Whither Atmanirbhar Bharat?

As recently as 2018, during the Kerala floods, we turned down Rs 700 crore in aid promised by the UAE.

On May 12, 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, announced his fivepoint ‘Atmanirbharta Mission’, and defined it thus: “The state of the world today teaches us that (AtmaNirbhar Bharat) “Self-reliant India” is the only path. It is said in our scriptures — EshahPanthah. That is, selfsufficient India”. Since then, ‘self-reliance’ and ‘self-sufficiency’ have been the underlying theme of the economic stimulus packages of October and November, last year, and of this year’s Union Budget. But, driven to its knees in the last 2-3 weeks as Covid infections register over 3.5 lakh a day, the government’s ‘Atmanirbharta’ campaign is in tatters. Swallowing its pride the Indian government is lobbying and accepting aid from everywhere.

The US is sending immediate supplies worth over $100 million. This will include 1,000 oxygen cylinders, 15 million N-95 masks and 1 million rapid diagnostic tests. On the way too are 20-30 million Astra- Zeneca Covid-19 vaccines from a 60-million stockpile that the US has no use for. Even China, whose goods faced a boycott call post the border clashes, has lined up much-needed medical equipment.

amit bandre
amit bandre

Disasters and national pride

So where is our national pride? Something has obviously gone wrong. Disasters are not new to India, and it has been our humiliating record that we have had to repeatedly turn to international aid to meet a crisis whether it was the Latur Earthquake in 1993 or the Bengal cyclone in 2003. It was finally in 2004 that the policy changed and then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stood up and proclaimed India would do its own disaster management without outside aid. His ‘atmanirbharta’ policy continued through nearly two decades.

As recently as 2018, during the Kerala floods, we turned down Rs 700 crore in aid promised by the UAE. Now there is a reversal, with even the PM-Cares Fund accepting donations from abroad. A policy of self-reliance is not a simple matter of choice. It is the path of foreseeing the needs of the future and then building the necessary infrastructure, and a cache of resources. Tackling Covid, after the peak of mid-September, the curve flattened and complacency set in. It was felt the nation was past the worst. People went back to normal life. The country’s medical infrastructure, geared to combat Covid-19, began to be dismantled ignoring the experience of other countries like France and Spain that saw a spurt of infections in a second and even a third wave.

The sentiment was only worsened by the Modi government declaring ‘victory’ prematurely, and celebrating publicly. “When the battle against Covid-19 just started, concern was raised that such a vast country like India will get devastated due to the dearth of resources. But, India has shown that if you have resolved to do something with resilience, it takes little time for readying the resources,” Modi said on January, 22 addressing a convocation at Tezpur University. But the second wave since 15 April has proved our health infrastructure has crumbled and people are dying not so much of the infection as much as from lack of medical intervention, and shortage of oxygen and hospital beds. The legend of people searching for oxygen cylinders as their loved ones gasped their last in hospitals will remain long after this crisis.

Preparing for the worst

While the government should have been ramping up infrastructure to face a worse second wave from March 2021, it worked the other way. IndiaSpend. org disclosed between December 2020 and April 2021, the number of dedicated Covid hospitals fell by six per cent. Again there were 2,55,168 oxygen-supported beds in the country on April 9, 2021. Though this is more than double the 115,134 million beds in May 2020, hospitals began to be dismantled from D e c e m b e r onwards, and the number of beds were six per cent fewer since December 2020.

Ma n y o x y g e n plants in the pipeline were never set up, lulled by the belief that the pandemic was over. Disaster management is based on planning for ‘theworst- is-yet-to-come’. India’s daily production capacity for oxygen is around 7,127 metric tonnes (MT) while the consumption of medical oxygen on April 12 was 3,842 MT. Our oxygen capacity and stock was “comfortably more than daily consumption”, the government said on April 15, 2021, little realizing the tsunami was yet to come. By April 21, appearing before the Delhi High Court in a petition by a hospital that had 400 patients facing death due to oxygen running out, the Union government admitted that in a week the demand had skyrocketed to 8,000 MT a day! On vaccinations, which is our long term cover, it is the story of failing to understand demand and supply.

Between Bharat Biotech (Covaxin) and Serum Institute of India (Covishield) the country has the capacity to produce 83 million doses a month. After 3 months since February, we have administered one dose to only 118 million, or less than 10 per cent of the population. At this rate, to reach 60 per cent coverage, which is the minimum threshold level that will give us herd immunity, will take another 15 months. This too looks unachievable as the supply is short of paper claims.

As many as 10 states have suspended their inoculation programmes. So the fallback is again on imports. Or, grants? Dr Devi Prasad Shetty, noted cardiac surgeon and chairman of Narayana Health, Bangalore, has projected India will need an additional five lakh ICU beds to the current stock of 90,000; as well as two lakh nurses and 1.5 lakh doctors, to handle the current wave. U n f o r t u - nately, these c a n’ t b e imported!

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