Why Should I Thank You, Modi Ji?
It’s pure hubris to exhort citizens to thank Modi Ji for the vaccinations that are being procured and administered through taxpayer’s money and not Modi Ji's personal funds
For the past couple of months or so, in the state of Uttar Pradesh and probably across most states in India, hoardings thanking Prime Minister Modi have sprung up at every nook and corner. Although it rankled me, I tried to ignore the phenomenon initially. However, my tolerance threshold was breached recently when at a prominent crossing in Lucknow city, I saw multiple hoardings exhorting the citizens to thank Modi Ji while at the same time a jingle was playing on my car radio, which, just like the hoardings, was trying to solely credit Modi Ji for the vaccination drive while expecting us citizens to feel indebted towards him. Well, I did not feel inclined for either of the two and felt like writing this article instead, explaining why I am not inclined to thank Modi Ji!
The reasons are manifold. Starting with the financial, a rough back of the envelope calculation told me that the cost of the hoardings and the jingle on a given day, on a given crossing in one of the cities in India, could have paid for thousands of vaccinations. Extrapolating the cost of every hoarding across every crossing, across all cities in India, coupled with the jingles running multiple times a day across multiple FM channels, lends itself to a mind-boggling figure that has been spent not on buying vaccines or administering them but on crediting Prime Minister Modi for the vaccination drive. Is it money well spent?
Secondly, the financial analysis led me to the second question i.e., Whose money is it anyway? The answer unequivocally is, it is the taxpayer’s money and not some politician’s personal kitty. If that is the case, I am actually more frustrated than enamored by the shenanigans of the Modi government as on the one hand, the money of every honest Indian taxpayer is being frittered away for personal grandstanding and worse still the citizens are being exhorted to feel grateful to someone else for something which is being paid for by their own money. That’s megalomania 101 in my books.
I am well aware that any logical argument these days in India has to meet the gold standard of, “What has been done in the past 70 years?” and “Other governments have also done it, then no one spoke. Why now?” I would like to tackle those two arguments head-on. While the corona vaccination drive is the latest and, in all likelihood, the second-largest vaccination effort in the world after China, the fact remains that we as a nation have vaccinated our people multiple times before without ever having to thank anyone except the administering nurse or doctor. In the post-independence period, the country became smallpox-free in 1977. The Expanded Programme of Immunization (EPI) (1978) and then Universal Immunization Programme (UIP) (1985) were launched in India and the country has successfully eradicated Polio and tamed many diseases like Tuberculosis, Diphtheria, Pertussis (Whooping cough), and typhoid-paratyphoid. So, what has changed now, except the vanity of the current Prime Minister?
What is even more striking is the fact that the adulation is reserved personally for Modi Ji, not even the office of the Prime Minister; while at the same time ignoring even the state chief ministers as well as thousands of other frontline corona warriors that are involved in the vaccination effort. In the past, I have seen hoardings from State governments, central governments, and even departments, with pictures of the dignitaries as part of the same, along with their office. This is the first time, that I have seen hoardings that are personally crediting an individual for the efforts of an entire nation including the central and state governments. In the effort to build a personality cult around Modi, the hoardings conflate the government with a single individual. The last time we saw this (read: Indira is India and India is Indira), it led to an emergency. Where are we headed now?
Lastly, we as a nation need to be aware that self-laudatory efforts like this led to the second wave and the collective citizenry of India was witness to the shambolic handling of the pandemic by the central and state governments. No amount of ad spend can erase our collective memories of the scramble for oxygen, beds, and medicines followed by hours spent on Co-Win trying to find a spot for vaccination. Not to mention the rural hinterlands where Co-Win became a barrier and not an enabler. The problems of inequitable access to the vaccination drive and the shortages persist to date and we will do well as a nation to remember that the headline figures of 60 plus crore doses hide the grim reality that less than 15% of our adult population is fully vaccinated, including the writer.
So, yes, in a nutshell, I am not thankful to Modi Ji for the vaccination drive. However, I will be deeply thankful if Modi Ji deploys all the public resources and the attention of his august office to collaborate with the state governments in order to ensure that over the next few months, the entire adult population of India is fully vaccinated so that we as a country are better prepared to face all eventualities, be it a potential third COVID wave or a state of endemic, as WHO experts are now terming the constantly high level of daily infections that we are seeing now.
In the end, I would like to remind Modi Ji, that just like banging thalis did not stop the first wave, Kumbh did not deter the second wave, similarly, hoardings and jingles will not stop the third wave! It’s the vaccines paid for by taxpayer money that will help us fight COVID and for that, I am thankful indeed but not to you, Modi Ji, but the Indian taxpayers and the Corona warriors.