A FEAST OF VULTURES

 If anyone ever had any doubt, handling of Covid19, all over the world has left scope for none. There was a time when politics occupied a corner of the turf and looked up to the larger society for its value system. But now politics has grown like weeds to occupy the entire turf and the values of politics are now the moral lodestar of the society. Conduct which society would have been aghast at is the new normal for politics and is accorded partisan approval.

Covid19 attacks the human race. Therefore, one should have thought the entire human race would put up a united front against the common enemy. At least that has been the common sense on warfare. If Donald Trump were to be believed, the ‘enemy’ of the entire human race , Covid19 , is a spiteful creation of China. His sabre rattling against China and his domestic strategy, were clearly politically driven, and aimed more at his rivals in the forthcoming elections .It has left America shattered and its people dying like flies. But even if we discount his hyperbole , the rest of world also believes that China has certainly struck some kind of a deal with the ‘enemy’, bought some favourable terms for itself , in lieu of ensuring its conquest of the rest of the world. Covid19 has spared its vast territory from contagion. The Chinese lives lost in Wuhan are being viewed as a sacrifice that will help it immensely in its trade wars with its enemies. Surely, there is some fifth column activity on the side of human race, going on in its war against Covid19.

Let us consider the situation at home . In the past we have given a great account of ourselves when China or Pakistan attacked India. They found every Indian, to a man ,ready to shed his blood in its fight against the enemy. We are faced with a situation far graver than that, it is an enemy that does not claim territory, it threatens life itself . Our present fight is with anti-life, a threat of universal reach that even the concerted effort of the greatest and most resourceful governments could barely cope with it. Covid19 attacks our human vulnerability, at the cellular level , and cells are not known to express themselves in political or religious terms. In so far as we are humans, we should be fighting the common enemy to save our cells not our political affiliations or religious identities, but are we? It looks like every party , every stake holder has raised its own army, claiming to fight the enemy. There is bound to be a squabble for positional advantage, much to the advantage of the enemy.

I put my query before those who know: how can an incumbent government and how can a party which has been for seventy years in government, fail to iron out a wart, like the bus issue? The media, birds of the same feather, are having a field day speculating, awarding marks to this or that party, but never holding them to account together. I have no preference, so I simply put it to their cussedness, because at the end of the day, there are going to be political victors and political losers, and they are playing for that . Meanwhile the migrants are lined up, ant like, trudging their way on their journey to nowhere. More than four hundred have already fallen by the wayside. Some of these also may also end up as more meat . Indians will debate, till cows come home , from the position of their respective political parties, as to who was to blame. But unless one makes an astral projection, and view the activity form a point above, one can’t beat the mirage. Viewed from that perch , the vocation of politics looks like a feast of vultures.