under special circumstances failed to show any humanitarian or duty-bound concern to save them. Even the SOPs were blatantly disregarded. It was alleged that two men were left unattended as they gasped for breath wearing the energy-sapping PPE suits in the exorbitant summer heat and were not even offered water by the police and other officials. Ultimately, they collapsed and later died. 

In what seems prima facie to be a case of official negligence, although a magisterial probe has been ordered, would it otherwise be ideal to say that the deaths happened only because a group of officials appointed by the administration for the cremation of a COVID victim was indisciplined, insensitive and apathetic? Or is there more to it than meets the eye. Of course, the bereaved families have cried foul and accused the concerned officials of consciously choosing to let the two men die. However, that part will only come to light after a proper and impartial investigation is conducted. 

But the other major worry that surfaces from this outrageous incident is the efficacy, or the lack of it, of the administration in the newly born UT to handle matters of public concern not just from the standpoint of the crisis that has erupted from the coronavirus pandemic but more so generally. 

Specifically in this particular case, it was alleged that the Zadoo cousins and their other cousin- the son of the deceased COVID victim - were made to run helter-skelter with the dead body with the unforgiving PPE kits on in peak hot conditions. After traversing several cremation grounds, the ambulance finally took them to Sidhra along the embankment of the Tawi river. While on its way through the stony terrain, one of the ambulance tyres got stuck and the three men were asked to get off the vehicle and lend a hand. The scorching heat got the better of the three men and two of them lost their lives as they kept pleading for water whereas the deceased’s son was lucky to survive. 

Firstly, it begs the question that why was the dead body taken for cremation to Sidhra which is on the outskirts of the Jammu city? And why were the SOPs so blatantly violated? 

Secondly, above and beyond the allegation of deliberate negligence and foul play, if any, which will become clear once the result of the investigation comes into the public domain - does the mysterious death of the two Kashmiri Pandits reflect the administrative crisis that the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir is gradually sliding into?

It is baffling that at a juncture when the entire country is grappling with the coronavirus pandemic, the J&K administration has not set up dedicated crematoriums for COVID-19 deaths. Had that been the case, the Zadoo family perhaps would not have had to go through the ordeal that ended up claiming two innocent lives. Moreover, the deaths took place in the presence of an ADC, a high ranking official, who had been deputed by the authorities for the cremation of the COVID-19 victim. 

Astonishingly, much like appointing a jury to pass judgement when they are the accused themselves, the same ADC was designated by the Jammu District Commissioner to conduct a magisterial inquiry into the deaths. However, due to public pressure, he was later replaced by another ADC. 

The Broader Picture 

Even outside of the debate of whether or not the J&K administration, with the Lieutenant Governor at the helm of affairs, has been able to put its best foot forward in terms of handling of the coronavirus pandemic - there is growing disenchantment within the local population with the way the current administration has addressed some concerns, especially in the Jammu region. 

The historic abrogation of the draconian Article 370 on August 5, 2019, was done to integrate J&K into India beyond a scope of doubt and unwarranted interference. And the move has worked immensely in putting the terrorist state of Pakistan in its place and suppressing the criminal separatist voices in the valley, thereby ensuring the safeguarding of India’s sovereignty and national interest. 

But unfortunately, at the same time, the UT appears to have slowly walked into a state of administrative stagnation. At the moment the show is being run by the bureaucrats and, to put it bluntly, they leave enough to be desired. The lack of a politically elected government representing the best interests of the people, particularly in the Jammu division, has now set the alarm bells ringing. The death of the Zadoo cousins (in otherwise suspect circumstances) is a flashpoint in this regard that reveals the lacklustre and insensitive approach of the J&K bureaucratic machinery. 

The writing on the wall is clear. To have a territory, especially a particular one like Jammu and Kashmir, governed by a bureaucracy-heavy administration for a prolonged period in the absence of a politically elected government will invariably have shortcomings. Even from a purely psychological perspective, the efficacy with which a regional politician or an elected MLA can approach and understand local issues or handle a public crisis is generally greater than how a bureaucrat would. It may not always be true but then the fear of hurting the vote bank sometimes pushes politicians just that little bit more to deal with emergencies with a stronger touch of seriousness and sensitivity.  

But having mentioned all that, the need for the restoration of the political process in J&K is not lost on the central government. The BJP National General Secretary, Ram Madhav, recently stated in no uncertain terms that the time had come for elected representatives to take over the reigns of the new UT as the region is going through a significant phase wherein people are waiting optimistically for the dawn of a new era of development and good governance without the baggage of Article 370. 

Therefore, the need for the Election Commission to fast track the delimitation process has become more imperative than ever to prepare the UT for Assembly elections as soon as possible. 

As a matter of fact, it is the only way to ensure that atrocious incidents like the one involving the Zadoo cousins are avoided and the greater good of Jammu and Kashmir is achieved.