Page 3 - Seniors Today - May21 Issue
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Publisher’s Note
India’s Lost Decade
India finds itself in the throes of a humanitarian immunity and that we would be able to deal with
disaster. The second wave of the pandemic has the coronavirus better than the rest of the world.
struck India with a devastating impact. To put Indians are an unhealthy population, what with
numbers on new cases and deaths is adding obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, air pollution
insult to injury. In any case, one is not sure of the and a ragtag medical infrastructure that gave way.
statistics. Everyone seems to have lost someone. There is no incentive to prevent disease. A largely
The stress of the pandemic has been brutal, commercial and profit-driven medical system,
the situation seemed to have gone downhill which is out of reach of the middle class anyway,
rather quickly and there is no respite. As late has resulted in a large number of avoidable deaths.
as March 2021, the health minister went into India is a high-risk setting for an epidemic, and the
self-congratulatory mode, with overconfidence current situation was predictable. For the future,
and false assurances that India had overcome bolstering infrastructure will be necessary -- it is
the pandemic. The virulence of the second wave not sufficient that death must be averted -- not just
has plunged the country into a medical disaster to treat disease but prevent it altogether. India has
unparalleled in the world. Recognising the crisis, been ineffective in controlling the current crisis.
the Supreme Court of India set up a national The stories of a collapsing medical infrastructure
taskforce to facilitate a public health response to are numerous, with reports of lack of oxygen for
the pandemic based on scientific and specialised hospitalised patients.
domain knowledge. The gut-wrenching images of bodies burning
India is the fifth largest economy in the world. on pyres in the streets and the overcrowded
It is now evident to the world that India could cemeteries will remain in our collective memory.
pull the global economy down. Which is why And it will be decades before families can begin to
every significant power is sending us dole – alms, recoup their shattered lives. A young man, 38 years
handouts, oxygen, concentrators, ventilators, old, lost his life to Covid leaving behind a wife of 35
vaccine raw material, drugs, medical aid and and a nine-year-old daughter. It is not easy for the
everything else that the country needs to fight the wife to explain the empty seat at the dining table,
pandemic. The scale of the crisis in India means and it will be a decade by the time the daughter
that international restrictions will remain in grows up to understand it all. In the meantime,
place for a much longer period. Preventing this economists and politicians will talk about recovery
spread requires strict quarantines and travelling of GDP, growth rate, rebuilding India etc. But when
restrictions; this is bad news for the travel and will the nine-year-old ever recover, and like her, so
hospitality industry, and will have a cascading many parents, spouses, brothers, sisters, children?
effect on the global economy.
This has been the lost decade for India.
Callousness and complacency gave the virus
an opportunity to spread. We wrongly believed Vickram Sethi
that our poor hygiene gave us much stronger Publisher and Editor-in-Chief
SENIORS TODAY | ISSUE #23 | MAY 2021 3
