Central Hall – Don Quixote’s Cavalry!

@prashanthamine

Mumbai: Little must  have famous Spanish author Miguel De Cervantes must have realised that the fictional character of Don Quixote that he created in 1605 who imagined strange things making people laugh at his wild imaginations, would still be revered and followed to this day!

Don Quixote, the fictional knight who imagined in strange things, charged at Windmills imagining them to be Dragons and trying to slay them. Asking his beloved trusted Squire (trusted aide) Sancho Panza to upturn a bowl of curd on his head and then begins imagining that his brain is melting!

Well we are not attributing this analogy to someone here.

But what has been happening for the past few weeks over the mysterious death of Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput, demolitions, drugs, illegal constructions and the mass hysteria being sought to be created over it, is nothing but imaginations of Don Quixote running wild.

We are not demeaning the unfortunate incident, but the manner in which it is being played out raises quite a few questions and eyebrows too. It is not that these are the only things that matter, yes they do, but at the same time one must not lose sight of the real issues that plague us. What is happening now is that we are throwing muck at each other, blissfully ignoring the havoc the pandemic is creating.

While nations around the world are in the process of slowly opening up their economies and restarting economic activities, we are yet to gain control over the spread of the Coronavirus. It does not augur well for the government that the situation as far as the continued rise of Covid-19 positive cases is concerned.

The failure of the administration in containing the spread of the deadly virus in the financial capital of the country, Mumbai and other major centers of economic activity is going to hurt the country only, in the near future.

Whether we were late in anticipating the Coronavirus and late in responding to it with crisis management plan of action is a debatable point. But what we have done since then has been nothing short of what Don Quixote tried to imagine and do things accordingly.

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After having locked the economy and imposed travel restrictions, only to ease them a bit after hue and cry, has led to further spread of the deadly virus to the hinterlands where people have simply not understood and worst still are in a state of panic.

In the initial stages the government miserably failed in assessing the scale of the problem and the measures to be adopted to deal with it. Neither did it take any steps to educate the people about what was meant by lockdown, hygienic measures to take and how to conduct their daily activities.

The present generation has been totally oblivious to what it means by following lockdown norms, following curfew like restrictions, maintaining social distancing, wearing face masks and following hygiene and sanitation. There are quite a few people who still believe that the virus can cause no harm unto them and that it is a thing of the past, and continue to roam freely.

The Covid-19 pandemic has thoroughly exposed how the woefully inadequate and corrupt our health care system, especially in the rural areas. Many countries around the world either made the costs of the tests and treatment absolutely free or brought down their costs where even the poor could afford it.

Forget about the woefully inadequate medical facilities, treatment costs and spiraling medical bills, the government is oblivious to the fact that people are being fleeced as they are paying exorbitant prices for even basic essential commodities.  

Neither has anyone bothered to question as to why our healthcare system is in such a bad shape. Why despite pumping in more money into irrigation projects, often throats and fields are parch dry, civic infrastructure is in a bad shape. Where has all the tax money gone or going down the drain?

A simple case of conducting exams of any nature has exposed how woefully inadequate our much talked about digital economy or online learning process has been. Surveys and reports show that digital connectivity is yet to reach the last village.

Instead what has been our response is to politicize every other issue. Instead of the government, administration and all the stakeholders doing hand-holding to tackle the pandemic, what we have is blame game and raking up totally unrelated issues so that failures are glossed over.

Such a prolonged unruliness is neither good internally, domestically but also externally as well. To let things drift as they are now is going to only invite more trouble in the long run, not just for the political executive, the administration and the people at large.

Until we do not reign in the Don Quixote and his cavalry, Don Quixote like wild, wishful thinkers who conjure up imaginary things just to divert attention, we might face another 1857 like situation or a situation of utter chaos.

Until and unless we do not fix our healthcare system, our education, infrastructure, disaster management plan, research and development, there is no escaping the economic meltdown and its collateral damages. We have been hanging there by the thread, simply because of the informal street economy which too is struggling to remain afloat. But we need to fix our Don Quixote’s first. Or else Sancho Panza’s will have the last laugh at us.