Dr Manisha Bangar
Why don’t you instead make everyone believe that “lighting a candle” will take away the hunger of the hungry trapped in the Corona crisis, Mr Modi ??
The total number of deaths in India due to Corona has touched 56 and 2301 patients are Covid positive.
By this time you all know that I did not burn any candle on 5th April Sunday at evening 9:00 p.m, and refused to be a part of PM’s voodoo events. But this time what bothers me more than the fact that many again gave a full toss to physical distancing, that the candle burning (you never know what that enthusiastic moron bhakts will be burning other than lamps to create that extra energy) will play havoc with the environment and divert all (taking a stand on either side of the senseless event) from more immediate concerns in the path of Corona Control, is the fact that the PM, in his second address, rather than appraise citizens of what milestones we have achieved so far, has chosen to maintain a deafening silence on matters of paramount importance.
I had thought that our PM will tell us about the progress that the country has made in controlling the Corona problem.
~ That he will tell us (in exact figures) how many more ventilators have been arranged in the Centre and State Government run hospitals. As per a Brookings report, the country might need anywhere between 110,000 – 220,000 ventilators by May 15 in the worst-case scenario. The number of ventilators available today in the country is a maximum of 57,000. Most of those available ventilators cannot be put to use. How does the PM propose to solve the problem that almost 3-5 % of those who test Corona positive will need a ventilator.
~ How many more isolation words have been created in each state? Has the Covid testing capacity for the entire country been increased from it’s 12,000 tests per day?
~ Whether the requirement of the masks and the PPE has been met?
~ How many special gloves are being made available to the doctors?
~ How many doctors who are in the frontline risking their lives in treating Corona patients, are being given the insurance?
~ How many sanitation workers who are risking their lives to keep our country clean and dipping in muck each day, are being given the current insurance benefit?
~ How much more progress has been made: whether the daily wage labourers and those families whose earnings are less than 100- 200 rupees per day will be sleeping hungry?
~ How do we plan to feed them if they do not earn for another month?
~ How are they being taken care of? How much of #PM_care_fund has already gone to the migrants’ welfare, safe transit back home and health checks?
~ Why was it created when there is already a PM relief fund. Why are the daily wage labourers and the migrant workers hungry today? Why are they scared of what’s going to happen tomorrow??
There was not a single word from the PM to provide succour or solace to those millions and millions of people.
The only best thing that he could do, and wanted us to do, was to light a candle. This will not only play havoc on the environment but will definitely and most importantly divert the people, keep them occupied and take the attention away from the incompetencies of the government. The PM is not only creating a glamour event but is also disturbing the CMs of states who are waging a war day and night, trying to navigate the challenges. Rather than facilitating and providing solutions, Mr Modi is more bothered about hosting a nationalwide candle night party and keep people engaged in this frivolity.
Instead of doing this he could have very well told his Ramayan Mahabharat watching dimwitted slaves to churn out an astro-cosmological-philosophical propaganda to make people believe that ” burning a candle” takes away the hunger of the hungry and the suffering of the sick. So go on and keep burning candles daily during the Corona lockdown.
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Dr Manisha Bangar is a leading organizer of Mulniwasi Bahujans of India (the Indigenous majority population). Currently serving as National Vice President of BAMCEF (Backward and Minority Communities Employees Federation), she is former National Vice President of Mulniwasi Sangh and National President of Mulniwasi Mahila Sangh the mass based offshoot wings of BAMCEF.
A good orator, freelance writer and poetess she has continued to speak for more than a decade at Universities, Civil/Human Rights and Phule Ambedkarite Organizations, both Nationally and Internationally (USA, UK, Europe and Middle East) including the United Nations on issues of Caste, Gender Equality, Health and Education rights, Comparative Religious thought and Phuley Periyaar Ambedkar Ideology.
She is also a super specialised, practising Hepatologist in Hyderabad, Telangana, India.
