The media, which sometimes
is paid, many times is remote-controlled creates perceptions that strongly
weigh in the minds of common man. The
unanswered Q is – the direct relevance of Educational qualifications with Good
Governance !
Tamilnadu had a golden
rule under Mr K Kamaraj who was not a graduate.
Mr Edappadi Palaniswamy too is managing well, again not a graduate –
significantly both are not from tinseldom too ! .. .. Media have oft repeated
Mr Arvind Kejriwal to be the most intelligent followed by Pinarayi
Vijayan. Kejriwal graduated from IIT in
Mechanical Engineering; Pinarayi holds
BA Economic degree -; while Media’s bete-noire Mr Ajay Mohan Bisht aka Yogi
Adityanath holds a Bachelor degree in Mathematics.
For months, Kerala chief
minister Pinarayi Vijayan was getting unprecedented television prime time each
evening, appearing on Malayalam channels and giving out the statistics of the
day’s coronavirus statistics. With just over two dozen COVID-19-related deaths
in the state, Vijayan and his health minister K.K. Shailaja have won applause
across India and even internationally.
Kerala has not quite
excelled in behaviour as the most literate State – first when there was
lockdown there were reports of suicides arising out of liquor unavailability and
now the action of some affected people against medical professionals !!
A medical
team that went to the coastal village of Poonthura off Thiruvananthapuram for
Covid-19 swab collection Friday were surrounded by angry locals who threatened
them with expletives and even coughed at them. Poonthura and its adjoining
areas have been described by government officials as exhibiting a ‘super
spread’ of the coronavirus infections with over 200 persons testing positive in
the last week alone. On Friday morning, dozens of men and women came onto the
streets in the village agitating against the tight lockdown restrictions and
claiming that the health department’s data on infections among them was hyped.
They protested without masks and by abandoning social distancing regulations.
India’s Covid-19 cases and
deaths per million population is still among the lowest in the world, despite
being a country with 1.3 billion people, the Ministry of Health and Family
Welfare said on Thursday. Amid a sudden
surge in coronavirus patients across states over the last few weeks, the
country’s viral caseload is an estimated 2,69,000 people. “When we talk of the
caseload of Covid-19 in India, it is 2,69,000 people. This tells us that at the
end of the day we’ve managed a situation where our health care infrastructure
is not unduly burdened and is not creaking due to the pressure,” Bhushan said.
While Maharashtra, Tamil
Nadu and Delhi are running at the top with more than lakh of cases, Kerala
reported 272 new Covid-19 cases on Tuesday, the highest single-day spike in the
state till date, taking the total count of coronavirus infections to 5,894. Of the new cases, 157 came from abroad while
38 were from other states, chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan told reporters,
according to news agency PTI. Giving the
district-wise breakup of cases, the CM said Malappuram continued to record the
highest number of cases with 63 people getting infected today.
The record single-day
spike in the southern state came a day after the state government imposed a
week-long triple lockdown in capital Thiruvananthapuram and in parts of
Malappuram district. The lockdown has been imposed at the street, mohalla
(locality) and town levels with people restricted from leaving their houses and
strict surveillance in place. A coastal
village in Kerala's Thiruvananthapuram has been cordoned off and around 25
commandos have been positioned in that area as testing has shown a spread and
spike of COVID-19 cases locally. This, health experts say, is possibly a first
evolving cluster in the state, with more than one "super-spreaders"
identified.
"A super-spreader is
anyone who infects more than six people. In Punthoora, it is the first evolving cluster in Kerala ,
where multiple super spreaders have been identified", Dr Mohammad Asheel
told NDTV, health expert and core member of team dealing with COVID 19 in the
state told NDTV.
From all the
limelight, there appears some slip – a series of missteps over the past few weeks,
and an embarrassing case of officials in the chief minister’s office being
linked to a shocking gold smuggling case have suddenly put the chief minister
on shaky ground. One of the first controversies was the government’s decision
to enter into a contract with US-based Sprinklr for analysis of data related to
COVID-19 patients. The Opposition raised serious concerns of data likely being
misused by the company, as well as the manner in which state IT secretary M.
Shivshankar handed the contract to Sprinklr on his own volition. The CM,
however, shielded the officer.
Walking out
of the Sprinklr controversy, the government walked right into another one, by
initiating a mobile app to sell liquor from its monopoly outlets managed by the
Kerala State Beverages Corporation. The app, named BevQ, was meant to control
anticipated crowding at liquor outlets. The government once more lost face as
the app took much longer to develop than expected, and when it was officially
launched it was found that there were no major crowds to buy liquor, with the
common man’s earnings severely affected by job losses as a result of COVID-19.
The Sprinklr
and BevQ missteps have now been dwarfed by the gold smuggling case using
diplomatic channels, which has drawn the chief minister’s office into the
controversy. The gold smuggling case involves a former employee of the UAE
Consulate in Kerala, Swapna Prabha Suresh, and her accomplices smuggling a
large quantity of gold into the state, misusing diplomatic channels. This came to light when a baggage of 30 kg of
gold, concealed in plumbing equipment in a diplomatic baggage was caught. Meanwhile,
the state’s early achievements on the Covid front are also slipping, with a
spurt in cases in recent days. On Tuesday, there were 272 fresh cases,
including as many as 68 who got it through community spreading.
People get
guided by the news channels and presenters who depict their version of the
story !
With regards
– S. Sampathkumar
10.7.2020
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