Amid the cash for query row TMC MP's Lok Sabha speech during Covid 19 goes viral.
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00:00 [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
00:07 Thank you, sir.
00:09 Come gather around people wherever you roam
00:12 and admit that the waters around you have grown.
00:15 And accept it that soon you'll be drenched to the bone,
00:18 for the times they are a changing.
00:20 Honorable chairperson, sir, my esteemed colleagues,
00:23 it is probably the first time that Bob Dylan has been
00:25 quoted in this August House.
00:27 But in these changing times, popular culture
00:30 can sometimes do what great poetry and great prose can't,
00:34 that is to strike a chord.
00:37 It is unlikely that in this myopic environment
00:40 of a Hindi, Hindu, and Hindutva driven environment
00:44 that most people will have listened to Dylan.
00:46 So let me again begin by repeating that the times are
00:49 indeed a changing.
00:51 From starting out as the Iron Man government, which
00:54 prided itself on never budging from its position,
00:57 the past 18 months have seen India transform itself
01:01 into the land of the U-turn.
01:04 The BJP government has finally realized
01:06 that they better start swimming or they'll sink like a stone.
01:10 I stand here today to speak on a discussion on the COVID
01:13 pandemic, a pandemic whose official death toll is
01:17 4.7 lakhs.
01:18 But all realistic unofficial records
01:21 put the number at 10 times that, or 4 million people.
01:25 This government only yesterday told us that it
01:27 had no data on farmer deaths.
01:30 Previously, it has told us it lacks data on migrant deaths.
01:33 It has no data on oxygen deaths.
01:36 So frankly, we would much rather go with unofficial figures
01:39 than the official figure.
01:41 The pandemic started off on almost a celebratory note
01:44 when the prime minister exhorted us all to gather outside,
01:48 bang thalis, light diyas.
01:50 When the government should have been ordering vaccines,
01:52 it was actually propitiating the gods.
01:55 The key errors that the government
01:56 made in COVID management were along the following lines.
02:00 Vaccine supply.
02:01 The government always knew this was a double dose vaccine.
02:04 To vaccinate an adult population of 940 million people,
02:09 India would need about 2 billion vaccines.
02:11 Foreign vaccines had not been approved by India.
02:14 Domestic production capacity was nowhere near what we needed.
02:18 In May and June of 2020, we should
02:20 have been ramping up production.
02:21 We didn't.
02:23 When the UK, the US, and the EU were investing in vaccines,
02:26 which had not yet been cleared, and placing advance orders,
02:29 these were high-risk investments, obviously.
02:32 But India didn't make these investments,
02:34 so they didn't get advance allotments.
02:36 So we had a supply crunch.
02:38 Halfway through the year, in mid-May,
02:40 June, the government said we would have 900 million vaccines
02:43 by year end.
02:44 But when they went to the Supreme Court
02:46 and placed an affidavit, they said
02:48 they would have only 500 million.
02:50 I'm very glad today that this government has
02:53 vaccinated a billion people--
02:56 a billion doses.
02:57 But that is not due to the government.
03:00 It is due to the fact that Covishield alone
03:02 has ramped up production to 240 million doses a month.
03:06 The next error was in the field of the rate of vaccination.
03:09 The government claimed it would fully vaccinate all adults
03:12 by year end 2021.
03:14 However, as of today, we have given a double dose
03:17 to only 48% of the adult population, which
03:20 is not even half, and a single dose to about 83% of adults.
03:25 To reach this target by year end-- that is, another 20 days--
03:28 we would have to vaccinate 18, 19 million people a day.
03:32 Today, we are doing only 9 million people a day.
03:35 What is the problem in increasing double dose
03:37 coverage?
03:38 You know what the problem is?
03:39 Because when we took down the names
03:41 of people who were getting the first dose,
03:43 we took only their phone numbers.
03:45 The government didn't take their addresses.
03:47 Now we have a vast rural population, urban slums,
03:50 migrant labor.
03:51 So when, with the harvest season going on
03:54 and poor rural connectivity, you're
03:55 trying to contact these people to chase up on double dosage,
03:59 we're not getting much success.
04:01 So we need physical teams to go house to house.
04:04 In India, now we are busy playing catch up.
04:07 There is complete silence on third booster
04:09 shots for the vulnerable, as well as vaccines
04:12 for children and under 18s.
04:15 There's a battle outside, and it's raging.
04:17 It will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
04:20 for the times they are a-changing.
04:22 These changing times caused the government
04:24 to do three rapid U-turns in vaccine policy.
04:27 The government's original vaccine policy
04:28 required people under 45 to pay for their vaccines.
04:32 The Supreme Court called this arbitrary and irrational,
04:35 and it also breached the fundamental rights
04:37 of Indians, Article 14, Article 21.
04:40 The Center for States said states
04:42 should pay more than the Center.
04:43 Then they backed down.
04:45 Then they first said that private hospitals have
04:47 the right to fix prices, then they backed down.
04:51 The line it has drawn, the curse it has cast,
04:54 the second wave of the pandemic laid bare
04:56 how grossly unequipped our health care systems were.
05:00 When several factors were responsible for the pandemic,
05:02 not all of which can be blamed on the government,
05:05 an easily preventable dimension of this
05:08 was that oxygen shortage should never have happened in India.
05:12 Independent researchers have documented
05:14 that between April and May 2021, over 700 patients
05:19 died due to oxygen shortage alone.
05:22 In early April, it was clear we had a problem.
05:25 I have two minutes more, sir.
05:26 Two minutes, sir.
05:27 Please, within one minute now.
05:29 Please, two minutes.
05:30 I'm very sorry, but parties asked you.
05:32 In early April, it was clear there was a problem.
05:34 Numbers were exceeding 270,000 a day.
05:38 Yet the Prime Minister was lauding a huge crowd
05:41 in a Bengal election rally.
05:43 The Shahi Snana Dukum for lakhs of people continued.
05:46 The Chief Minister of Uttarakhand said,
05:48 "We have faith in God and in Mother Ganga."
05:51 Let me point out a very brief timeline of who said what.
05:55 27 January 2021, World Economic Forum,
05:59 Java's Honorable Prime Minister declares,
06:01 "India has succeeded in defeating --
06:04 containing corona effectively."
06:07 21 February 2021, the BJP passes a resolution
06:10 glorifying the Prime Minister
06:12 and stating that India has defeated corona
06:14 solely due to him.
06:16 7 March 2021, the Health Minister says,
06:19 "We're in the endgame of the COVID-19 pandemic in India."
06:22 And then, Parul Khakkar says,
06:25 [speaking in foreign language]
06:33 The majoritarian narrative that this government
06:35 was propagating through its intermediaries
06:36 and via its power is slowly but surely disintegrating.
06:40 The first of these is the office of the PMO.
06:43 In a democracy, one should be able to fairly criticize
06:46 the highest elected office.
06:48 Sir, this is not fair, sir.
06:49 Jarad Dhan Singh, sir, got nine minutes.
06:51 They just -- we got nine minutes, sir.
06:53 Please let me finish.
06:54 Today, I stand --
06:56 No, sir, please let me finish.
06:57 This is not fair, sir.
06:59 Sir, this is not fair.
07:00 (upbeat music)