BY DN SINGH
As it plays out itself there is little doubt that the new Covid strain is back with a vengeance.
But at the same time, the duplicity in the action of the political parties and political executives is more alarming than they want the cake and have it too! Knowing well through several reminders by experts that the new strain has sprung from the UK and other countries can be more lethal, but it was given secondary importance and lives were allowed to break out of all restrictions. Intoxicating vote politics drove the people in politics to forget what happened last year in this month.
And the most naked display of the abuse of the guidelines were more pronounced by the acts of political leaders, cutting across party lines, when they took the plunge into the campaigns in the poll-bound five states. It became a free for all situation everywhere.
Myopia Hunt `Netas`
Thousands and lakhs of public were made to gather at each election rally and what was seen there? The Kurta-pyjama-clad leaders on the stages all geared with masks and sitting at required distances and delivering the speeches.
And what was beyond their nose! A teaming multitude of people bristling in the heat, a majority of them without masks, jostling with each other giving a hoot to physical distancing and playing the cheerleaders to the rhetoric spewed by the `netas`.
Are our politicians so blindfolded to the bottom realities that, their so-called supporters are under the occupation of a monster called a Virus that is 70% more virulent than the earlier one!
Votes Holier Than Lives
For netas votes are more precious than the lives of people on the ground and that is simple and clear.
Can`t the leaders make an appeal before organising a rally that, all must come with gears like mask and not to jostle with each other? Rather they start the monologues with a chant of Jai....and so on.
How on earth the government allowed the cricket extravaganzas to go on once the footfall of the second strains!
Even the vigils on the clustering of people in markets, shopping malls, ceremonies and clubs/pubs were left pathetically ignored.
Even all the national media houses for quite some time remained preoccupied with airing the trading of charges or harangue between Mamata Banerjee and the BJP leaders from morning to night but, had little care to use the wisdom in hindsight to alert people about the second strains.
Now that the damage is done and India has crossed 50000 positive cases, an ever-reactive government has got up from its catatonic stupor!
Your support to NYOOOZ will help us to continue create and publish news for and from smaller cities, which also need equal voice as much as citizens living in bigger cities have through mainstream media organizations.