Corona Virus Pandemic has challenged human race in a way that India didn’t face since after the Flu Pandemic of 1918-19. 10 crores of then Global population lost lives in the epidemiological crisis of the last Century. Famous Bengali Novelist Sharatchandra Chattopadhyay had given a heart-wrenching description in his Novel ‘Shesh Prashna‘.
Meeting the current enormous epidemiological challenge by COVID19 has been quite a task for India which she has taken with grounded & pragmatic approach while keeping a wise account of her limitations especially in infrastructural preparedness. GOI has been pro-active & taken the task on war-footing. The country set an early internal lockdown in comparison to other nations in order to maximize prevention of disease transmission. Lockdown of 1.3 billion population was indeed a daring decision. PM graduated it by first calling for a Janta Curfew on March 22 as a drill, followed by the lockdown that began from March 24, 12 am. Early lockdown was justifiably expected to help India to a significant extent had Tablighi Jamaat event not messed up the discourse.
However, even the super-colossal Global-Local crisis couldn’t halt political blame games in the multi-party Ecosystem of India & West Bengal tuned in to be perhaps the first one to kick start blame-politics regarding Corona Pandemic. West Bengal, in last 4 decades, continued to be a hotbed of blame-politics. The first case of COVID19 infection was detected in India on January 29 & by February end, the Prime Minister declared he wouldn’t attend any Holi celebration gathering due to Corona threat. Political blame game started hereafter. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee marked PM’s statement as an effort to divert attention from Delhi Riot. It may be mentioned here that an unfortunate yet severe communal riot broke out in Delhi on February 24 when US President Donald Trump was here & continued till February 25 mid night as officially stated by Home Minister in the Parliament. However, Mamata Banerjee’s blame-politics couldn’t deter the Virus & COVID19 got its mark registered even in Kolkata on March 17. Number of cases gradually increased till today & West Bengal, now, has reportedly turned into a Covid Timebomb.
WB CM, however, didn’t delay to invoke Epidemic Diseases Act in West Bengal from March 16 itself & declared Schools, Colleges, Shopping Malls, Cinemas closed. By this time, she perhaps forgot the comment she made when PM Modi cancelled all his Holi Celebration gatherings.
As number of cases rose up, infrastructural lacunae of West Bengal Health System started being exposed. West Bengal Government continued to promote its multi & super speciality hospitals, they actually remained to exist as newly-constructed buildings without required manpower & treatment infrastructure. West Bengal has a crying scarcity of doctors, nurses, paramedics & technicians in hospitals as West Bengal Government doesn’t appoint them in regular intervals nor pay them the right salary. West Bengal is perhaps the only State in India that disobeyed even the Court Order to pay off the due Dearness Allowances of the State employees. As a result of low payment to Govt staff, WB has crying shortage of doctors affecting the huge number of West Bengal population negatively. In her Administrative Review Meeting at Burdwan, WB CM declared on August 26, 2019, that West Bengal wanted to appoint 820 doctors, but received only 105 applications & ended up appointing only 39. That’s enough of substantiation of the claim that West Bengal doesn’t offer a good working atmosphere, infrastructure & payment motivation to the health providers.
Corona Virus outbreak, hence, sprang up as a challenge to WB CM not only in terms of saving people from the viral outbreak but also in terms of how she’d hide the health infra lacunae of West Bengal. Initially, West Bengal doctors & health workers started murmuring that they had not been provided with even masks to meet COVID19 patients with. A junior doctor from Calcutta Medical College & Hospital expressed his disgust in his Facebook timeline that on asking for masks, they’re being compared to street dogs who don’t die even without wearing masks.
