India’s Response To Covid-19: ‘Gold Standard Governance & One Nation’

Sarvesh Kaushal

         Before a mid-term evaluation of India’s response in the face of COVID-19 pandemic, it is essential to narrow down the focus to the most reliable section of the statistics, i.e; the number of confirmed deaths per every million of a country’s population. As on 8th May, 2020, India has suffered 1.37 deaths per 1 million of its population as compared to UK 450.9, Italy 495.4, USA 228.61, Sweden 301, and, nearer home, China having faced 3.2 confirmed deaths per million of its total population. The data, and the resultant interpretations, are so incontrovertible that it requires very little scope for scepticism in giving a thumbs up to India.

As per well the well-established data, there is only an insignificant time lag of one week between UK and India when they recorded their first COVID-19 death on 7th March and 13th March respectively. USA reported its first COVID-19 death on the 1st March 2020. With the time lag of just 1–12 days between USA, UK and India, they can very well be compared as contemporaries in terms of timelines of COVID-19 management. In that light, the comparison of number of confirmed deaths per 1 million of their total population becomes relevant. There was either something seriously wrong in how the pandemic was handled in the USA and UK; or there was something outstanding in the way it has been handled in India so far.

            The USA and the UK are far more privileged than India in terms of availability of health infrastructure and medical personnel, financial resources and the general affluence of their society. While India has a large population of about 135 crores, the USA and UK can micro-manage their smaller populations, which are just a fraction of the size and dimension of the challenge that India faces. Still, there has been a commendable uniqueness in the Indian approach to the pandemic resulting in just a miniscule number of confirmed deaths as compared to USA and UK. Obviously, there are reasons for that, which are not far to seek in a fair and unbiased analysis.

            A bold, proactive, timely and effective lockdown ordered by Indian Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi is acknowledged as a landmark of ‘Gold Standard Governance’ all the world over. The effectiveness of the lockdown has been appreciated by the World Health Organisation [WHO] as “tough and timely”. According to Lancet, a reputed medical journal, the “lockdown is already having the desired effect of flattening the epidemic curve”.

It is a puzzle for the analysts as to how it could be achieved in a democracy where the governments generally dither and procrastinate under the fear of an electoral backlash. It is now an irrefutable fact that the Indian government acted purely in public interest, at whatever cost to the political interests of the ruling regime at the centre. This was squarely lacking in the response of USA and UK to the COVID-19 pandemic, where the banning overseas and domestic mobility, lockdown and its enforcement, pandemic preventive strategy, and such crucial decisions got either delayed or diluted due to indecisiveness.

The Indian Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, often faces criticism for having acquired a larger than life stature in the Indian democracy. His critics, for their own political reasons, may have been unhappy about his tall stature and popular mass appeal, but it certainly proved to be a boon in carrying the people of India along through the hardships that afflict all the layers of society during a deadly global pandemic. A testimony to the fact as to how India rallied behind the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi was the rarest of the rare sight of a country of 135 crore people lighting candles, sounding bells and every piece of metal around, and showering flower petals on health and sanitation workers on his call to the nation. The COVID-19 awareness became viral much ahead of the Coronavirus in India.

The core challenge of essential supplies management during the present lockdown was focussed not only upon the permanent residents in distress, but also on approximately 5 crore persons who had migrated inter-state for employment. With the precautionary mobility restrictions preventing them from falling back to the joint family resources back home; and the employers, on account of their own economic compulsions, retrenching daily-wage employees or ordering major cuts in the salaries of regular employees; the welfare of the migrants squarely emerged as the responsibility of the Government.

Had the migrant labour been allowed to immediately fan out to their homes all over India, mainly in the rural areas with lesser healthcare infrastructure and manpower, it would have amounted to inviting a disaster for them and their near and dear ones back home. Despite the critics having kept on blaming the government for the lockdown hardships to the migrant labour, the Prime Minister’s answer to them, unwavering as usual, was ‘Jaan Hai To Jahan Hai’, i.e; saving human life is the first and foremost priority, the hardships come and go, and all that we need to do is to endeavour to go all out to minimise the hardships by extending our helping hand to our brothers and sisters in crisis.

