The most powerful word of the last decade has been development. Since the introduction of liberal economy in India in the year 1991, it has become the ‘tag line’ of Indian people’s aspirations and democratic politics. The direction of progress and change in Indian society is more or less determined by the desire for ‘development’ rising in the minds of the people. This whole concept of development was thought through on the basis of convenience, speed and dazzle. Elements like highways, flyovers, malls, electricity, flashes of LED lights emerged as symbols of the country’s development. The relentless pace of plastic currency, cryptocurrencies, and other forms of human mobility were just beginning to create a globalized world, global humans and markets, that COVID-19 turned this whole concept of development upside down.
When I asked a middle-aged farmer from a village in Uttar Pradesh about the same longing for development, which had begun to resonate in the Indian rural areas as well, he said in a very dismayed voice, ‘What development? Brother? Save lives first. We’ll hear this reaction of that middle-aged village in the form of a popular public reaction to that whole arrangement, thinking and understanding of ‘development’ nowadays in villages and towns.
Urban, urban, cosmopolitan people-garden, who were considering themselves to be developed, the difficult and sad experience of Corona has so far compelled the ongoing direction of development to be considered void. Shortage of hospitals, lack of oxygen, covid beds, drugs to treat corona, injections have taught us all that the present concept of ‘development’ needs a radical change. Measures, efficient public health services, vaccines, drugs to stop the dreaded virus should be the basic concern of development in this 21st century world and especially in India. More and more health facilities, doctors, health workers should be considered as the most important component of this time. All these will be able to create the human face of development in today’s context. The true meaning of development in today’s context would be to reach the last man of the society, public health facilities and means of livelihood.
The catastrophe of this virus has brought ‘protection of the human biological body’ to the core of the dynamics and ethics of development and administration, more than convenience and speed. It has explained to us that policies will have to be made for a few days now only by focusing on more prudent sustainability than speed, more local than global and development and expansion of local resource capabilities.
On the basis of this we have to plan our administration. In the coming days, more and more public servants equipped with medical knowledge will have to be prepared. This ongoing humanitarian fight against the virus is being fought on the principles of surveillance, control and health protection. In this, we are following the principle of protecting ourselves against the virus.
This principle of health protection has forced us to re-think on the Indian statute of this catastrophe. We have to allocate a significant part of our national and state budgets in future for raising basic facilities of health services, medical education, public health. In future, like the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Health will become an important department in the Indian Democratic Governance. Protection of lives, safe limited travel, virtual dialogue, dialogue between the state and the people will now decide the nature of power, governance and development. Both the state and the society together will be able to overcome this catastrophe in such an emergency. This crisis of Corona has also made us understand that the leadership section of all our sides has to be more aware and able to face health crises. In the context of health crises, we have to create a competent state authority to respond quickly. At the same time, along with the state, 'society', service-oriented institutions, public servants, almost all aspects of the state and society will have to become aware, sensitive and service-oriented. If the Indian bureaucracy is capable and sensitive, it will help us to face such an emergency, because these days the biggest challenge is to fulfill the mission of providing awareness, infrastructure and health related facilities at the grassroots level. For this, along with forming teams at the top level, the government, the government and the people will have to form many 'people's teams' together.
Corona has not only influenced the prevailing concept of development but has also created conditions for significant changes in Indian polity and administration. It has also created sabotage and transformative changes in the nature of democratic politics in India. We will see how in the upcoming elections, instead of traditional development, public health and life-saving discussions will come to the centre. Manifestos, resolutions, speeches, promises, attacks on each other by political parties will focus on the way of fighting the fight against coronavirus and the question of healthcare. Instead of other questions of social development, personal experiences, sad memories from Corona will emerge as an enabling factor in deciding the mobilization in Indian democratic politics. In the political discourse that follows, not ensuring the right to a ‘healthy and disease-free life’ in the development so far will be presented as a major administrative and planning mistake. Once again we will go through a political experience in a new sense as ‘personal is political’. If this situation continues, then the society and the state will have to live as a society with deep concern for ‘mere biological body protection’ for a long time. However, it is a matter of satisfaction that the Indian state and society is preparing itself to face the future health crises with utmost vigour, due to the fear of the arrival of the third wave of Corona.
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