S Varman and Nila Varman
When will the smoke in India clear? Wreathed by smoke, a moment of reckoning may be near. Overseas and away from extended family, our minds toil as to when things will get better. I see those running to lie at the feet of their struggling family members running through my mind when I close my eyes. From feeling helpless to watching the hapless on the news, everywhere we look all we see are those who have family struggling, dying, or dead and we can’t do anything about it but keep our spirits high. My dad spoke to me of his survivor’s guilt.
I am in angst.
It’s an avalanche. Maybe a persistent morsel of an unrelenting Tsunami.
People are withering away in a modern-day, 21st century India with might, money, expertise and technology; beleaguered, dying and waiting to be cremated on roadsides with an utter lack of dignity due to lack of general health care throughout India’s so-called ‘model states’ from North to South and East to West.
The capital, Delhi is on fire; funeral pyres lit incessantly whilst hapless wives, husbands, sons, daughters, families loiter and holler in pathos; fatigued by the helplessness, societal failure and mainly the elected government’s inadequacy and inertia in preparing their states and country for the second and third waves of this unrelenting global pandemic.
They dug themselves into a shambolic game of blaming, naming, suppressing numbers and facts and deleting “tweets”
Middle class and poorer sections of society are mostly affected. On the other hand, rowdy politicians and the rich, upper-middle-people grab their chance at another quick fortune, shying away from feudal patriotism, which is usually something they boast about. They’ve suddenly become busy making money out of dead bodies, reminiscing of an erstwhile demonetisation exercise.
The Union Government is helpless due to its inefficient policymaking; failed strategical thinking emboldened by a fascist attitude. The autocratic rulers are in the process of stripping India and its selfless and spiritual people. There ought to have been large scale rescue efforts put into place- however, they dug themselves into a shambolic game of blaming, naming, suppressing numbers and facts and deleting “tweets”, which is surmounted by their lack of transparency and obsession with secrecy.
The state, union governments and their politicians are obsessed with building temples rather than engaging in hospital, health care and infrastructure endeavours
As a fledgling democracy, India was once a beacon for other democracies; albeit it is currently struggling due to its own newfound obsession with religious hatred, corruption, on and off communalism and an ever-ingrained Casteism. The state, union governments and their politicians are obsessed with building temples rather than engaging in hospital, health care and infrastructure endeavours. Once again, they are obsessed with their unfounded Vedic excellence in Maths, Science and Medicine whilst neglecting modern sciences, evidence-based research.
We see now more than ever that the government negates expertise in regard to everything from the economy, the environment and to education.; skewed with an altered state of mind in policymaking, laden within the caste entrenched system.
The media is subdued and blackmailed; the judiciary is being blanched; the press is trampled upon and educational institutions are invaded for their anti-establishment views.
The democratically elected Prime Minister of a Union Government is, unfortunately, behaving like a wannabe superhero obsessed with image, nepotism, religious fanaticism, and is surrounded by kitchen coteries of cronies. He looks increasingly helpless with an awful demeanour and body language; yelling empty rhetoric with dulling oratorical skills and would not attend a press conference even during these arduous and difficult times as a basic tenet of democracy. Instead, he bleats and boasts his policy decisions in Tweets like his erstwhile contemporary in the United States.
Failed economy and vaccine diplomacy, shameless showcasing triumphalism, parading vanity, oozing with empty rhetoric. Holi festivities: rallies with eight-stage state elections, let alone an iceberg of a Kumbh Mela with 3-4 million devotees alone suffices to derail Indians for the foreseeable future whilst the politicians busy weaving fabricated lies with their magic realism bolstered by fake identities.
God save India and the ever-positive Indians.
S Varman and Nila Varman
Featured image courtesy of Hakan Nural via Unsplash. Image license found here. No changes were made to this image.
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