Bengal’s Epidemic Act

For Bengal as indeed the rest of India and large parts of the world, the week that is now under way has been like no other. The Chief Minister has on Monday ratcheted up the official response and pre-eminently so with the invocation of the Epidemic Diseases Act of 1897, which had been enacted by the British to fight bubonic plague in Bombay. In 2020, it is intended to “provide for the prevention of the spread of dangerous epidemic diseases and to tackle the outbreak”.

After 123 years, West Bengal would appear to have rediscovered the virtues of the legislation enacted in the high noon of the Raj. Though the state does not figure in the infographic of the affected provinces, Monday’s welter of measures ought not to be construed as an overkill when one reflects on the frightful spread (150,000 afflictions around the world) and the ballooning casualties (6,000).

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The precaution is eminently justified not the least because not a single confirmed case has mercifully been reported from anywhere in the state. It would be no exaggeration to aver that never in its closeto- a-decade-long tenure has the administration of Mamata Banerjee been so decisive. The closure of schools has been extended till 15 April.

No one denies that this will disrupt the academic schedule unless the schools, colleges and universities are prepared to truncate ~ if not cancel ~ the summer vacation. But the paradox of the closure must be that it has been effected in the midst of the Board exams, and for thousands of students the first public exam in Class Ten.

Considering the enormity of the tragedy, the search of learning has had to be kept in abeyance for many, if not most. This was unavoidable. The Chief Minister has set up a Rs 200-crore fund to procure protective equipment to tackle the outbreak. However enormous the tragedy, there is an underbelly that can scarcely be distinguished from organised crime.

This is pretty obvious from Miss Banerjee’s directive to enforcement officials to “act against hoarders”. Sad to reflect, protective equipment, notably masks and hand sanitisers, have become vulnerable to hoarding in Kolkata. Both have virtually disappeared from medicine stores. It will be direly imperative to step up vigilance in the supply chain and eventual sales-point.

It is reassuring to be informed that the fund will be utilised for the purchase of 2 lakh protection equipment, N95 masks, 10,000 thermoguns and 300 ventilators. It is distressing to reflect that essential gear is woefully insufficient or has been appropriated by hoarders. For all the visuals showing the Chief Minister using a hand sanitiser, it is just not available to hoi-polloi. Admittedly, the state government has not tried to dumb down coronavirus in the manner of dengue some years ago.

But the attendant crime of hoarding and disappearance of masks and sanitisers from the shelves cries out for a severe crackdown. The shortage is contrived, no less critical than the affliction. The Chief Minister’s order against hoarders and profiteers while welcome is a tad belated.