DailyPost 1666
REAL VISUALS & IMAGINARY DISCUSSIONS
Bizarre is an understatement, things don’t change but who knew that the enemy would be changing the rules of game. Laxity and timelessness has been our sanskar. Not that we have not handled emergencies but mostly the emergencies have always had the better of us and passed over. The well-oiled and nearly perfect credit sharing mechanism did the rest. We can create out of heros out of disasters and sing paeans endlessly. We talk of vision, statesmanship and accomplishment with a flurry even without really knowing the spelling of these words and what it really conveys. Even prisoners of war have wide range of protections under the third Geneva Convention, but we are “Prisoners of Fate” in our own geography with no right to life as it stands now.
Even the worst of the traumas would not have created anxiety and stress as that from the Second Surge and to the entire population. It is turning out to be a purge. Everybody is on tenterhooks. It is the mixture of fear of the unknown and the known. The visuals over different mass media are disturbing to say the least. The multimedia technology which was created to entertain and connect us, today has become the tool of graphic representation of what is happening with our lives. Today it is somebody else’s, tomorrow is can be any of us. We don’t know whether we are better off with these visuals. Anyway, information is power and it should be used to our advantage during these stressed times.
”The metal frames of gas furnaces, on which the bodies are kept, and chimneys are melting or breaking because of overheating and excessive use.” None of us would have either heard of anything like this or even imagined in our worst dreams. The Dooms Day is here. The issue is not of avoiding, it is of minimizing the damage. While the reality is the gloomiest, the TV debates are still maintaining the tone and tenor for scoring brownie points against each other. Politicians do what they are best at. If these visuals and eerie silence cannot bring them together, nothing can. When govts have political executives, senior officials and official spokespersons, how and why political party’s spokespersons take upon themselves the mantle to speak for the govt. They have no right to do that. It can only make things worse as has been the case.
Governance is the most complex art and science bundled together. It has institutions, structures, systems, conventions, mechanisms, communication methodologies et al, which are created over time and space, to become a well-oiled machine, to take on everything; from a physical war to a cyber war to creating a health infrastructure meeting our needs to handling COVID-19 with confidence and clarity. What differentiates countries is the quality of governance. It’s being reflected in the present crisis in medical oxygen production, its supply chain, cryogenic tankers, building new medical oxygen plants caught in ever foxed bid process, jumbo COVID-19 closing down and the uphill task of maintaining our ever crumbling governmental health infrastructure. The countryside is left completely to their own plight.
POLITICAL SEAT OF POWER SYNTHESIZED WITH WORLD CLASS EXPERTISE TO GOVERN AND DELIVER CAN BE OUR ONLY SAVIOUR IN FUTURE.
Stay Home, Stay Safe.
Sanjay Sahay