Facing a Herculean challenge, the Modi government promptly announced a pandemic related relief package of Rs. 1.7 Lac crores to be released during the three months of April to June. Rs. 9930 crores were promptly credited to the bank accounts of 19.86 crore women as the first instalment of Rs 500 each. As many as 2.8 crores senior citizens were paid Rs. 1450 crores as the first of the two Rs. 500 instalments. Another Rs.14946 crores were transferred to the bank accounts of 7.47 crore farmers as the first of the two instalments of Rs. 1000 crores each.

Further, the New India Assurance Company, an entity of the State, provided blanket life insurance of Rs. 50 lacs to more than 20 lac frontline healthcare staff. The Government also provided nearly 1 crore free cooking gas cylinders under PM Ujwala Yojna, which will be refilled free of cost in the next three months. Under PM Garib Kalyan Ann Yojna, 40 million tonnes of foodgrains are being distributed to the poor, with every targeted household getting 5Kg wheat or rice and 1 Kg of pulse every month. The package extends to EPF of employees, loans to women’s self-help groups, increase of MNREGA wages from Rs. 182 to Rs.202 per day, and so on.

Effective leadership has a major motivational role for larger public, philanthropists, NGOs, corporates and social workers. It goes to the credit of India’s leadership that through his motivational strength, the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi successfully invoked a great nationalist spirit amongst the people, and awakened the real India, a country inhabited by the profoundly spiritual, highly cultured, ethically enabled and morally sound millions, who would go all out, never to let anyone die of starvation.

The Indian government, despite the meagre resources available to a developing country, utilised every moment of the lock down, procured protective gears and facial masks for health and sanitation Corona warriors, arranged ventilators to the extent possible, created quarantine facilities, commissioned mobile hospitals and added more than 2 lac hospital beds making a total of 18,99,228 beds in 69265 hospitals, out of which the 25778 public sector hospitals have 7,13,986 beds now. The number of ICU beds in India has been increased to 94961, with 47481 ventilators. Within a short span of two months, India has become world’s second largest PPE kit producer, making more than 2 lac kits a day, besides pioneering the production of reusable kits at the lowest price. In addition to its own needs, India also supplied essential medicines like hydroxychloroquine and other health equipment to more than 100 countries of the world to register its solidarity to fight the global pandemic together.

A section of international and social media, piloted by a few core capitalist economists, criticised the Indian lockdown as detrimental to India’s economy, and hence avoidable. The same is true of the core leftist ideologues, who highlighted the natural hardships faced by the poor during a lockout, without providing any alternative workable solutions. Nothing could be more irresponsible and untenable than handing out their anti-lockdown prescriptions for India, ignoring the fact that USA and UK have together seen more than 1 lac deaths already with just a fraction of vast population of India, and at this rate, may end up around 1.5 lac COVID-19 deaths in a couple of months, against India’s restricting the COVID-19 deaths to less than a total of 2000 till today. India cannot opt for the USA, UK or the European way, and thus invite lacs and crores of deaths.

The anti-lockdown critics must not lose sight of the fact that the lockdown is being very carefully regulated, calibrated and moderated in a need based manner, purely in public interest; and that caution cannot be thrown to the winds, especially in view of the fact that, as stated by Dr. Randeep Guleria, the Director of All India Institute of Medical Sciences, India is yet to face the peak of the pandemic in the next two months. These attention-seeking critics are rendering unsolicited opinions and dishing out their unworkable prescriptions to the international and social media, without being accountable for any of their utterance proving wrong, and causing unprecedented havoc in India. It is good for India that it has a strong leadership, which does not go off track by losing its focus from the national goals.

The coming days are the days of real challenge. Well begun is half done. India has unitedly blunted the opening attack of COVID-19 pandemic. Now is the time to put the survival of humanity first, and everything else later. It’s the time to display the strength of our  unity, our indomitable character, our values, and our great inheritance. It’s time for Indian government to adhere to its ‘Gold Standard Governance’  through sagacious and dynamic need-based decision-making, aimed at minimising the setbacks faced by all sections of the society in its fight against the global pandemic.

