This story first appeared in The Wire

Today, Modi and his efficient digital empire have ensured that many of those vulgar videos where he stooped way below the belt trashing and insulting his political rivals are not to be found. For instance, in Gujarat, he referred to Sonia Gandhi as ‘Soniya ben is a Jersey cow. And Rahul is a hybrid calf’.

Ahmedabad: For any Gujarat-based journalist to see Rahul Gandhi being disqualified as a member of parliament for his statement of why “these thieves from Lalit Modi to Nirav Modi have the Modi surname” would sound nothing but a boring, casual political statement.

Because many of us have constantly and consistently followed Narendrabhai Modi. If I have to talk at a personal level, I have “dealt” with him ever since I was a cub reporter with The Indian Express covering the Somnath to Ayodhya Rathyatra phase in Gujarat. It was his hard work which was seen to ensure that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) formed the government in Gujarat in 1995. Then his banishment followed, and then his sudden ‘divine’ sort of appearance once the earthquake struck Gujarat in 2001 and thereafter.

So from the 1990s to 2001, Narendra Modi was a focussed, reasonably well-read man with his biggest strength being assessing the public mood. He often supervised hundreds of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) workers who would sit in buses. They talked of Congress corruption, Congress nepotism, Congress for just the marginalised and poor, Congress rendering a disservice to people from Savarna communities. This actually clicked. But to be fair to Modi, he did not indulge in uncultured, divisive and vulgar language then.

PM Narendra Modi at a 2015 rally in Gopalganj. Photo: Twitter/@ANI

I had even met his Muslim barber who trimmed his beard for over 20 years near Kankaria. He had kind words to say for Modi. In short, Modi was no cult till then. It all happened in 2002.

This ethereal hologram – the ruthless modern politician as ‘prophet’ and ‘guru’ – has won two successive election landslides across a vast, extraordinarily diverse country of over 1.3 billion people. But who is the real Modi?

In trying to find out, I kept coming back to three key questions. Which country does he see himself as leading: India or Hindu India? Is he saving Indian democracy or is he subverting it? And is he, as he insists, a true economic moderniser – or a fanatical religious nationalist for whom modernisation is a tool to assert supremacy – with reforms proposed, chopped and changed for sectarian advantage?

I have come to the view that these questions can’t be resolved, unless he lurches to extremity thereafter, because Modi is another name for chronic ambiguity. A fervent Hindu militant in his teens, he now operates within a quasi-Western political framework he half-accepts and half-rejects but has not sought – or at least has not yet been able – to fundamentally work his way out of.

Tearing through a Divide 

Once Modi realised how easy it was to tap an anti-Muslim strain in a significant section of Hindus, he grabbed the opportunity.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has been disqualified as a member of parliament for his 2019 statement where he casually remarked naming Lalit Modi and Nirav Modi as to why “these thieves these days in India have Modi as a surname”. Gandhi’s speech was in English and it was being translated. There is, of course, no way, I would support Rahul Gandhi or for that matter anyone, indulging in tasteless, vulgar or even casual public discourse.

But when I heard Rahul Gandhi in 2019 at Kollar, where I was present, I did not find it obscene, vulgar or below the belt. I was covering the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. I did find that Rahul’s statements were acerbic and that his political attacks were becoming more fierce and pointed.

Back in Gujarat 

I hail from Gujarat. Since 2001, I have heard, watched and personally witnessed the death of decency in public discourse. Before that, I have to specify that the BJP was in power but did not indulge in this level of mudslinging. I once asked Atal Behari Vajpayee, when the BJP national executive was meeting in 1998 in Gujarat, as to what his dream for the BJP was.

“I want the BJP the rule India. But we have started with Mahatma Gandhi’s land. Gujarat is special for us. We will follow the ideals set by Mahatma Gandhi,” is what he said. Poor Vajpayee must be turning in his grave.

Full marks to Prime Minister Modi for his oratorial skills – in Gujarati and now a bit in Hindi. When he speaks in Gujarati, he can mesmerise a crowd. His Hindi too has improved. Despite the teleprompters, his English remains more about being a fun speech rather than a language for serious articulations.

Coming back to decency in public discourse, who but Modi should be crowned for assassinating it?

The mystery of Modi’s old speeches

Surprisingly and actually quite expectedly, we cannot find any of his 2002 Gaurav Yatra speeches on YouTube. But here I would like to point out to a link which I was able to locate after much work and time.

