Endangering the corona battle
Educated but irresponsible, some in high positions are proving to be a bane in India’s struggle to keep the coronavirus at bay.
As the country scrambles for resources and has adopted unprecedented nationwide lockdown measures in addition to pleading with people to adopt social distancing to stop the virus in its tracks, some are putting every effort at risk.
An hour after PM Narendra Modi addressed the nation on Thursday evening and called upon his fellow Indians to observe a day’s self-imposed janata curfew on Sunday, Odisha confirmed its second COVID-19 positive case.
Not unexpected, but as details emerge, the gravity of the case is worrying. The youth who tested positive is the son of a senior doctor, who is a superintendent of a premier national hospital branch in Bhubaneswar. On returning from the UK recently, the youth was kept at home in a posh apartment complex where he is reported to have mingled with people, while the father was attending to official duties as well as taking part in coronavirus coordination meetings with senior state government officials. All guidelines on precautionary measures were thrown to the wind by the very person at the forefront of battling the crisis.
The case is similar to the one in Kolkata where the son of a senior West Bengal bureaucrat was allowed to socialise and visit malls, while the mother attended official meetings before the boy tested positive. In both cases, the irresponsibility, bordering on being criminal, has not only exposed a lot of people to the threat of the virus but also has the potential to derail the tireless efforts of governments by afflicting decision-makers, who will inevitably have to self-isolate themselves.
While WB Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has rightly criticised such behaviour and warned “VIP culture will not be tolerated”, the tendency among the entitled to hide their vulnerability for fear of submitting to inconvenient isolation facilities in government hospitals is of serious concern. Those in high positions should be setting an example to motivate the common man. This is a supreme duty as well as moral obligation, for one ‘Patient 31’ in India can lead to a catastrophe.