When Covid crisis was still in its very early stage and so was lockdown, I was very optimistic India will ride this one too and not only that, India will come out as a better country. After nearly 70 days my optimism has not gone into negative but it has hit a new low.
The initial optimism got a major boost when within days a Pune-based company developed low costing test kits. For me that was a good sign of what future had in store. But there has been little development on that front. Yes we are making lots of PPE suits everyday but that’s no innovation. Thats a result of facilities lying idle and they being used for making PPE suits. There were tweets that Mahindra group has worked on a desi ventilator and also supplying the same to the government. I hope the company is doing that.
Coming back to first good news to come within days of Covid crisis hitting India. The lady who was part of this testing kit was all over news as she delivered a child only after the kit was launched. But that was the last of that affordable kit I heard. The company executives were on channels discussing their capacity and how it can be ramped up. But there is nothing about the company that is making news these days – specially about affordable test kits when states are demanding more test kits and some like Delhi and Mumbai have suspended tests. The initial estimate of Rs 1,200 per test is not a reality. The tests cost between Rs 2,200 to Rs 4,500.
Secret Data
As media student, I do try to understand whats happening in other parts of the world. One thing that struck me was availability of data. For example in United States, worst affected by coronavirus, the data was very transparent and available at: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
Similarly, Singapore also had a very open policy on sharing the data with public. All the information about the patients, where they came from and how many more persons caught the virus was available on internet on their website https://covidsitrep.moh.gov.sg/. In the early days there was a website which followed the Singapore model but not to the T. Sadly the website went off the net following some issues with the server and now its gone.
There is this government website https://www.mohfw.gov.in/ which gets updated every 24 hours with fresh data at 8 AM. Again its very basic, pathetic representation of data. Please don’t get me wrong. But everyday you share the numbers without any more info as to how many new cases reported, how many cured etc etc. What I see on the screen is what you see in the pic above.
Data and stories
Now all the states have different ways of collecting data and presenting. There is no uniformity which is not surprising. But remember my optimism in the early days – I was hoping we will have a uniform data representation. But with different parties in power in different states, it becomes a big ego issue for all. Kerala perhaps has the best dashboard. Very informative and easy navigation. If you haven’t do checkout their website: https://dashboard.kerala.gov.in/index.php
Maharashtra has copied the Johns Hopkins UI and has only made it data centric. Check out their website here.
Madhya Pradesh government had to face a rather embarassing situation after a hacker exposed flaws in the dashboard. The Shivraj Singh Chauhan government went back to the drawing board and there is no update available as I write this. May be it is available and I need to work on my search skills.
This piece is not about comparing the dashboards or choose the best. My point is crisis is the best opportunity to learn. What have we learnt? States were fudging data, some hospitals were delaying the data. Why can’t we have a centralised template which is shared with all the states and all the data collection is uniform. This not only applies to health but to any field where data is collected.
If I am living in Mumbai or Kolkata my driving licence from either of the state transport department should be identical. Just like a passport or (many wont agree) an Aadhaar card. Sometimes I feel this difference actually allows people to fudge the documents and not get caught. But each state during covid-19 collected data as per their local laid down guidelines.
As I was writing this post came the news that West Bengal has come up with guidelines for covid victims. The state allowed families to pay their last respects to the departed soul and many other provisions. Shouldn’t all states follow the same guidelines? How come a covid victim dying in West Bengal is any different from one dying in Tamil Nadu? Should MoHFW frame these guidelines? If yes, will all the states follow it?
Late Comers
The initial lockdown days were spent trying to order the essentials. The tried and tested and trusted apps suddenly stopped taking orders. If anyone came across any site taking orders it was shared on various groups. Reliance Smart was one such website taking orders. But what a shock when I finally managed to find the site. So the company which has stores all across India had a pathetic site. There was no mobile version of the site and this I realised after I struggled on the mobile device.
The website from a company which had all the money, resources in the world to launch the either an app or a better version of the website within days of Lockdown 1. But the company took its sweet time and the new avatar of Reliance Smart which not takes you to Jio Mart was launched sometime in May.
The second company was not a disaster but again took time to realise online is where they were going to get their business from. D-Mart had a not so great UI but the company did not waste too much time in upgrading the website and now its much better version of the website I first visited in April 2020.
Am I still hopeful or has hope given way to despair? Yes because I still believe it was the one big chance to set things in order. I know these are big changes and will take time and may be I am proved wrong. It was the time to think out of the box and come up with solutions to various problems in the country. Two most important systems in the life of any citizen anywhere in world – health and education – both need immediate overhaul. But barring digital classroom which again had very limited access, there was nothing big bang that happened. Wait there was one – digital payments and it was wonderful to see making payments without any human touch was a reality. Will the changes I was expecting reflect in coming years? I would like to hope so.
Diary Of A Journalist 