If you get a chance to visit any government hospital mortuary in the aftermath of a tragedy leading to a large number of deaths, you will get a fair idea of what ease of living we have in this country. You would be able to reverse engineer their lives, provided you are able to gain entry, which would be next to impossible. Leaving the dead and their lives to their fate, the plight of their kith and kin is worse than that of the dead. The whole experience from the time of the relative’s injury, later death or instantaneous death till getting the dead body and its final cremation or burial, is no less than life’s worst nightmare.
That the government exists and that too of an magnitude and claimed expertise and concern is not seen anywhere. This is the antithesis of electioneering, a big event drama or the beneficiary support we keep hearing day in day out. Who will guarantee you a self respecting life and the ROI, return on investment on the taxes paid. This is the post governance age, where governance has been declared a thing of the past. Governance is the interface between the citizens and the government. The rule of democratic pressure can be felt and there is an extreme fear that the media and civil society would put the government in the dock and it would be next to impossible for them to come out of it.
If my memory serves me right, think of the UPA2 government under Dr. Manmohan. Many state governments have faced that plight. Leave aside the daily ease of living, about which the less said the better, we restrict to the Mahakumbha ease of living / travel / worship et al, organised for 50 or 100 crores at the cost of around a billion dollars. No resource was coming in the way and the whole of the government machinery was placed at Mahakumbha’s command. Latest technology was pressed into service to make the travel, stay, bath and return of the devotees a spiritual experience. The VVIPs / VIPs had their fun, all seen in their visual manifestations on social media.
The Mahakumbha Social Media Event with the clarion call to all to be a part of the world’s biggest religious congregation and experience, created a once in a lifetime FOMO. Ease of living apart the travails of the devotees after the initial days are to be seen to be believed. The tragic stampede on the 29th of January 2025 brought all the tectonic fault lines in the open. Accidents can happen but the way it all happened, the build up to it, the tech being of no use, the evacuation, disaster relief, deliberate information glitches, and the fate of kith and kin, has been diametrically opposite to what one would think of as ease of living and rightly so. The traffic gridlock plaguing hundreds of kilometres of roads and many villages, towns and cities, is unheard of in human history globally. There have been accidents primarily due of driver’s fatigue. People of Prayagraj face a total lack of ease of living because of the environment and the ecosystem around. And now its tremors are experienced even at the New Delhi Railway Station. What a plight!
IS THE ERA OF RESPONSIVE GOVERNMENTS AND PEOPLE BEING AT THE CENTRE OF DEMOCRACY SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN LONG OVER?
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.