It’s very true that Infra insufficiency is a pan Indian problem & in front of COVID19 challenge, world’s best health infrastructures too are appearing insufficient. Even US infrastructure failed, they asked common people to use scarfs while preserving masks for the health workers. So what’s the big deal about West Bengal’s infra deficiency? Is it being politically hyped? Perhaps not. It became indirectly evident that for West Bengal State Hospitals, regular purchase of protective equipment for Doctors such as coverall suits made up of a specific, scheduled microfiber, head gear, face cover, N-95 masks & surgical masks, gloves etc of prescribed specifications were even lesser than that in other States. How was that indirectly evident? Because initially the State distributed Raincoats not only to the doctors of General Hospitals, but also to those of a famous Infectious Diseases Hospital of Kolkata. PPE i.e. Personal Protective Equipment is not something that’s required only to treat COVID19 patients but for any infectious disease. Hence, an Institution that’s earmarked only for virulent Infectious Diseases, couldn’t logically have any shortage of PPE. But it had shortage. There may be scarcity of PPE stuff in other General Hospitals. But how did it happen that the Institution that dealt only & exclusively with Infectious Diseases’ also displayed crying shortage of those? This fact corroborates well with the hypothesis that doctors’ security infra of WB is perhaps the worst in India.
It needs to be mentioned that scarcity of PPE is a pan-Indian issue. In Haryana, in different other States, ‘jugaad’ mechanism had been applied to compensate non-availability of PPE for doctors almost everywhere in India the initial phase of the pandemic. In some place, doctors wore even Motorbike helmet to treat COVID19 patients due to lack of N-95 masks. Yet, scenario of West Bengal became a media sensation because there were serious pre-existing allegations of Government treasury defalcation against the present legislation. After the Raincoat issue floated up, some opposition voices in WB demanded WB Govt to release a White Paper on what happened to the State’s health budget allocation. Such allegations gained momentum since October, 2018 when West Bengal CM didn’t co-operate with CAG who wanted to conduct a Process Audit of the State’s welfare schemes. As even the Bureaucrats of West Bengal became instrumental in this process of non-cooperation, CAG couldn’t conduct the said process. Allegation of defalcation of Government Accounts & expenditure of planned sectors’ budget in unplanned sectors thus soared up in West Bengal.
There’s another issue that deserves a mention here to give a feel of the true politico-administrative environment of West Bengal. To the famous SSKM Hospital of Kolkata, an influential member of the ruling Trinamool realm, Nirmal Maji had referred a dog that belonged to one of his relatives to the nephrology ward on June 10, 2015 for hemo-dialysis. Doctors protested as it was not a veterinary hospital & they contemplated an infection. The hospital’s director Pradip Mitra gave an instruction for the dog’s dialysis which wasn’t acted upon because the hospital was meant for humans. Since the director couldn’t dominate the Hospital’s doctors, he was transferred to a nondescript hospital of WB perhaps on punishment. After serving the prestigious SSKM for seven years, Mitra couldn’t take the insult & wanted to avail a voluntary retirement.
In such a State, while doctors were murmuring (they couldn’t raise their voice initially as bizarre reactions from the administration to gag criticism was anticipated) their disgust in State Hospitals about fighting a dreadful enemy like COVID19 without proper protection, Dr. Indranil Khan, an Oncologist had raised his voice & asked for proper PPE stuff from the Government. He tweeted one after another showing that doctors were being given Raincoats while nurses were made to wear waste plastic sheets in North Bengal Hospital. On March 29, he tweeted tagging WB CM the report of a famous Bengali Daily of North Bengal, ‘Uttarbanga Sangbad‘, that doctors needed the real PPE as Raincoats were not enough to fight COVID19. He volunteered to provide the Government with inputs from other Hospitals of WB too & added that at the moment of supply-shortage, Government may distribute proper PPE to those doctors first who needed them the most, instead of raincoat. At this point, it would be right to recall that even the Infectious Diseases Hospital lacked supply of PPE & that was almost a conclusive proof of serious lacuna in dispensation of health budget in West Bengal. Dr. Khan also tweeted that as he was raising his voice in the social media against the State’s infra-deficiency, various sources tried to silence him. His sarcasm was cutting as he tweeted on March 28 evening with supporting photographs—“Welcome to India’s #RainCoatDoctors fighting Covid19 in West Bengal govt hospitals. Asked to wear #raincoats & substandard masks instead of PPE, these are frontline medical workers fighting Coronavirus in WB.”
