Every ruling party in every state in India sits for an exam once every five year i.e. the assembly elections. There are different questions for different states with different weightages and the candidates provide answers to those questions. The answers provided are subjective, they include a huge amount of data dump, facts, figures and what not, you name it and you will find it in the answers. Parties have found ways to ace that exam. There are tricks, cheat sheets and short cuts.
But this time, an external examiner i.e. Coronavirus conducted another test. The most important part is that it is free of any prejudices and biases; it attacks people of all religions, castes, states, UTs and cities alike. It came up with the exact same copy of the question paper for each and every state. It did not care, who is who, who said what, who is communal who is secular, who is right or who is left. It tested the veracity of the answers provided by the ruling parties in their respective exams. And not surprisingly those students who keep their internal teachers happy and scored 90% in the internal grading are finding it extremely difficult to score 33%. Although, having said this, I won’t be surprised if some clever people come up and claim that Coronovirus is attacking Dalits and Muslims more. In fact I am waiting for Delhi’s chief minister Mr. Arvind Kejriwal to come with a theory that suggests that Coronovirus is working on the behest of BJP, Modi or LG and that is why Delhi has the highest rate.
Yeah, I know it comes at third rank after Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu when we look at the number of cases. But we don’t include the population of the states. That’s one of the skill sets of our respected media houses, they are good at manipulating numbers and projecting them the way that suits them. The population of Maharashtra as of 2019 (i.e. in excess of 12.3 crores) is 6.6 times the population of Delhi (i.e. in excess of 1.8 crores). However, the number of covid-19 cases in Maharashtra (1,04,568) are only 2.6 times that of Delhi (38,958). The same goes with the number of deaths linked to Covid-19, the number for Maharashtra is 3,830 whereas for Delhi it is 1,271, which is 3.01 times and is clearly way less than 6.6 times. So, when we bring population of the states in consideration, Delhi is doing far worse than Maharashtra.
Delhi was the last state that witnessed elections before Coronavirus and so the questions asked, the answers provided, the issues raised are still not forgotten and this is the only reason why I am writing specifically about Delhi. Coronavirus has now re-evaluated the answer sheet, and the party that managed more than 60 seats does not look like it deserved it. Forget 62, if the elections were to be held today, the party would struggle to even get double digits.
Kejriwal claimed that the party won 2020 assembly elections on the basis of the work done in the four sectors Bijli, Pani, Healthcare and Education.
What did the party do for Bijli & Pani other than offering free water and electricity? According to Kejriwal, he had done all the calculations and the state had enough funds for the freebies. If that was the case, why is the state now not able to pay salaries of over-worked healthcare employees? Doctors have not received salaries for the last three months. Why? If the state was so rich and if the government was not corrupt, how come the state that was cash rich, revenue surplus since 2010 not able to afford an extra month of lock-down? Kejriwal came on record and released a press briefing stating that we cannot live with lock-down, we have no money to pay salaries. Even when the number of cases is rising exponentially, the state has clearly refused for the possibility of extending the lock-down even when people are dying.
The truth is that his government emptied the coffer while buying the votes and did not expect an external situation like this to happen. And when it did, there was no time to fill up the coffers.
Also read: Delhi: Collateral Damage for nation building!
Moreover, the state that apparently had a lot of money to give away as freebie is forces nurses to work extra hours. Why do nurses need to threaten of indefinite strike to get their just demands fulfilled? The party and its supporters boast about the fact that the government allocates around 14% towards healthcare. Where do the funds go? In providing free medicines? The AAP government has provided free medicines to 18,95,715 people against the target of 18,33,860 people in its 26 hospitals. Is providing free stuff the only way to win elections?
Kejriwal, his party and his supporters brag about Mohalla Clinics as healthcare reforms. They supposedly got appreciation from some international organisations. Where are these clinics now, when people need medical assistance? Closed? The government pays upto Rs 20,000/- per month as rent to the people who lent their property for theses clinics. Are these twenty thousands a part of the healthcare budget allocation? So, in short, there are clinics for which the government pays quite some money, the landlords get upto 20k every month, but these clinics can’t be used. Doesn’t that look like a scam? And what does this say about the international organisations that were endorsing the scheme?
Three hospitals namely, Indira Gandhi Hospital Dwarka, Burari hospital, Ambedkar Nagar Hospital were planned in 1997 and are still not operational. They were supposed to add around 2800 beds. Kejrwial’s government was in full majority and completed all five years, why are the hospitals still not operational? Does it take this long to get a hospital operational? Congress’ snail pace of doing things was one of the reasons why it lost the election. How is AAP doing any different?
