In the past 16 months, India experienced a devastating pandemic, the type witnessed once in a hundred years. India with the world’s second highest number of caseloads and deaths in the world has lived through two waves of the pandemic – the first from May- September 2020 and the second from March-May, 2021. The impact has been socially and economically distressing. Lives have been lost, incomes fallen, hunger and unemployment increased and people traumatized and stunned.
What happened? What went wrong? Could better policy and its implementation have saved lives and reduced much of the trauma and suffering we experienced? Who is at fault – people, political leadership, judiciary, media or the executive? The central government or the states? Or is it that whatever happened was inevitable and a part of handling pandemics?
K Sujatha Rao, former Union Secretary of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India takes us through the answers to these questions at 10.30 am, July 4, Sunday.