Jaishankar, his son, and digital India.

This whole ‘Jaishankar went to a restaurant in the USA with his son’ story is simply hyperbole, and I’d rather that he (and his counterpart in the opposition, Mr.Tharoor) not use their erudition and almost artist-like skills of articulation to mask and disguise the naked truth just because it is ugly in its unclothed form and words are such golden threads that make it all shiny and good looking even while covering up everything that it stands for.

Let me tell you something about the USA:

1. No one died due to a shortage of oxygen or medicine during the entire pandemic, first, second, or third waves notwithstanding. Millions of Indians, most not even counted towards the total death toll, died due to a lack of basic oxygen and medication.
2. The vaccine was free for everyone (even masks were and remain free), and all you had to do was walk to your nearest drug store/pharmacy to get your shot, or schedule one. Like me, millions of Indians paid for their vaccine and had to deal with an incredibly buggy and badly designed Cowin app, use multiple SIM cards, and wake up at odd hours or use another app just to try and find a slot to get vaccinated. Even now, the app is causing untold pain to thousands due to the wrong recording of data.
3. The USA led the world’s search for a vaccine along with other like-minded nations who have traditionally invested in fundamental as well as medical and public health research. it invested over US$10 billion and led the world in vaccine development along with Russia, the UK, and China. India’s paltry Rs.900 Crore vanished (there was supposed to be an enquiry on how this money was spent) into thin air and all we could do was leverage our strengths (of our private sector, mind you, something this government has not just had no hand in building, nurturing, or growing, but has actively sabotaged, except for the few crony capitalists they love) of manufacturing and production to make vaccines once they were developed outside the country.
4. The USA has a digital record-keeping (and specifically detailed medical record-keeping) history so far back into time that any comparison with ours would only end up in embarrassment. For us. Best not to go into it.

So, it would be an obviously ignorant person to recount an anecdote and talk of, ‘this is where they are, and this is where we are’. Because where they are is so far away in every respect that it would get super awkward super fast to start comparing our responses to Covid.

Also, even without comparison, we haven’t exactly covered ourselves in glory during the pandemic, if I could say so, including, by the way, the mass bonfires and burials, the long & arduous trek back home of the migrants, the grovelling and begging for medicines and oxygen, the constant crashes and glitches in the Arogya Setu/Cowin, the completely needless and transparently PR-driven mug shot of the PM on our certificates, the mess up with the acceptance of not just these certificates outside the country, but also a specific vaccine (Covishield) that had the government scrambling to find a solution to a problem they should have solved before it occurred, the thali-banging, the diya-jalaaoing, the flowers from helicopters on doctors (while simultaneously revoking the life insurance promised to them), the (completely unjustified, in hindsight) blaming and shaming of people, especially Muslims, the holding of the Kumbh Mela right in the middle of the pandemic, organising vanity programs for visiting heads of state (the POTUS, no less), the beatings (of people out to buy essentials) by the police (and their publicity via WhatsApp groups), the refusal to lock down airports in time, the delaying of the national lockdown to facilitate the bringing down of a democratically elected government, and the bickering between the central and state governments are just some of the issues that come quickly to mind without even much thought or research.

Be that as it may, you’ll say, but we did have the pioneering Cowin app, right? Ah, about that. You see, many countries had it. It was not exactly a novel approach to do anything in the 21st century where literally the first go-to response to any problem is now, ‘Is there an app for it?’. In fact, as an example, UAE, a country with a GDP that is roughly equal to the GDP of Maharashtra, has had its own app which not only records your vaccination status but also every RT-PCR test you have conducted, how long ago it was, and what its results were (oh, and by the way, you can also chat with an expert from inside the app in case you have a question). So, obviously, the Cowin app in itself isn’t much to write home about, coming as it does from a nation that calls itself an IT superpower.

So, all in all, while Mr.Jaishankar’s witty speech was full of nudge-nudge, wink-wink references to how ‘backward’ the USA is as compared to the ‘technologically advanced’ India and I am sure appealed to the TG it was directed to, it was mostly hot air, hyperbole, and rhetoric delivered with an icing of polished, slightly accented English. Much like the other politician we know of: Shahi Tharoor.

That, of course, isn’t the problem. He is, after all, a politician and if you don’t let a politician deal in hot air, hyperbole, and rhetoric, what is a politician supposed to do? The problem is that he is being hailed as some sort of an outlier, a hero, and feted online and offline as an example of a technocrat, a non-politician, a non-partisan, non-biased, professional foreign affairs chief and his speech is being held up as an example of India’s shining light that the world must look towards to guide them.

And that, as the sane amongst us know, is total bullshit.

Because the reality is that he is just another politician. One more monkey pretending to be a lion. No more and no less.