In its 2015 election manifesto the party claimed that it will get 5 beds for every 1000 people which is in accordance to the international WHO standards. The party will add 30,000 new beds. These two things are mentioned in the manifesto, you could read online. How many beds did the government add? The government added only 394 beds in last three years, private hospitals that Kejriwal does not support and openly criticizes added way more than that. There are a total of around 9000 beds, out of which majority of beds are in private hospitals. The rest of the beds will be added in the future. When? Maybe in next 25 years. I don’t know.
And Mr. Kejriwal before this election (2020) claimed that the increase in capacity would be 122% and also said “Delhi’s citizens deserve world-class facilities and we will make that a reality“. Coronavirus tested the truthfulness of the statements made. These statements are quite funny to read today. Or may be people should have asked “by when”. He would probably say, I meant it would be like this in 2050. Well hopefully!
Quite interesting is his stand on the issue of National Register of Citizens (NRC) and Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). His government passed an anti-CAA resolution in his assembly as soon as he won the elections, he is against the bill and does not support NRC. So, he is fine with illegal migrants exploiting the limited resources of India but he does not want Indian citizens from outside Delhi to avail limited services that Delhi provides. I can really make this statement look ugly by introducing religion in this, but I prefer not to.
When the lock-down ended, he very confidently came up and said “we are now prepared, lock-down gave us enough time to get ready to handle this situation“. What were his preparations? Throwing out the “outsiders”? He literally asked the people from UP and Bihar to leave as soon as the lock-down started and we saw a big migrant crisis within a couple of weeks into the lock-down. People did not leave because they were having fun on the streets, their struggle was forced on them. One of the two reasons why the outsiders were asked to leave was to make sure that the shortage of healthcare resources can be kept hidden.
Also read: The upcoming Bihar elections and the new Migrant vote bank
The state is now starting to build a makeshift hospital like China did. The hospital will be ready by the end of the month. And here also, he makes a point to highlight the number of beds people from outside Delhi would be using. So, I ask again, what did the government do in the three months of lock-down? Isn’t it too late to start thinking of getting a makeshift hospital and arranging extra beds?
May be because of people like him, the capital city is not a full state. Illegal migrants are welcome, but the citizens of India from other states are not. That’s interesting! Slow claps for the gentlemen.
If you remove “freebies” from the work done by the party, you would literally struggle to find one good thing that the Aam Aadmi Government did in its five years. If you think education is the sector where the government has done something. Just wait for a few years, a tsunami is heading towards Delhi. It would take some years before the student who is studying in class IV to complete high-school. That’s when the crisis would hit Delhi. And the worst part, it won’t be as easy as arranging few extra beds. Students would have complete their school education in a flawed system, you can’t go back in time. Can you? Mission buniyaad is a replica of a system used in Germany. Germans are fighting it, protesting to get rid of this system. Why? Please read the link below, before it is too late. Mission Buniyad kills the career possibilities for one third of the students in Delhi straightaway.
Must Read: Mission Buniyaad: A mission to weaken the foundation
There was a report tabled by the government of Delhi listing the projects that were not approved/delayed by the office of LG. Did anyone read the report? If people had read the report, they would have got some idea as to what was coming for them in the near future. Aam Aadmi Party lead government’s top most priority was/is advertisement. The schemes that it wanted to bring would help the party win election but won’t help the state. Have a look at the article I wrote at that time, SC’s (L-G vs AAP) verdict: An inevitable, silent but deadly storm approaching Delhi. I like two statements from that post:
Mr. Kejriwal can claim the Supreme Court’s verdict as a win, but in reality, it is a win for the L-G as he would not be held accountable for Delhi’s Greece-ification in the coming years.
and
“Terrorism was considered a regional problem and not a global issue until a highly qualified engineer blew up a tower” and “Delhi did not become a failed state until a highly qualified engineer used it as a stage for his political ambitions”.
I am sorry, but these two statements aptly define the conditions in Delhi today. I saw it coming in some form, I am sure a lot of people would have seen it too. But they kept quiet. I don’t understand why. If they did not keep mum when they knew something was not right, people would not have been lying along side the dead bodies in the hospitals today. May be they thought it was not their problem, why should they speak? Is it their problem now? Sooner or later it always becomes our problem. Media is a business, not only in India but every where. They run behind TRPs. But what do the rest of the citizens do? In this era, there are more than enough ways to voice one’s opinions. Blogging is one of them; you tube channels is another; and many more. You could look up the history, the societies where the educated/literate/rich/privileged did not speak up, those societies did not improve a bit; and of course religions too.
Coronavirus is not lethel in itself, it is comorbidity that is the root cause here. The healthcare system in Delhi has not scaled up with time, there has been little or negligible progress in the infrastructure for years if not several decades. Its this stagnation and mismanagement that is killing people. It is my earnest request to everyone, please read the reports and if you find something not good, highlight it. If you have time issues, then please share and promote articles like this one. Unless people know what is happening, nothing is going to change.
Thank you for your time!!!
Also read:
Delhi under siege!!!
Delhi’s Bermuda Triangle