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*Sarvesh Kaushal,

MA(History, Economics), LL.B; IAS (Retd),

Former Chief Secretary,

Government Of    Punjab (India)

The State must ensure ‘Ease of Living’ for all citizens at any cost. Citizen-centric governance is the ultimate end.

The State should be absolutely citizen-centric and go all out to make people’s lives comfortable through efficient delivery of services to them. Ease of living is what a State must ensure for every honest and hardworking citizen at any cost :
Sarvesh Kaushal
Former Chief Secretary, Punjab
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Full text of interview:
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* Q: You belong to a family of servicemen for three generations. Does that help?
A: My answer is both yes and no. Yes, because one is groomed all through the formative years about the work and conduct essentials. No,because one is exposed only to a particular section and not the different hues of the society on a level platform. In India, services mostly handle the supply side, and not the demand side of the sea saw. One must have a taste of the receiving end to calibrate one’s responses to correct perspective.
* Q: Why do people feel dissatisfied when it comes to dealing with the government offices?
A : Yes, particularly the youth. Hard working people are generally stressed out because they face cut-throat competition in their daily routine. Apathy of public authorities at the cutting edge levels is the last straw which pushes them against the wall.
* Q: Where does the remedy lie?
A: The civil servants need to pace up and cover real ground in providing citizen-centric administration. Ease of living for the citizen is the first and foremost thrust area which is not getting the desired amount of priority, attention and efforts. There are no authentic benchmark indices for ease of living rankings. Ease of living is the core remedy for making a vast population relatively more satisfied and happy. Their day to day lives need to be de-complicated.
* Q: What are salient thrust areas for improving ease of living?
A: The first and foremost, a fundamental change is required in the mindset. Bureaucrats must trust the citizens. They should step into their shoes and respect them for the desperate effort they make day in and day out to keep themselves afloat. Unfortunately, many bureaucrats are still steeped in the colonial legacy of rulership, and therefore invite backlash of contempt, disrespect and distrust by the people in a democracy. The governance narrative must change, there is no place for attitudinal kinks now.
* Q: What measures should we take for improving ease of living?
A: Cent percent digitisation of citizen related government records and their automatic online retrieval under well notified Standard Operating Procedures for domicile, caste, physical capacity, education and employment related certifications is the first and the foremost. Online submission of all applications and exchange of correspondence with government and it’s entities, and a very strong date bound Management Information System for concurrent forensic breakup and analysis of pendency in government upto the last man.
* Q:What else?
A: Of course Ease of doing Business, quality of health, education and transport infrastructure.  Skill development, employability and employment generation. Safety, security, rule of law.
* Q: You mentioned rule of law. What are the systemic corrections required in policing for ease of living?
A: Let me clarify that ease of living should be for honest law abiding citizen. The system, without suspecting everyone, should automatically make the life of a dishonest, manipulative, law breaking criminal’s life extremely difficult.   There should be certainty of punishment for such elements. Only then the vast majority of right minded citizens will have ease of living. Police investigators should be highly qualified professionals and third degree physical torture which is an obsolete tool which should be effectively discarded. Law should provide for a full audio- video footage of every second of police custody and custodial investigation, and it should be legally mandatory to supply a certified copy of that to the person in custody. There should be a Board to study the acquittal cases, and if they have symptoms of malicious prosecution, the criminal and departmental liability should be inescapable. This should apply to all institutions empowered to arrest and carry out custodial investigations. The fear of wrongful arrest and torture in custodial investigations is the biggest worry that a normal law abiding citizen suffers all through his life. Lots of police reforms are being enforced, a lot more needs to be done.
* Q: There is a feeling going around that bureaucrats shirk taking difficult decisions?
