The central government has lost the initiative on every front: Proactive/preemptive action on covid front, Timely relief for an overstressed health sector, media management, perception management. The Government is no longer setting the agenda, just reacting to the news of the moment. The initiative wrt perception management has firmly passed onto the opposition and to entities hostile to the government. In terms of scale of disaster, this is worse than Donald Trump losing the battle of narratives in mid July last year. In terms of a strategic defeat, this is as big as the destruction of Army group Center and the annihilation of Falaise Pocket for the Wehrmacht in World War 2, combined. The doors to toppling the government in 2024 are now well and truly open. It'll take incredible skill and a good measure of luck to stem the tide now. And the Government has
BJP and the government is now in danger of being trapped in its own little milieu/echo chamber if it can't figure out the rage building across the nation. There is a unanimous consolidation of opinion that this is largely the government's fault. Forget the English newspaper and foreign newspaper editorials, forget the English channel commentary, forget the twitterati, put your ears to the ground and get a feel for the real India that is on edge.
The government didn't do much wrong, and course corrected faster than other governments could. The government was unlucky in more ways than one too. Another couple of months, and this surge would have been checked with an expanded resource base and greater availability of vaccines, medicines and oxygen. Further, around July, if our numbers are right, US and Europe will be sitting on a stockpile of over 200-300 million unneeded vaccines which we could have tapped into as an interim bridging measure till our internal supply picked up. But all this belongs to the bucket of "What if?"
None of that matters anymore. As it is, the ramp up will take almost two months to become visible on the ground and show real effectiveness. The government doesn't have that much time. Government needs to find a way to stamp the curve down as fast as possible and delay any potential third wave until the vaccination has ramped up beyond 10 million a day, while avoiding the incredibly damaging scenes playing out in hospitals and cemeteries across the country. One cannot overestimate just how incredibly soul jarring the images are to ordinary Indians and people globally and how they serve to batter whatever remains of the government's credibility.
www.nationalgeographic.com
