These are challenging times. Deaths, distress and destruction are all that we are encountering daily in the media, in our vicinity and our daily lives. Each one of us has lost someone precious and we are struggling to make sense of the world around us. Just in the last few weeks, we have been through so much that it seems like an eternity – death, sickness, fear, economic setback, social isolation and in the midst of it all partisan bickering about how to handle it all.

Numbers no longer make sense and there is a certain numbness that envelops all of us. The fragility of life stares at us, making us humbler perhaps about our ambitions and abilities to shape the world around us.

Uday Deb

This is indeed a once in a lifetime crisis and there’s no standard template to emulate. Nations, across the world, have struggled to come to terms with this pandemic and some of these nations are much wealthier, with stronger health infrastructure.

There are questions galore without any answers. There’s justifiable anger at those in positions of authority who seem to have given up their primary role of helping and providing succour. Indians feel abandoned by a state that is not only venal and corrupt but also inefficient. Instead of acknowledgment of mistakes, we still hear a cacophony of arguments.

Those who never liked the Modi dispensation have found in this crisis an opportunity to finally decimate the aura of Narendra Modi, while the supporters refuse to yield any ground. Those who were once against lockdowns are clamouring for it now. Those who once derided the vaccines today want universal vaccination, fast and furious.

And in the midst of it all is the Indian state that has once again underscored its power of being a weak state with aplomb. For the last seven decades we failed to learn from one crisis after another. Slogans were given but policy eluded us. Today, it is social media which seems to be driving policy conversations in an atmosphere of distrust and rancour. We are talking past each other even in the midst of a crisis that is testing our national resolve.

Indian state’s capacity deficit has been reflected in every single domain in the last few weeks: Lack of coordination between state and central governments, lack of responsiveness to the immediate demands of its citizenry, lack of an institutional infrastructure to carve out a long-term response to an impending crisis as well as to manage an unfolding crisis, and lack of effective communication to a nation searching for answers amidst all around turbulence.

The sad sight of India’s top leadership claiming that all’s well when things around them were vividly crumbling is a reminder of how deep the rot has set in. When you claim the mantle of leadership and bask in the glow of your exceptionalism, you have to eventually answer for the abdication of your responsibilities.

Nonetheless, it’s easy to blame the party in office; the entire political class remains complicit. Today when questions are raised about elections and political rallies, it is easy to forget how no political party opposed the holding of elections in the midst of a pandemic. After all, if elections could be held in Bihar during the first wave, why deprive other states of their democratic rights. And if the Election Commission had indeed deferred the elections, Modi’s authoritarianism would have been an easy target.

Partisanship is such that even today it is our political affiliation that determines our take on Kumbh and Eid festivities. Effective public policy in democracies requires getting both the policy and the politics right. For effective policy, we can rely on our experts. But the real question today is, how do we get our politics right?

The PM will have to make the first move by getting rid of incompetence around him and by reaching out to the widest pool of expertise available, not only to tide over the present crisis but also to frame an effective long-term national response. It’s only he who can empathise with people’s sufferings by fixing accountability in a manner that lays the foundation for something permanent in the governance structure of the country.

The opposition, too, will have to do its bit. No state government can say that they have done a good job of handling this crisis. There’s no Kerala model, Gujarat model or Maharashtra model. All models have been abject failures. Finding in this crisis an opportunity to make Modi politically vulnerable can wait for a few months. The nation first needs to come out of this crisis. Learning best practices from each other and sharing experiences can go a long way in crafting adequate policy responses.

And as citizens we should, and we will, certainly hold the powerful to account. But let’s also remember that this crisis, much like several other such crises in the past, won’t alter the trajectory of India’s rise. If UPA-2’s years-long policy paralysis couldn’t hold India back, and if the entire might of China couldn’t succeed in confining India to the subcontinent, this crisis – with all its devastation and misery – will not pare down India’s aspirations.

For India’s rise is a story being written by its ordinary citizenry, not by the ‘nattering nabobs of negativity’ who continue to see in every stumble of India the demise of the very idea of India. This moment too shall pass. But we will have to ensure that those who govern us never ever forget their complicity in making this crisis the catastrophe it eventually turned out to be.

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Views expressed above are the author's own.

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