India under lockdown: Modi turns Lakshman to halt Corona surge. Can we be the Sita who toes the line?

The Greeks took a kingdom under siege by planting a Trojan horse. Beginning Wednesday midnight, Indians went for a self-imposed siege to flush out a Trojan virus.

Less than four hours of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s televised address on Tuesday, an unprecedented lockdown was imposed on a country with a Billion-plus population making us sever ties with the next-door neighbour as with the rest of the world. We’re no longer a part of the global village. We are an island shuttered down for the next 21 days attempting to tackle Corona virus by pulling a knockout punch.  

Appreciating safety and food

Seated at my desk, working from home, I am listening to PM Modi’s words as the quiet beginning of 9-day festivity Navratra sinks in. As children, our elders would discourage us from venturing out after sunset by telling us of the ghouls lurking in the dark and reminding us of safety within a warm house with food on the table. At the end of PM Narendra Modi’s address to the nation Tuesday night, his second in a week, that childlike feeling gnawed back into the heart from a life now long past.

For one of the most populous nations, fighting the Corona scare is a nightmare for the governments both at the Centre and in the states, which make the democracy federal. India has an abysmally low doctor-population ratio and the availability of the hospital beds doesn’t elicit much hope either. In the event the virus, which has left countries with better physician counts and more hospital beds incapacitated, triggers a Stage 3 spread, it would render the country with its teeming millions into one apocalyptic playground.

One in thousand won’t get a hospital bed

Comparisons are billed an odious exercise, but in the extraordinary times we are living in, it is good to be swatted down the hard plane of truth, for once. For a thousand people, India has half a hospital bed. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), even Indonesia, a cluster of islands, has a hospital ratio of one per thousand. Italy, which has unfortunately crippled by the spread of the virus and is recording more deaths every day than China had at the peak of the viral outbreak, has more than 3 beds for a population of thousand. Japan has an incredible 13 beds per thousand, and China where it all began has more than 4 per thousand.   

America with 2.8 beds per thousand is panicking over the surge in patients infected with Corona Virus. Experts in the US fear it will “push the country’s healthcare system to its limits”. The Business Insider estimates “nearly 2 million could require care in an ICU”.  
Read here: Here’s why experts are worried we won’t have enough hospital beds to handle a surge of coronavirus patients.

Don’t ostracise that doctor

The number of doctors is as skewed in India and any outbreak in the country would place them and the health workers under unimaginable stress. The World Health Organisation (WHO) places the availability of a doctor at little under 8 for a population of 10,000 in India. This is when every parent’s dream career for their child in the country is a pick between a doctor and an engineer. Pakistan, India’s archrival and always the enemy at the gates, has a doctor count of 10 per 10,000 people.  

Italy has 41 doctors and China almost 18 per thousand. United States has 26 doctors for the same size and they are scared.

The residents who are foolish enough to haggle with the doctors and health workers returning from their shifts at hospitals and refusing to let them enter the colony gates, should find themselves some other pastime. The day the doctors decide to get back, all they have to do is to do nothing. Realising we are also battling stupidity alongside a virus, PM Modi chose to dedicate his prayers at the start of the new year as per “traditional calendar” to the doctors, health workers and police who are at the at the frontline of fighting this pandemic.

The Covid count

As of today, India has recorded 583 Covid19 cases and 11 deaths from it. The United States has 43,600 patients and has reported 549 deaths. Italy has 63,927 and more than 6,000 deaths. China has a cumulative count of 81,691 infected and has so far attributed 3,276 deaths to the pandemic.
Read more: COVID-19 Coronavirus Cases & Deaths by Country

Modi as Lakshman. Now it’s up to Sita  

These numbers are people and that’s why PM Modi insisting on “ghar pe rahiye, ghar pe rahiye, ghar pe hi rahiye (Stay home, stay home, stay at home)” is more than just a warning. It’s a plea by the head of the state, who in his desperation to keep the citizens indoors pulled out the mythological reference of Lakshman Rekha (a protective line that shields Lord Rama’s wife Sita while in exile, which she doesn’t heed to setting a series of unfortunate events in motion) from the Hindu epic Ramayana and implored people to stay behind it.

We are at war. Troy was won by the Greeks with a Trojan after 10 years of failed siege. We know the Trojan is here. And, we have 21 days to beat it.