There was another event where he categorically said, “How will the country develop? Tum Panch, tumhare pacchees,” categorically pointing out to Muslims who are by law allowed to marry four wives. He was hinting at a widely held presumption amongst bigots that they have multiple children, as a result.

If this was not distasteful, what about his comments on the women of Gujarat? That malnutrition is a misconception. “Our women are very figure-conscious. They like to remain thin.”

If Sonia Gandhi’s neech rajneeti comment bothered Modi and he made a national scene out of it playing a perfect victim, much credit should be given to Sonia Gandhi for swallowing Modi’s jibes quietly. Sadly, her lazy party did not do enough. Today, Modi and his efficient digital empire have ensured that many of those vulgar videos where he stooped way below the belt trashing and insulting his political rivals are not to be found.

For instance, in Gujarat, he referred to Sonia Gandhi as Soniyaben to ek Jersey gay che and aa Rahul to ek Hybrid vachardu chhe. (Soniiya ben is a Jersey cow, And Rahul is a hybrid calf). Modi said this pungently adding that Sonia is a foreigner, just a dumb cow and because she married an Indian, Rahul is a hybrid calf.

He then said, me 20 loko no puchyu koi soniyaben ne clerk ni nokri no aape ane Rahul patawala ni. Aaawa loko ne aapne appdo desh apaay? (asked 20 people. Nobody wanted to make Soniaben even a clerk and Rahul a peon)

Because it was Gujarat, people cheered.

Rahul’s references to these thieves being Modi were not getting any traction in Gujarat because we are so used to vulgar, distasteful and uncultured comments.

And we are conditioned to it. 100 karod ni girlfriend becomes a joke, applauding and  appreciating PM Modi’s misogynistic comment as his ‘sense of humour.’ Indeed.

Link to original story

He spoke with a vigour and an enthusiasm that many in polarised Gujarat undoubtedly subscribe to and clapped. So when a school student was awarded the trophy for his oratorial clarity, subject knowledge and passionate debate on “My Ideal:Nathuram Godse”, hundreds of people clapped. Several stood up to give the student a standing ovation for his conviction. Vibes of India sought the video footage both from the school and the local government but “orders are out not to share it “.

The Valsad district Sports and Cultural activities chief organised the local talent hunt show on the morning of Valentines Day. More than 375 students across the district participated in various activities, over 12 of them, including singing, dancing, model making and others.

The talent show was organised at Kusum Vidyalaya in Valsad but its coordinator Archana Desai says they are nowhere involved. “The local district sports and cultural activities chief organised the event and we were simply asked to provide the premises. “We have a big campus. So we did that”, she adds. We did not even participate, she claims on a video. However Vo! can share that it was not the truth.

Interestingly, Kusum Vidyalaya is run by the well known Desai family of Valsad. The school coordinator is Archana Desai who is the sister of Acting Surat City Congress president Naishadh Desai. Though belonging to Congress family, the school did not protest holding of a debate on My ideal Nathuram Godse on its’ campus.

Tehsheel Vajid Sheikh of Kusum Vidyalaya participated and won too. She spoke on I will become a scientist and not go to America. Vivek Desai, administrator of the school told this to Vo! denying the school coordinator Archana Desai’s claim that their school did not participate.

However, the activities, competition and prize distribution all went till two alert citizens brought to attention the fact that the first prize winner in the debate competition was a kid who passionately spoke on why he believes and his ideal is Nathuram Godse. He was awarded the trophy for his oratorial clarity, subject knowledge, speaking prowess and passion for the subject.

The story twists from here. Two concerned citizens raised the issue about the topic and the trophy.

Now 48 hours after the competition was organised, the District Sports and Cultural Activities chief has changed the name of the winner and the Nathuram Godse trophy has been recalled. All this was done swiftly. Now the District sports and cultural activities chief also stands suspended. SHe did not talk to Vibes of India.

Valsad is in South Gujarat. As soon as the news spread, after 24 hours of the talent hunt programme, the Gujrat government has suspended the Valsad chief of sports and cultural activity blaming her for the choice of subject. “We will investigate the matter furthermore. As of now Mita Gawli, the person responsible has been suspended”. Gujarat Minister of home affairs Harsh Sanghvi has announced an inquiry on what actually happened.

Sources tell Vibes of India that Mita Gawli was not the only one who okayed the topic. But now the government would not even give out names and has interestingly also withdrawn the first prize from the kid and taken the trophy back. The student is shocked. “I really worked hard on it and had taken my teachers also into confidence. This is just not fair”, he said teary-eyed. Vibes of India (VO!) is not printing his picture since he is a minor.

