From the looks of it, nearly everyone has got the wrong end of this stick — or should I say needle. It is not a just case of a man arrested for fraud or fake vaccination camp busted or MP duped or buck being passed from civic body to police to administrators. The sting of the matter is that unsuspecting citizens have been put at risk. When Debanjan Deb, the fraudster posing as an IAS and a joint commissioner of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation, pushed something that was not coronavirus vaccine while making false exhortations, he breached the epidermis and law. But the system breached way more.
It’s a break-in
It is not difficult to imagine how this will play out. The ruling party will deny and rule. The Opposition will blame and hope to reap dividends from this poll, that poll, bypolls. All the while something other than a coronavirus vaccine would be galloping through many bodies. Something, which until lab reports arrive, is feared to be anything from an antibiotic to a measles or BCG vaccine to distilled water. Something these people never consented to let into their system. Something whose very unexpectedness alone is enough to compromise the heart, forget liver, kidney and what have you.
Double standards
Television channels continue to zoom in on photographs of the fraudster in the company of administrators and politicians; on government plaques bearing his name — albeit one of many; and report how Deb interviewed X candidates for this job and that job; how he has a degree in genetics, how he is the son of a retired excise officer and so on and so forth. Of course, there is no consolation in the knowledge that this is no one-off. There have been cases of fake vaccination in Maharashtra and reports from Bihar of vaccination callousness. And yet think of it this way, when China pulls a Doklam we summon our forces. When Pakistan breaches the Line of Control it precipitates armed conflict. Intolerance for outsiders is what CAA-NRC is all about. But tax-paying citizens are supposed to have their bodies broken into and violated through fraud and still go about their business!
