COVID-19: The Government Falters, and Continues to do so

Mens rea is defined as the intention or knowledge of wrongdoing that constitutes part of a crime. In a court of law, for a murder to be proven, the mens rea i.e., the intention, is important. But, if death occurs by an act without the intention to do so, it qualifies as “culpable homicide not amounting to murder” under Section 304 of the Indian Penal Code. This section of the IPC must be slapped against the Union Government for killing 16 migrant workers who were returning to their villages and were run over by a goods train near Aurangabad in Maharashtra. By no means can it be qualified as an accident.

There have been more than 300 non-Covid deaths reported in India since the lockdown began. Every day, there are ghastly stories about migrant workers getting killed because of the long walk from their places of work to their home. In some instances the distance travelled is more than a thousand kilometres. Then there are stories of deaths due to hunger and even due to the non-availability of medical facilities because of the lockdown. A large number of deaths occurred because of suicides owing to fear, anxiety and other conditions triggered by the lockdown.

How long this distress will continue is not known; the reality is that the situation is very precarious. The reality of living with the virus has to begin, and the earlier the better! It is for the simple reason that the government at the Centre has completely failed to isolate the virus and according to reports, there has already been a community spread of the virus. The best that the government at the Centre is doing is remaining smug and allowing communities to develop immunity. Our testing numbers for the virus are still among the lowest in the world and unlike Kerala, where the state government traced contacts, isolated, tested and treated the patients, the central government is doing exactly the reverse.

Initially, the government miserably failed to deal with the migrant workers in the cities by allowing them relief and a habitat for a few weeks during the lockdown. Later, because of pressure from various stakeholders, the central government allowed for the selective movement of migrants back to their home states. By allowing some of the migrant workers to return home, and rightly so, but without proper testing and institutional quarantine, the government has risked the respective states with an avalanche of the virus in the offing. The Himachal Pradesh state government faltered badly in managing the influx of migrant workers and students into the state. There is no doubt that during the first phase of the lockdown, the state did exemplary work by reaching out to almost all of the 14,83,000 households in the state and looked for symptoms of the virus, even mapping the movement of its people. It is because of this that the state was qualified only in green and orange zones.

All of that has now been completely eroded by the very unwise stance of the government not testing the migrant workers and students when they enter the state. A total number of 2,56,173 people from outside Himachal Pradesh had applied for entry permits. However, permission was given to about 54,000 people while an equal number of people have sneaked in through its borders. Since none of them were tested and only their body temperatures were taken, it did not mean that they were not carriers of the novel coronavirus. According to stories and anecdotes told by some of the migrants who got permits, they gulped a paracetamol tablet to ensure that their body temperature was normal before they entered the state. And this ‘normal’ is now is turning into a real crisis in the state.

The complacency of the state government can be gauged from the fact that its Director General of Police, in a recent statement, said that the state will be free of the virus in a day or two. A day after this statement, COVID-19 cases started sprouting in. After the third phase of the lockdown began, six cases were reported from the state. Most of these cases have history of entry into the state from outside. Cases were reported from Kangra, Mandi, Hamirpur, Chamba and Baddi in Solan district. The total number of COVID-19 cases in the state has hit 50 with three deaths, two in the state and one in Chandigarh.

Since all the new cases are linked to the influx of migrants, there is no reliable data on the total number of cases in the state since testing is too low. A mere 0.1 per cent of the population has been tested so far. The government has miserably failed despite a strong foundation laid down in the initial days of the lockdown. Now the government is left to bank on chance and probability and tracing the contacts of the newly-found cases which are sprouting everyday. Realising its failure and the threat to the two medical colleges and hospitals of the state, IGMC Shimla and the Tanda Medical College in Kangra, the COVID centres have now been shifted to Dharamshala and Mashobra hospitals from Tanda and IGMC respectively. At least this will save the hospitals from a random spread of infection.

The government must act fast to ensure that the spread of the virus is contained. There is scope for large quarantine centres, but that option does not exist since those suspected to have been infected have already reached their homes. The state apparatus, however, can reach out to each household once again and at least speed up the testing of those who have a travel history to the state in the recent phase of the lockdown. Else, the state would be moving towards a major disaster with very little logistics at its disposal and given the dearth of equipments, the situation would be very precarious.

The author is former Deputy Mayor of Shimla. The views are personal.