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Analysts are looking at the events of the past two weeks from all sorts of geopolitical and other angles. But they are missing a crucial point, i.e., what led to the political crisis and to the truce between prime minister KP Oli and his arch-nemesis in the party, Madhav Kumar Nepal. No, it has nothing to do with democracy, India or making the government more responsible in dealing with the rising number of covid cases.

The difference between Nepal and Oli didn't arise from the latter’s dictatorial tendencies and total disregard for party directives or mishandling of the corona pandemic. Nepal would have been no different if he were the PM. If one is to look closely, the present event is nothing but a repetition of what transpired in the past between KP Bhattarai and GP Koirala, and later between Koirala and Sher Bahadur Deuba. The real reason for their split (and all other splits of the past 30 years) has to do with our leaders’ Afno manche syndrome—the sense of power one derives from having their people, no matter how tarnished or corrupt or unqualified, appointed at almost all important government positions. This ‘my man syndrome’ is the reason Nepal is one of the most corrupt countries in the world and as a result, one of the most underdeveloped as well.

We are a nation of wrong hero worshippers. The politically biased mainstream media creates heroes for us and we idiots believe in the invented heroes’ sacrifices and greatness. The person who heavily politicized the bureaucracy immediately after the restoration of the multiparty democratic circus in the country 32 years ago, KP Bhattarai, is hailed as a Santa (Saint) leader. Conveniently ignored are Bhattarai’s filling of the bureaucracy and academia with Nepali Congress loyalists, and those buying their loyalty (to him) by bribing his secretaries.

His successor Koirala went a step further. Now one had to pledge his loyalty to him to get a good position. They got lucrative positions by rallying behind other leaders. The clique-ization of Nepali bureaucracy was complete. Even the academia and the security sector couldn't remain unaffected by the new “political” criteria on promotions. One’s loyalty to the prime minister, whether via family ties or proved through bribes and sycophancy, was what it took to make it big in Nepali bureaucracy, academia, media, security and even private businesses.

The ones who succeeded them, whether from the Congress or the UML, were no different. But by then clique-ization of the parties was complete too. Prime ministers lost their prerogative to choose the ministers themselves. They had to accommodate the demands of the cliques. This portfolio to this clique, that portfolio to that clique became the norm, and the most powerful position in the country became the weakest.

PM Oli didn't accommodate all the demands of the Prachanda clique and the Madhav Nepal clique, and appointed his people to important positions. That made other leaders fearful of losing their grip on the state and the party, thereby losing the source of their income—money, not morality, is what ensures success in politics everywhere but it's dirty money in Nepal that makes or breaks a leader.

In a way, PM Oli was exercising his right by appointing the people loyal to him to the positions he deemed fit, but leaders of other cliques saw that as a threat to their control of the state and the party. They were losing control and something had to be done. More than democracy or morality, they were driven by their own petty calculations to oust him so that they could fill the government apparatuses with their own people, and derive a sense of power from it. (Bikash Sangraula has done a better job than me in explaining the leaders’ perverse sense of power and the media’s misreading of the whole episode in his Republica columns.)

That led to the most bizarre act of the democracy circus: The Nepal clique and Jhalanath clique first flouted the party whip in failing to vote in favor of PM Oli in the parliament, and then threatened to resign en masse to support the other parties’ bid to form government. If you happen to be a foreigner reading this and are not clear what happened: it's like Bernie Sanders demanding Joe Biden that his loyalists and friends be given government portfolios, appointed the joint chief of staff and ambassadors and the head of various institutions, including the NIH and even Supreme Court judges. And Sanders threatening Biden he would bring the government down if he refused to meet his demands. That's exactly what happened in Nepal. And being a dysfunctional democracy, our prime minister had no option but to agree to meet various cliques’ demands to have their people appointed in all positions—from ministers to professors to inspectors in the Nepal Police. (In America, Biden would have sent Sanders to a psychiatrist.)

Panchayat was better than the present circus. At least you didn’t have to pay your way to a job. Apolitical ones too were appointed to positions that matched their qualifications—as long as they refrained from criticizing the state. But it's a different world now. A qualified professor with a degree from an Ivy League school and with an extensive teaching and research experience abroad was disqualified in favor of someone with no such experience and who just happened to be close to one of the cliques of one of the parties, not that long ago. (The same is true of the ambassadors. You have to be someone's daughter, mother-in-law, nephew, have a lot of money, or be loyal to your leader to represent the country abroad. )

If the cliques fight to have their man appointed to a teaching job, imagine what they do to have their people in key positions. Unless our leaders cure themselves of the 30-year-old Afno manche disease, the country will continue to be a mess and petty infighting like the one we just witnessed will continue to dominate headlines for a long time to come.

I don't know what others conclude from all this. For me personally, I get a good I-told-you-so moment. It just proves that Nepal was not and still is not ready for the western style multi-party democracy and Mahendra wasn't wrong to do away with it.

Meanwhile, if any of you wants a government/bureaucratic job in the next two years, profess your loyalty to the UML, then join a clique, then prove your loyalty to your leader by either doing their dirty jobs, flattery or the easiest route, by making a donation. There’s probably a rate card for all positions, so pay the amount to your clique and get a job.