There were three debate topics. I will become a Scientist and Not go to America, All I want is to be a bird and fly in the sky and My Ideal:Nathuram Godse.

This story first appeared in The Wire

Amidst debate over whether Gujarat’s tribal population is Hindu or not, Congress has criticised the move, which comes just before the assembly polls.

The Gujarat government has decided to give special financial aid to the state’s tribal population for a trip to the Ram Janmabhoomi in Ayodhya. A tribal person in Gujarat can claim Rs 5,000 for the trip to Ayodhya, provided she can show evidence of ‘Ram Lalla darshan’.

This is a part of the tribal development and welfare programme of the  Gujarat government.

Bharatiya Janata Party sources have claimed that the scheme could be replicated in other BJP-ruled states as well. 

“After all, tribals constitute over 11 crore people in India and we are all descendants of Shabri, the mythological forest dweller Adivasi lady who fondly fed Lord Ram sweet berries in the Ramayan,” a BJP tribal leader said.

Not only will Dussehra Mahotsava will be held across Gujarat, special functions will be held in tribal areas at all pilgrimage places associated with the deity, Ram.

“Since we, one crore of people of Gujarat, are direct descendants of Mata Shabri who was a Ram devotee, all tribals will be given a special assistance of Rs 5,000 per person to visit Ram Janmabhoomi in Ayodhya,” announced Purnesh Modi, Gujarat’s tourism and pilgrimage development minister, at an impressive tribal gathering at Shabri Dham in the Dangs on Dussehra.

Why is BJP wooing tribals so aggressively in Gujarat? 

The assembly elections are due in Gujarat in December next year. This Ayodhya freebie is a part of BJP’s tribal appeasement programme, masked as a development and welfare initiative.

Tribals make up nearly 15% of Gujarat’s population, higher than the national tribal population share of 8.6%. Hence, with an eye on the 2022 elections in Gujarat, the BJP has a consolidated plan to woo the tribals.

Recently, Union home minister Amit Shah had lunch at a tribal person’s house in Chhota Udepur.

Tribal arithmetic in Gujarat

As many as 27 of the 182 seats in the Gujarat assembly are reserved for tribals. The tribal vote is significant in another 14 constituencies. Apart from these, Chhota Udepur, Dahod, Bardoli and Valsad are four parliamentary (Lok Sabha) seats reserved for tribals.

It must be noted that for the first time in the history of Gujarat since Independence, the Congress failed to win any of these tribal seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The grand old party did not win a single seat in Gujarat in that election.

Tribals’ political preferences

Until the assassination of Indira Gandhi, tribal people in Gujarat did not vote for anyone but the Congress. Most could not read or write but knew the Congress symbol. Many called Indira Gandhi ‘Maa’.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s experiment of wooing tribal people for BJP’s electoral gain was first tried and tested in the Hindutva laboratory of Gujarat. This had little to do with Narendra Modi and was a combined effort of the RSS, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal.

Swami Aseemanand – later accused and acquitted in three blast cases – was anointed to develop the tribal outreach and be a project manager. From 1990, myriad schools with saffron leanings came up under mysterious entities, and thereafter under the aegis of the Vanvasi Kalyan Kendra.

After the BJP won Gujarat for the first time with a majority vote in 1995, RSS, VHP, Bajrang Dal and Vanvasi Kalyan Kendras consolidated further.

Before Muslims, Christians were the saffron target

In 1998, the saffron brigade led a targeted campaign against Christians and blamed them for luring and converting tribal people in Gujarat.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister then and BJP is believed to have indirectly supported these attacks. Then Congress president Sonia Gandhi came to Gujarat and the Dangs but was not allowed to visit the sites where Christian tribals and their buildings were torched.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) had reported that from December 25, 1988, to January 3, 1999, at least 20 prayer halls and churches were damaged or burnt down and Christians and Christian institutions were attacked in the Dangs and its surrounding districts. At least 25 villages had reported incidents of burning and damages to prayer halls and churches all over Gujarat.

BJP’s 2017 wound and eye on tribals

In Gujarat, the 2017 assembly elections upset the party’s applecart. Out of the 27 assembly seats reserved for tribal people, Congress won 15. The BTP won two tribal seats and the BJP won just nine. In the present scenario, the Congress has 13 tribal MLAs and the BJP has caught up with 11 MLAs. One Congress MLA, Jitu Chaudhry, defected to the BJP. The BJP also recently won the Morwa Hadaf seat that was vacated following the Congress MLA’s death. Now, the BJP is aiming at a higher strike rate for the 2022 elections.

