Article writing. Topic- An analysis of how our nation is handling the pandemic situation. (listen to the criticisms of
various state governments on the issue of unavailability of the vaccine, oxygen cylinder etc,)
Answers
Answer:Our friendly little Israel just marked its exit from the pandemic with cases down 97 per cent. The not-so-friendly and bigger China announced its full recovery from Covid with a quarter of 18.3 per cent growth. Now, move your gaze to India on the same day. Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired a top-level meeting to respond to the growing crisis over the shortage of medical oxygen as Covid cases, deaths and positivity rates rise.
He didn’t waste any time in ceremonials or election campaigning on the day we are writing this. Already, Modi had cancelled a scheduled meeting with the visiting French foreign minister, not something you’d expect him to do casually. Especially given the centrality of France to India’s strategic interests and the PM’s likely summit with French President Emmanuel Macron later this year. In fairness, you could argue that the PM is so sensitive to his people’s distress that he is willing to leave everything else and focus personally on the day’s gravest crisis. But, should the crisis have become so grave that the prime minister of a nation of 1.38 billion with nuclear weapons and pretensions to be a global power is reviewing the supply status of medical oxygen?
We can say the usual stuff about this being an over-centralised, PMO-run government. This is more than a story of micromanagement gone wrong. This is a national leadership gone so wrong that India’s most powerful prime minister in four decades has had to personally take charge of medical oxygen shortages. As if a war with China was raging for some time and India’s forces were running short of missiles.
Being an old government watcher, I also noted with special interest that even representatives of the steel industry were participating in this meeting. A few phone calls unravelled that mystery. The steel ministry and industry come in because you need many more gas cylinders. Some decisions were taken at the meeting after this. Mostly good ones — allowing free inter-state movement of oxygen among them.
Mukesh Ambani chipped in with transferring some oxygen from his plants. And, as I write this, I see an anchor on India Today TV explaining in great detail — breathless in excitement — that the oxygen cylinders available for home use “you can buy from Amazon, but also from elsewhere”. A nation that takes pride in being the unipolar vaccine world’s only super-power — hailed by Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, such as he is, as the modern-day Hanuman bringing Sanjeevani to the world — is now all battle-stations for medical oxygen. Of course, it is also out shopping for Covid vaccines across the world too.
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