India - need unified effort

India - our country is in tatters . The dreaded virus has been rampaging through our country and has been creating miseries to 1.4 billion population. It may not be a hyperbole to state that no single family is not adversely impacted from the dreaded virus. Procession of dead bodies , live streams of people gasping for breath , sordid scenes of burning pyre are few of the devastating scenes witnessed by our motherland. This has created anguish and pain to every one of us and we are venting our angers towards political leaders. There is no denying of the fact that our political leaders ( irrespective of party affiliations ) have failed miserably in discharging their duties . But we , as a citizen , are also equally to blame due to our brazen disrespect to advises of health experts. This not the time for blame game . Rather than this is the time for united efforts to overcome this crisis and plan for future so that none of us has to see these sordid saga again in the near future. In this article , I shall delineate certain measures that can help us to ameliorate some of the sufferings and prepare us for the future .

We must wear mask in the house :As a recent article in The Lancet has strongly vouched that the Sars Cov 2 virus are airborne , we should not only wear mask outside but also inside the house . This would save us from getting infected from the asymptomatic person . Let us take pledge that we shall develop this practice for next 18 months at a stretch . Please remember , human willpower is the most powerful element on earth .

We must get vaccinated : Let us get vaccinated as fast as possible . I have come across few people who are skeptical about vaccine efficacy . It has been proven that vaccination would reduce severity as well as infection . Israel has proven that the only way out of this pandemic is the vaccination .

We must maintain social distancing : Let us not lower our guard . We must maintain social distancing . However , we should also carry out outdoor activities which are vital for economy. Let us take pledge that the virus would not win over us. We must understand that India has vast informal sector whose livelihood depends on outdoor activities of people. Wearing double mask , keeping social distancing and adhering to hygiene behaviour should be followed . We should not develop attitude " to stay home for preventing death from road accident " . Rather we should develop risk oriented approaches : " wearing seat belts even when we are sitting in the rear seat of a car " .

All the above three measures , we can do at an individual level .

However , the State can not abdicate its onus towards its citizens. State must come forward without showing ambivalence. There is no denying of the fact that India , as a country , is very poor in appreciating risks . This can be corroborated from the fact that hardly 10% of the population wear seat belts while sitting in the rear seat even though no body has told them not to do so . We simply do not think it is necessary as we are not capable of comprehending risks ( remember the unfortunate death of our leader Gopinath Munde https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/wearing-seat-belt-could-have-saved-gopinath-munde-harsh-vardhan/articleshow/36052452.cms) . Both central and state government should develop basic principles of development of risk focused approaches. Our government must make it mandatory to develop " scenario analysis " in future for all major decisions . For example, our government must develop scenario when both Covishield and Covaxin may not as effective as required due to mutation of virus. As it is emerging that m-RNA vaccine techniques have cracked this problem at fundamental level (https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/03/27/covid-19-vaccines-have-alerted-the-world-to-the-power-of-rna-therapies) , what is our plan of development of m -RNA vaccines within short period of time. Thailand , our nearby nation , has already been ramping up m- RNA vaccines to distribute other Asian countries ( https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/mrna-vaccines-can-adapt-to-variants-faster-than-others-101619202236657.html). States must create sufficient scenarios with appropriate probability and put a rule based execution system in place so that bureaucratic bungles do not push people into the misery.

Before I wrap this rather long article , I would bring to the notice of a potent extremely debilitating impact on Indian competitive advantages unless State draws up an immediate strategy to win over the extremely anxious Global players about the state of health infrastructure of our country . I hope that decisions of HCL Tech for workload rebalancing is an exception rather than an emerging trend ( economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/stocks/news/hcl-tech-moving-some-workload-to-other-geographies-to-tackle-covid-challenges/articleshow/82243097.cms).

Let us channelise all of our energies to fight against the virus rather than throwing brickbats within ourselves.