The BJP has to be credited for its hawk-like vision, execution and delivery. To woo tribals, the Gujarat government and its state unit (the Sangathan) have already put in place a year-long, sustained drive with a proposed Rs 1 lakh crore Van Bandhu KalyanYojana-II.

The second phase of this ambitious project was strategically launched in Gujarat by BJP on World Tribal Day on August 9.

Are tribal people Hindus?

It is debatable whether the tribal population are Hindus. Most tribal communities worship nature and objects associated with nature such as fire, wood, water. The saffron brigade has been steadily brainwashing them into believing that they are Hindus and all their objects of worship from Vandevi to Annapurna are actually Hindu deities.

However, not all agree. For example, in Jharkhand (which had been under the BJP for long till the Sorens’ Jharkhand Mukti Morcha swept it out of power last year), a renewed agitation is taking shape among tribals who want their Sarna code as a religion in the census.

“We are indigenous people. However, the BJP is once again trying to saffronise us,” Sukhram Rathwa, a Congress MLA from Chhota Udepur, said.

In Gujarat, large percentages of the tribal population live below the poverty line – 40% in Dahod, 34% in Narmada, 31.5% in the Dangs and 28.36% in Tapi.

A Rs 5,000 Ayodhya freebie is a big amount for most, therefore. The BJP, however, refuses to see it as a dole.

“Tribals are descendants of Shabari Mata who met Lord Ram during his 14 year exile. It is our duty to do this for our tribal brothers and sisters,” asserted minister Purnesh Modi.

Senior Congress leader Arjun Modhvadia, however, said that the BJP’s “dirty tricks department” was working overtime again. Gujarat Congress president Amit Chavda has also called the Ayodhya dole “a blatantly shameless act of polarisation”.

“Tribals need better health facilities. They need schools, they need empowerment. The tribals in Gujarat are fighting for their forest rights. They want employment. And instead of doing what it should, the ruling BJP government is trying to divide them on religious grounds by giving greedy tourism offers,” Chavda said.

Vadgam MLA Jignesh Mevani also criticised the Ayodhya dole.

“This is a distortion and disrespect to Adivasi culture to send them to Ayodhya,” Mevani said. “I suggest if the BJP wants to help, give them Rs 5,000 but what’s the need for a Ayodhya pilgrimage? Let Adivasis look up to Jaipal Singh Munda and Birsa Munda. The BJP should empower them by Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas (PESA) Act, 1996. The BJP’s idea to convert Adivasis into Vanvasis is sinister.”

BJP leader and Valsad MP K.C. Patel said at Shabri Dham: “Our Narendrabhai and his government has ensured the construction of a Ram temple in Ayodhya and the Union and Uttar Pradesh governments are working to finish the temple construction soon.”

The crowd, mostly tribals, applauded and some of them chanted “Jai Shri Ram.”

(Inputs by Janvi Sonaiya)

Deepal Trivedi is the CEO and founder editor of www.vibesofindia.com.

This article first appeared on Vibes of India.

Link to original story

This story first appeared in m.thewire.in

Ahmedabad: Residents of Gujarat, India’s ‘model’ state, were shocked on Thursday when they read news reports that their government had given Uttar Pradesh 25,000 vials of the antiviral Remdesivir at a time when stocks of the drug in Ahmedabad appear to be low.

In Ahmedabad, the families of people in need of Remdesivir have been compelled to wait in queues for up to eight hours to buy the drug, underlining the fact that the coronavirus crisis in the state has been severely underplayed by the government.

On Thursday night for example, Gujarat reported 8,152 new cases, the highest daily figure of new cases so far, bringing the total number of active COVID-19 cases to 44,298. The state also reported a total of 81 COVID deaths in the last 24 hours.

Meanwhile, Gujarat’s neighbouring state, Maharashtra, reported 61,695 fresh cases and 349 deaths in the same time period.

On Wednesday, the Ahmedabad Medical Association wrote a letter to Vijay Rupani, chief minister of Gujarat, urging him to ban the use of oxygen in all sectors except hospitals. The letter highlighted the difficulties faced by medical professionals who lack the medicines, injections and oxygen to properly treat patients of COVID-19.

But the government continues to play down the crisis. It issues data to support its claims that hospital beds are available, even as people on the ground complain that no beds are available for COVID-19 patients, and seems to ignore the fact that ambulances are in short supply, space in burial grounds is becoming increasingly limited and cremations are being waitlisted all over the state.