While Department of Health & Family Welfare of West Bengal replied back to him on March 29 evening that they were taking immediate steps to not only reject any defective or substandard piece (that does not conform to the Health Department’s approved sample), but also to supply the PPE of micro fibre variety subject to availability, Dr. Indranil Khan tweeted his satisfaction that WB Govt had addressed his concern over inferior quality #PPE & initiated to cater to the issue with sincerity. However, the matter didn’t end there. On March 29 itself, Dr. Indranil Khan received a notice under CrPC section 41A from IC Zinzira Bajar under Maheshtala Police Station, of Diamond Harbour Parliamentary Constituency. He was detained in the PS & grilled enough so that the very next morning, March 30, Dr. Khan tweeted an apology. “The Govt of WB is working hard to ensure safety of frontline healthcare workers & it is very important that all of us cooperate with the govt in greater interest of public health. I apologise in case my previous post has unintentionally created misconceptions among followers.” It needs to be mentioned here that Abhishek Banerjee, nephew of West Bengal CM, is the MP of Diamond Harbour Parliamentary Constituency.
Police seized his cellphone, simcard & lodged an FIR against Dr. Khan under IPC section 153A to intimidate him. The oncologist had moved the Calcutta High Court in a writ petition against the State on March 30. On the same day, the Court gave interim relief to him & asked the Police to return his cellphone & simcard. The Court’s observations went distinctly against the State as the court observed State’s behaviour to be violative of freedom of speech under Article 19 of the Indian Constitution.
In this regard, the order of the Calcutta High Court stated,
“Freedom of speech and expression which is granted under Article 19 of the Constitution of India has to be scrupulously upheld by the State. If an expression of opinion brings the government into disrepute, it cannot defend this allegation by intimidation of the person expressing the opinion by subjecting him to prolonged interrogation, threatening arrest seizing his mobile phone and SIM card and so on.”
The Court added that the State might take such coercive action—
“… if a citizen tries to utilize this freedom by trying to circulate alleged facts maliciously with a view to causing damage to another person or to the public at large or the nation. This could be done by unnecessary spread of fear and panic among the public for the above reason.”
Calcutta High Court
The court ordered—“For the time being the writ petitioner is restrained from making any posting in his Facebook concerning the above issue.”
Dr. Indranil Khan had been the whistle blower against the corrupt & intimidating State of West Bengal. After that, under the current topsy-turvy COVID situation of West Bengal, people in general have lost faith on the health services & Governance of the State. Before the pandemic took West Bengal into its clutches, people here practiced to remain silent about any lacunae of the State Govt out of utmost fear. The ground of WB radiates terror for non-followers of the ruling party. This is the LEFT legacy of West Bengal. Even constructive criticism of Government actions gets marked as crime. Hence, those who would criticize, be unduly heckled. This fear got removed to some extent during this pandemic as a huge number of people experienced the State’s lack of infrastructure themselves. After Dr. Indranil Khan, many Organizations of Doctors had written about specific issues related to them, hospitals & patients. West Bengal’s conundrum became a global issue of which Dr. Khan was the whistle blower.
It would be relevant to remember the case of Chinese Dr. Li Wenliang in this context whose Coronavirus death sparked anger in China. Wenliang was the doctor who, in the month of December, marked the fact & messaged his colleagues that COVID19 appeared like SARS – another deadly coronavirus. But he was asked by the police to “stop spreading rumours”. Wenliang’s father Li Shuying told the media that his son’s warning was proven correct. Dr. Indranil Khan warned WB Govt about procuring the right PPE for doctors. And 2 days back WB lost a doctor who died of Corona infection but the State Government is unwilling to admit COVID19 to be the cause of his deaths in the State’s official record. WB people are no more surprised to behold similarities between Governmental actions of China & West Bengal. Not only Covid19 pandemic, people of West Bengal are simultaneously facing the disaster of failing democracy.
Debjani Bhattacharya