Why Kerala will not have a happy Onam this year

Onam is a festival that unites the people of Kerala like no other. It is usually marked by celebrations lasting 10 days with pookkalams (floral decoration), sadyas (feast served on a plantain leaf) and myriad festivities. It also serves as Kerala’s traditional harvest festival heralding prosperity and wealth. Of late, however, recurring floods and the onset of COVID-19 have contributed to the toning down of the event.

An Unhappy Onam

This Onam, in particular, will be a low-key affair, weighed down by the three-month-long restrictions leading up to it. Moreover, it is feared that the post-Onam days will see a spike in COVID-19 infection rates. The Pinarayi Vijayan government, which was re-elected in May, has not only lost its grip on the situation, but is also on the wrong to tackle the pandemic as a law-and-order problem.

In a case of the right hand snatching away what the left hand is giving by way of the tom-tommed food kits and welfare pensions, the police have levied a massive Rs 125-150 crore as fine between May 8 and August 4 registering cases under the Epidemic Diseases Act.

This gives the impression that the much-talked about achievements by the state in tackling the pandemic was messaging aimed at winning a renewed mandate. Kerala went into a lockdown on May 8, a week after the state election results were declared, and the Left government has been consistently one step behind in dealing with the pandemic since then. A spate of suicides was reported following the prolonged restrictions even as the government followed unscientific and irrational parameters to persist with it.

The Unravelling

Since June 30, when the Supreme Court asked to Centre to frame guidelines on ex-gratia compensations for COVID-19 victims, the state government has been facing charges of undercounting of COVID-19 deaths. Leader of Opposition VD Satheesan exposed the government’s fudging of COVID-19 death figures in the assembly on July 27. Since then, Vijayan has not addressed a single press conference. If the rationale for holding daily press briefings before the elections was to assuage people’s anxieties over the pandemic, today the Chief Minister is missing when the people need him the most.

When it comes to the enforcement and lifting of lockdown restrictions, the state government seems to disregard the suggestions of health experts. While it claims it has been following the instructions of an ‘expert committee’, nobody really knows the exact composition of this committee. In fact, the bureaucracy which took charge during the three-week-long break before the swearing-in of the second Vijayan government has pretty much called the shots since then.

It has been left to Health Minister Veena George, the journalist-turned-politician, to deal with the all the criticism coming the government’s way, with Vijayan giving the press a miss. This ‘Captain’, as Vijayan is referred to by Left sympathisers, is not leading from the front.

Losing The Plot

By trying to replicate its strategy of controlling infections during the first wave — when the world was still coming to grips with the pandemic and vaccines were unavailable — through enforcement of lockdowns, the Vijayan 2.0 government stuck to a standard SOP to tackle an evolving situation.

The state government’s failure to expedite vaccination by subsidising it in private hospitals as indeed its inability to involve the private sector in its mitigation strategy remains an Achilles heel. As the third sero-prevalence survey figures imply, a large number of people in the state are still susceptible to the virus.

The lifting of the lockdown restrictions announced on August 5 has been largely panned both of mainstream and social media for its impractical and mindless suggestions. What the circular achieves is that it gives the police yet another reason to harass the public. Thankfully this has not been enforced, probably fearing a backlash in the run-up to Onam.

A Post-Onam Surge?

The state government is yet to heed the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR)’s directive on conducting a state-level sero-survey (as Tamil Nadu did thrice). This is despite the Indian Medical Association (IMA) volunteering to undertake it on the government’s behalf.

With breakthrough infections being reported in the state on account of the Delta strain and, cases expected to surge post-Onam, the government will have to be more transparent and effective in its communication to take citizens into confidence.

The practice of police and bureaucracy dictating state policy in tackling a health crisis needs to be revisited. This Onam being as it is, Keralites will hope for a better deal at least next year.

Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.