Welcome to the bizarre democratic tyranny of the few—Republic of Nepal.

The influenza pandemic of 1918, also known as ‘Spanish Flu’, was an unusually deadly pandemic that lasted from February 1918 to April 1920. Spanish flu infected 500 million people—about a third of the world’s population at that time. The estimated number of deaths ranging from 20 million to a possible high of 100 million makes it one of the deadliest pandemics in human history.

There are stories documented in the pages of history from the Spanish flu era (1918-20) from which we can learn a lesson or two. On 28 September 1918, the Liberty Loan Parade was organized in Philadelphia, US, to economically support the soldiers who fought in World War I. Intellectuals opposed the event. They were of the opinion that as the Spanish flu was still going strong, a crowded event may result in a new disaster. Ignoring such objections, local administration allowed the event. It was a matter of patriotism, so more than 200,000 people gathered. What followed was along the expected lines. Within the next few days, 47,000 fresh cases were reported and 12,000 people lost their lives. In October 1918, over 195,000 people had lost lives in the US alone.

The tragic Indian chapter

Spanish flu struck India at the same time and 10-20 million people, then three-six percent of the population, had died. The major damage was caused in a short period from June 1918 to early 1919. The second wave lasted for less than three months—but was most devastating.

A worker at the cremation ground in Delhi said that they were doing 25-plus cremations a day at the time.

One of the famous Hindi poet and writer of that era, Suryakant Tripathi Nirala, wrote a book based on his personal experience of the 1918 pandemic. The writer famously known as ‘Nirala’ received a telegram message that read “Come back urgently, your wife is seriously ill”. The writer was in Bengal (province in East India) and he took the next train to his hometown in Uttar Pradesh. When Nirala reached his hometown on the banks of river Ganga, he observed that ‘the River Ganga was swollen with bodies’. By the time he reached home, his teenage wife was already dead. In the days to follow, all other family members got the infection and died. Reports from government documents had made similar observation that “all rivers across India were clogged with bodies because of shortage of firewood for cremation.”

History is repeating itself

Looking at images and reports in Indian media this week, it seems nothing has changed even after a century. Locals in Buxar district of Bihar province reported about floating dead bodies in River Ganga on May 9. Similar was the sight in Ghazipur district in Uttar Pradesh province the very next day. Local administrations performed the last rights and are investigating the cases.

The bodies are suspected to be those of Covid-19 patients who were dumped in the river, revealing the scale of Covid emergency in India. Locals said, following the Hindu cremation rituals, people either burn their dead or immerse the bodies in the river. Due to the lack of firewood at the crematoriums owing to the rise in Covid-related deaths, the poor immersed them in the river.

These may be stray cases, but even isolated cases put a big question-mark on the progress of medical science and human development. Such incidents depict a real picture of the catastrophe this planet is going through at present.

Social media feeds are filled with videos of Covid funerals at crowded cemeteries, wailing relatives of the dead outside hospitals, long queues of ambulances carrying gasping patients, mortuaries overflowing with the dead, and patients, sometimes two to a bed, in corridors and lobbies of hospitals.

What went wrong?

In early March, politicians and parts of the media believed that India was truly out of the woods. While customary guidance on Covid-appropriate behavior was issued, it was policymakers and elected leaders who tacitly encouraged crowding in festivals, election rallies and religious congregations.

The second wave of Covid-19 had come a few months after the second wave in other countries; there was no reason to believe it would be any different in India or in any other country.

Close to 100 million died in 1918 Influenza Pandemic. Photo: The Gurdian

More than ventilators and ICU beds, what was essential was an adequate supply of oxygen in hospitals to treat critically-ill patients. Nonetheless, when the second wave arrived, India’s medical oxygen supply network collapsed.

Availability of hospital beds was nowhere close to meeting the sudden demand. WHO standard is 30 hospital beds per 10,000 people; India has only 5.3, much less compared to even smaller countries like New Zealand (25.7) and South Korea (124). Nepal has three hospital beds available per 10,000 people, which is way below WHO standards. India and Nepal, both South Asian countries, need to increase the numbers.

India recorded a worrying test positivity ratio (TPR) of 22.36 percent in the end of second week of May, way above the 5 percent TPR needed to control the pandemic. But India’s testing numbers seem to be dipping instead of keeping pace with the rate of transmission.

Battle is far from over

Experts are raising concerns that inoculation is not helping turn the tide in some places. Of the Seychelles, Israel, the UAE, Chile and Bahrain—the world’s five most vaccinated countries, in that order—only Israel is not fighting to contain a dangerous surge in Covid-19 infections.

Seychelles, which has vaccinated more of its population against Covid-19 than any other country, saw active cases more than double in the end of first week of May.

Cremation grounds in Delhi saw over 700 ‘Covid cremations’ in a day.

In the Maldives, where over 35 percent of the population had received two shots, is also struggling with rising number of new cases, which jumped to 12,000 plus on May 12.

