The numbers are stark and scary. The magnitude of the wave is expounded by the data. India is topping the infection charts again. On Friday, the country recorded over 1.4 lakh new COVID-19 cases and over 700 deaths — that is over 100 cases every minute and a death every two minutes. The force of the surge, some epidemiologists estimate, may see daily case count triple and the death toll can top 2,000 by mid-May.
The spectre unfolding across India represents failures at multiple levels — policy, politics and personal behaviour. Most importantly, it represents contextual amnesia — the collapse of collective accountability, the quarantine of reason and lockdown of pro-active public policy response across states even as the pandemic was alive and kicking. The tragedy of commons is exacerbated by the failure of those in positions of power and influence to deploy the ‘power of example’.