For many people, the attitude of the Gujarat government to the second wave of the pandemic is baffling. On the one hand, people are fined Rs 1,000 for mask violations – as they should be. But on the other hand, the state’s ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), held a massive bike rally on Wednesday while campaigning for the forthcoming by-election for the Morwa Hadaf assembly constituency, in which masks were completely absent.

“Corona does not exist for the BJP anywhere there are elections,” former Union minister and senior Congress leader Bharat Solanki told The Wire.

Crime and the coronavirus

In the last 96 hours, the chaos surrounding the management of pandemic in the state has led to at least four police complaints of cheating and fraud.

In Ahmedabad, the police arrested a contracted employee of a government hospital for stealing gold bangles worth Rs 1.6 lakh from a corpse as he shifted the body from the ICU to the morgue. In two cases in different parts of Gujarat, police arrested black marketers who were selling Remdesivir for Rs 12,000 per vial. Remdesivir is generally available at the government-mandated price of Rs 800 per vial or at Rs 690 per vial if acquired directly from the laboratory. The black marketers had apparently told the police that they had sold 50 vials of the drug so far, but the police believe that they could have sold many more.

In another incident of black marketing, the special operations group of the Gujarat Police caught two men in Valsad with 18 doses of Remdesivir that they had planned to sell for Rs 25,000 per vial.

Meanwhile, in Rajkot, a hospital associate and the BJP head of a municipal ward have been named in a police complaint for taking Rs 45,000 to administer Remdesivir to a patient and then not even giving the patient the dose. Rajkot, incidentally, is chief minister Vijay Rupani’s constituency.

“These are unethical times,” said Congress leader Indranil Rajyaguru, who had unsuccessfully contested against Rupani for the Rajkot seat. Speaking on the phone, Rajyaguru said: “Gujarat, which was known for philanthropy, is now tarnishing its image. Patients are in a serious condition. Relatives are asked to manage [to procure] Remdesivir and Tocilizunab, but since no relative is with the patient, several patients are being cheated by fraudulent hospitals and doctors in the same way that the Rajkot patient was cheated. This is a serious matter of concern.”

Soon after he spoke to The Wire, Rajyaguru was admitted to a Rajkot hospital for COVID-19.

There are other forms of coronavirus scams too. This week, a laboratory in Ahmedabad’s Ghodasar neighbourhood that had conducted more than 3,000 RT-PCR tests was raided by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation based on complaints by those who had taken the test there. The raid disclosed that the laboratory had no equipment or kits to conduct the rapid antigen tests, but had fooled the public and issued fake reports.

As people buy Remdesivir on the black market and reportedly sell their jewellery and homes for COVID-19 treatment, the news that the Gujarat government sent 25,000 vials of the precious drug to UP added to the sense of doom.

Although the state government denied the news reports, issuing a statement that called them “fabricated and baseless”, Brajesh Mishra, editor-in-chief of the Lucknow-based news channel Bharat Samachar, said that UP will not face any Remdesivir shortage as the state had received 25,000 vials of the drug from Gujarat on Wednesday. The Gujarat government however continues to deny that it sent the drug to UP and no spokesperson from Zydus Cadila, the manufacturer of Remdesivir, was available to speak to The Wire.

Meanwhile on Wednesday, almost all the top Gujarat ministers and bureaucrats huddled in meetings to put together a report highlighting the state government’s response to the coronavirus crisis. The report was submitted to the High Court of Gujarat on Thursday as part of the government’s response to the high court’s remark earlier this week that it was unhappy with the way the pandemic was being managed in the state. During the high court hearing, Gujarat advocate general Kamal Trivedi submitted that as of April 12, 2021, bed occupancy in Gujarat had been only 53%.

The cricket match factor

The sudden surge in COVID-19 cases that has taken Gujarat by surprise is believed to have started after the India vs England cricket match held at the Narendra Modi cricket stadium last month, where over 75,000 people, mostly without masks, had converged. There were 49 cases at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, alone, and officials had attributed it to a small group of students who had gone to see the game. The Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, reported 25 cases.

Congress leader Bharat Solanki accused the Gujarat government of pandering to Jay Shah, the president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India and the son of Union home minister Amit Shah, who was reportedly keen to hold the match complete with spectators.

“The Gujarat government is spineless and could not ask Shah to cancel the match,” Solanki told The Wire. “It was only after a big public outcry after two matches that spectators were banned from the stadiums.”