A. To answer this, we should understand the decision making process. It’s a universal fact that time changes everything and life is like a flowing river. When a bureaucrat takes a decision, it’s a snap-shot of circumstances based on which he takes decision at that point of time. But as I said circumstances keep changing, and when they change, some decisions may appear wrong later. Secondly, in a democratic form of government, there is always counter opinion on the table and a bureaucrat always keep that in mind – which renders decision making process reticent and slow. Thirdly, our system doesn’t allow any scope for genuine mistakes and realising that, fearful for not taking right decision without an iota of doubt, bureaucrats avoid taking any decide at all. Some develop a fear of the unknown over the years. Finally, there is very little incentive to be pro-active.
* Q: Isn’t this decision paralysis a serious governance issue?
A: Yes it is. But blaming civil servants alone for that is not fair. In a system where even an imaginary allegation through ‘source reports’,  anonymous and pseudonymous letters etc. can render a bureaucrat guilty till he proves his innocence, which may take a decade, what confidence do we generate in them? Even during a preliminary enquiry or disciplinary proceedings, the vigilance clearance is withheld for any foreign posting, foreign training, central deputation and almost everything. Even if bureaucrat is fully exonerated, he has already after lived long years of tainted life, and perhaps dubbed as ‘controversial’ all through his life despite having proved his innocence.
* Q: What is your take on the ‘media trial’ culture? How do you react to adverse campaigns?
A: Being a no nonsense person causes problems. The vested interests hit hard, and below the belt. Even I also suffered a couple of patently false and motivated allegations from dirty vested interests as part of conspiracies, which fell flat one by one after the authorities inquired and realised that they were unsubstantiated. It takes time to vindicate oneself. The remedy lies in the top civil servants, Tribunals and Courts not getting influenced or swayed by motivated media trials.
* Q: The new amendment in Prevention of Corruption Act would provide some protection for bonafide mistakes. Isn’t it?
A: Of course at the prosecution sanction stage. It all depends whether the competent authorities have the moral fibre and guts to be fair and just in denial of the prosecution sanction where it merits disapproval. If they are self-image conscious, they will tend to mechanically grant the sanction saying that ‘what has the officer to fear in trial if he is innocent’? We must never forget that it is equally important to restore the dignity of a falsely accused officer, as much as it is to bring a rightly accused officer to book.
* Q: Why are the inquiries allowed to linger on endlessly?
A: Fishing and roving inquiries and do not close sometimes even when there is no prima facie truth in allegations. Blocking a fishing and roving inquiry sometimes invites a risk of allegation of complicity. At the top of it, some institutions, I don’t need to name them, have been found indulging in sensationalism in pointing out highly exaggerated hypothetical losses and culpability, leading to medial trials. Everyone knows about them. This has vitiated bold and independent decision making in bureaucracy.
* Q: What should be done?
A: It is imperative that the political executive and senior bureaucrats provide the right type of leadership to their juniors, and encourage them to take well reasoned, well documented, bonafide and proactive decisions. Without tolerating and sheltering corruption at any cost, they should introduce confidence building measures for pro-active decision making without any fear of uncalled for retribution later.
* Q: You studied law and graduated while you were in service. How is that useful to you?
A: Anyone in government must study the laws as thoroughly as possible, because the entire governance has to take place as per law. Ignorance of law is no excuse, and acts of omission are as serious as the acts of commission. I feel merely studying law and obtaining a degree in law serves no purpose unless one becomes a perpetual student of laws, and keeps on regularly brushing up one’s knowledge of the emerging laws and their interpretation by the Supreme Court and High Courts. if one is able to develop the mental faculty of legal analysis and legalistic thinking, it’s a remarkable administrative quality. Secondly, I feel very confident and reassured that the doors of my second profession are wide open after my retirement from service.
* Q: Your message?
A: Truth and righteousness. Never say Yes to the vested interests, you must say No, whatever may the consequences be. Never say No to a citizen when a citizen is entitled to a Yes, howsoever difficult may it be.  Be citizen centric and go all out to make their lives comfortable through efficient delivery of services to them.  Tour extensively and remain in touch with the people to understand their issues. Always be fair, just and kind to all fellow human beings. State should be a truly welfare state, having a sacred obligation for the welfare of the last man on the street. Always wish and work hard for peace and prosperity of all citizens. In them one should see the reflection of God!

Sarvesh Kaushal makes a presentation before National Legal Services Authority

Sarvesh Kaushal making an in-depth presentation as Chief Secretary on behalf of State of Punjab before Lordships of the Supreme Court and of various High Courts in 2015.