If a chaiwala in Ahmedabad is implicated for spreading Covid, why not state BJP chief CR Patil?

A rally felicitating new state BJP chief CR Patil

By Rajiv Shah

This was scary: A very close friend, near and dear to me, phoned me and told me that he was in “frantic search” of a hospital bed for a relative in Ahmedabad, but to his utter surprise there is a “long queue” everywhere. The reason for the search, he said, was a relative from a neighbouring state had rung him up to inquire whether one could come over to Ahmedabad to get post-Covid treatment, as hospitals were “full” in the city where this relative lived.

“I inquired in all top Ahmedabad private hospitals taking in Covid patients, including Apollo, Zydus, CIMS, elsewhere. They took my contact number and told me that all beds were full, and there was a long waiting list, hence they couldn’t give a date”, this friend, who happens to move around in Ahmedabad’s established business circles, told me.
“This made me approach an influential journalist I know who could talk over with hospital managements”, my friend noted, adding, “The reply that I got wasn’t very different: That you can’t get a bed in a multi-specialty private hospital in the city. The reason he gave me was, the number of Covid cases in the city had spiked.”
Spiked? I was surprised. The daily cases being officially reported for the city were hovering around 150 on an average – ranging between 140 and 160 for the last one month. “Yes, this is what he told me”, my friend told me, adding, “According to his estimates, which he had made on the basis of his contacts, the daily cases would hovering around 1,500 on an average”!
Wondered my friend: “Are they under-reporting only to ensure that there is no scare? This is dangerous. The under-reporting has made people complacent. They feel things have improved, which does not seem to be the case… Maybe there is space in government hospitals, but people wanting special treatment don’t trust them.”
There appears to be much truth in what he said. Take the huge housing society – with about 650 flats – where I live. Of the 21 blocks, there are today Covid cases in eight of them, including the block in which I live. This wasn’t the case, say, a month ago, when one heard of a case or two in just one block.
As for complacency, less said the better: I was told about a music programme being held in a small theatre, especially designed for the purpose, in which 50 persons participated. I don’t know if the programme was held in violation of the government order not to hold them. Be that as it may, I have been told that following this programme, eight of them have got infected with Covid!
I have also been told that in Vatva industrial area, while the economic activity has picked up considerably, some of the industries are running in more than one shift. More recently, a large number of textile, especially garment, units have been set up in the area, and they are running with “full capacity.”
In one such unit, which someone I know visted, all the workers had masks with them, but “nearly 30% did not wear them at all… It was as ifhanging below the chin.” Things were not very different outside the unit: People were found to be moving around masks, indifferent towards the need to control the pandemic. It seemed as if there was no pandemic.
As I was talking about this with a very close relative, who has nothing to with politics, I was told pointblank: “What to talk of ordinary people? State BJP president CR Patil took out rallies without any social distancing or properly worn masks. Patil has got Covid, and is currently recuperating in a top private hospital, and so has many others… They implicate a chaiwala for spreading Covid, but nothing happens to Patil. Why?”

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