While the mainstream English language media in Gujarat more or less sticks to the government line in its reportage of the COVID-19 crisis in the state, the local language media publishes realistic and powerful pictures of Gujarat’s handling of the pandemic’s second wave.

Devendra Bhatnagar, editor of Divya Bhaskar, a Gujarati daily, received much praise when he published the mobile phone number of C.R. Paatil, the Gujarat BJP chief, asking readers to contact him for vials of Remdesivir.

On April 12, it was reported that Paatil had procured 5,000 vials of Remdesivir and distributed them from the BJP office in Navsari even as people queued up at Zydus Hospital in Ahmedabad, some even overnight, to get the doses they needed.

But Paatil’s ‘initiative’ had had to be stopped a day later when the BJP was accused of discrimination and of politicising the pandemic in Gujarat. Much was also made of the fact that Remdesivir is a prescription drug that can be handled by qualified pharmacists only.

Ahmedabad’s Zydus Cadila is one of the biggest producers of Remdesivir in India, but in the last six months, the Indian government permitted all the producers of Remdesivir, including Cipla, Zydus Cadila, Hetero, Dr Reddy’s and so on, to export the drug.

More than 11 lakh doses of the drug were exported to nearly 100 countries in accordance with a voluntary licensing agreement between the Indian pharma companies and Gilead Sciences, USA. According to the government, India has an overall installed capacity to produce about 38.80 lakh units of Remdesivir per month. Three days ago, the Union government banned the export of Remdesivir for the duration of the pandemic.

Ambulances, carrying bodies of people who died of COVID-19, parked outside the Jahagirpura Crematorium for their last rites, as coronavirus cases surge countrywide, in Surat, Wednesday, April 14, 2021. Photo: PTI

While the Congress and BJP trade allegations about the coronavirus situation in Gujarat, residents of the state are in a deplorable position. On Tuesday, when Dinesh Patel (name changed on request) had to be admitted to Ahmedabad’s Civil Hospital, India’s largest public hospital, his family realised an hour and a half after he was placed in an ambulance that the ambulance was still waiting at the hospital gate. Patel’s was one of 35 ambulances that were waiting to enter Civil Hospital at the time.

“We knew people were waiting in ambulances,” Dr J.V. Modi, medical superintendent at the Civil Hospital, told The Wire. “But we could not admit people without following the mandatory procedures.”

Meanwhile, as burial grounds and crematoria in Ahmedabad and Surat work 24/7 and continue to witness waiting lists, the Gujarat government declared only 24 deaths each in Surat and Ahmedabad on Wednesday.

Faysal Bakili, the head of the Surat edition of Chitralekha, a popular Gujarati weekly, told The Wire that the Surat administration had not been prepared for this spike of COVID cases and still had not worked out a strategy to manage it. He added that the overworked staff of the crematoria in Surat had now replaced the ghee they had always used in the funeral pyres with kerosene, so that the bodies burn faster.

Sunit Gami, a resident of Surat, said that when his uncle had died of COVID-19, there was a 12-hour waiting list at the crematorium. “So we took the body to Bardoli, a nearby town, for the last rites. It was insane to be on a 12-hour waiting list,” he said.

Rahul Sharma, a former IPS officer and now lawyer, told The Wire that the Gujarat government had appeared oblivious to the threat of a second wave of the pandemic. “The Gujarat government did not bother about capacity-building in terms of testing facilities and life-saving infrastructure,” said Sharma. “It wasted crucial time.”

A senior Ahmedabad-based doctor told The Wire that he had drawn the attention of health department officials to the sudden spike in coronavirus cases, but was ignored. “Maybe the health department was told to keep quiet since the Gujarat local body elections were on that time,” the doctor said. He continued: “No precautions were taken, no arrangements were made. The government resorted to vulgar populism and this spike, mismanagement and anarchy is a result of that. Also the cricket matches were completely avoidable.”

Harita Dave, a resident of Ahmedabad, told The Wire that ambulances are near impossible to get. On April 13, Dave had called an ambulance for her 58-year-old neighbour whose condition appeared to be deteriorating.

“When I called the 108 ambulance service, I was informed that due to the current situation, no ambulances were free. They said they would register my request and get back to me as soon as they could. Three hours later, I received a phone call asking if I still needed an ambulance,” said Dave.

Mehul Narendrabhai, another resident of Ahmedabad, waited even longer for an ambulance on April 14. “We called to request an ambulance at 3:30 pm. They called us back at 1 am,” he said. “In the meantime we phoned 50 to 60 hospitals in the city, asking if they could take an emergency case, but no beds were available.”

Link to original story