Rahul Gandhi on Thursday implied an absence of planning to manage the medical, financial and humanitarian crises of the Covid-19 outbreak but avoided accusatory tones or political brinkmanship as he urged the government to throw itself into the battle.
The former Congress president dwelt on every aspect of the problem: shortage of personal protection equipment , infrastructural deficiencies relating to testing and treatment, limitations of the top-down strategy, insufficient financial aid for the states and the lack of a road map to check the economic slide, protect vulnerable industries and assuage the hunger of the poor.
Rahul stuck steadfastly to providing constructive suggestions, arguing the time for an objective scrutiny would come after India had vanquished the virus.
But implicit in his suggestions was a message of mismanagement and failure, which has left key medical and financial aspects of the crisis still waiting to be addressed.
Rahul’s comments come more than a month after the Covid-19 crisis gripped India and over two months after he had first altered the government to the peril.
“The main force in the fight against Covid-19 are the states. The strategy should not be top-down but bottom-up,” he said at a videoconference with the media.
“I would have favoured a much more detailed conversation between the Prime Minister and the chief ministers. But Narendra Modi has a particular style. No problem, we can work around that style.
“The chief ministers should have been empowered, given more financial support. The state and district-level machinery needed to be activated. Communication should have reached the district authorities on how to manage the crisis in advance.”
Rahul added: “We could have sent food and money to the poor. This is not the time for penny-pinching.... We have enough food stocks. At least 10kg of rice or wheat, 1kg dal and 1kg sugar should be given free every week.
“Those who don’t have ration cards should be given. Also, put some money into their bank (accounts). Nyay (a minimum income guarantee scheme the Congress had promised in its 2019 poll manifesto) is very important, take some other name but give money. We need a financial security net and a food safety net.”
Asked about the delay in ordering testing and PPE kits and whose failure it was, he said: “I’m not interested in a blame game at this stage. Testing kits are limited and the whole world needs them. The US, Europe, all want them. Other countries who ordered first will get them.”
“The rapid testing kits that were supposed to come to India are also very less, minuscule. I don’t want to get into why this crisis happened, but we have to find out ways. From today, all our energies and resources should be focused on this.”
Rahul said he had been talking to a large number of experts worldwide about the pandemic crisis.
“There is a misconception that the lockdown will defeat the virus. The lockdown is a pause button, not a solution. When we come out of the lockdown, the virus will start working,” he said.
“The idea is to evolve a strategy during the lockdown: bolster your medical resources, ramp up testing abilities. The biggest weapon is testing. Right now, we are testing 199 out of a million. We have tested 350 people per district. Not enough.”
He added: “By dramatically increasing testing, we can see where the virus is moving. But we have to do it strategically; instead of chasing the virus, we have to get ahead of the virus. Random testing has to be done. I get sad when we see blunt instruments. Use a nuanced, strategic approach.
“Even on the opening of the lockdown, the states should have been allowed to decide. Clamp down on hotspots but start opening the areas that are not affected. Only a lockdown is not going to help, dynamically identify the trouble spots and act.”
Rahul predicted a massive financial backlash and spiralling unemployment.
“In this crisis, everybody is impacted. Come up with a compassionate response to everybody. The MSMEs are most vulnerable. Protect them with a defensive package. The MSMEs should have known what is being done for them,” he said.
“Delayed action won’t work. A couple of mistakes were made during the lockdown. Migrant workers were locked up. I have told my state governments to deal with them with extreme care and kindness.”