The world is at war with Covid; more than 3 million people have lost their lives so far. But while some countries move forward with vaccination campaigns and business reopening, a resurgence in India and South America is a stark reminder of the pandemic’s severe and ongoing toll. Society’s staggered return towards “normal” also begs the question of what we will learn when this once-in-a-century pandemic is finally over and how the three million lives lost (and counting) will be remembered.

The author is former senior editor of The Times of India group and writes for Annapurna Express. He is based in New Delhi

A harrowing personal account of trying to call an ambulance in Kathmandu

A week ago, my aunt’s blood sugar dropped and she lost consciousness. It was 7:00 pm and we called an ambulance. One finally arrived. It was 8:15 pm.

It was an hour of mad frenzy with my husband and I calling a particular number only to be given another as my aunt lay unconscious and sweating profusely. On our way to her place, we called 102, the emergency hotline for ambulance services. A very sleepy sounding woman picked up after what felt like an eternity and told us to call another number. And so, it started.

This process continued for a while till one ambulance driver finally agreed to come. We must have called at least a dozen numbers by then. This driver said he was at Tribhubhan University Teaching Hospital in Maharajgunj and that it would take him 15 minutes to get to our location in Battisputali.

Five minutes later, he called back and ranted about how it was going to be difficult for him to find us, going on and on about needing to know the exact distance from the Gaushala crossroad. We told him we would be standing on the street, keeping an eye out for an ambulance, and that he would see us as soon as he passed Hotel Dwarika.

He called us again 10 minutes later. We could see an ambulance headed in our direction. We asked him if he could see us, waving our arms. It shouldn’t have been difficult, considering there were very few people out on the street and my husband is over six feet tall. But, very nonchalantly, he said he had decided not to come and that we should try somewhere else.

Every ambulance service/driver we called asked us the same thing: Covid ho ki hoina? (“Is it Covid?”), Jworo cha ki chaina? (“Does she have fever?”). Some said they weren’t equipped to handle Covid cases. Most blatantly said they wouldn’t come if she had had fever at any point in recent days. Others just seemed uninterested to do their jobs. I say this because their response was quite literally along the lines of ‘can’t come because we don’t want to’.

One particular ambulance service told us to wait as the ‘Covid ambulance’ had gone to Bhaktapur to pick up three patients and that would take at least two hours.

What complicated things more was that my husband and I had been quarantining at home as one of our friends/colleagues had recently tested positive. We didn’t have any signs of infection but, as we had received both the vaccines, we feared we could be asymptomatic.

So, we didn’t think it was a good idea to take my aunt to the hospital in our car. We also felt we wouldn’t be able to carry her down two flights of stairs without chancing further injury. But it was becoming increasingly likely that this was the risk we would have to take.

Then, giving it one last try, I called Dr Shailendra Kushwaha, consultant cardiologist at Norvic International Hospital. Dr Kushwaha had been, until recently, working with Dr J. P Jaiswal who has been my parent’s go-to doctor for two decades now and who has saved both my parents lives at least once.

My aunt was recently discharged from the hospital where she had been under Dr Kushwaha’s care. He has been our knight in shining armor. After talking to me, he got in touch with Norvic’s ambulance services and messaged me a number to call. He even rang back to confirm I had received the text.

When I called the number, in the background, I could hear someone say ‘yo doctor le bhannu bhayeko case ho’ (“This is the case the doctor was talking about”). I sensed they would have said no if they could have. However, even with Dr Kushwaha requesting them to attend to us, we had to go through the rigmarole of talking to two different people, twice each, and assuring them that my aunt didn’t have fever at the moment, and that she had ‘just fainted’. Finally, an ambulance was dispatched.

What happened when the ambulance arrived is another story: With only the driver, who behaved like he was coming to pick up a bag of groceries, and no trained paramedic, more time was wasted in getting someone who couldn’t move on her own into the vehicle and then taking her to the hospital with no medical intervention whatsoever. When we finally reached the hospital and my aunt was rushed to the emergency, her blood glucose level was 25. Had it dropped any further (had there been more delays) she could have gone into a coma.

They say all’s well that ends well. And, fortunately, that has been true for us. But thoughts of that night still make me shudder. We could have been too late. There might have been people for whom it has been too late. I wonder how many people must have lost their lives because they didn’t make it to the hospital on time. That’s the sad reality of the times we live in today.

I reached out to family and friends and asked them if they had faced similar issues. A friend complained about no one picking up the hotline number. Another said the driver started negotiating, saying he would come provided he would be paid 10 times the going rate. Quite a few have had to deal with rude drivers who said they would come, hung up, and then didn’t take their calls anymore.

It’s said that pre-hospital handling is a crucial part of medical care. Various studies have suggested that injuries and deaths can be drastically reduced if you get professional help within a certain time. Ambulance drivers and paramedics are at great risk but given the importance of their work and also the fact that they haven’t quit their jobs in favor of staying at home, should they be allowed to endanger lives by their couldn’t-care-less attitude?

Hospitals and frontline workers are inundated. Despite that, every hospital is still miraculously managing to attend to emergency cases, whether it’s related to covid or not. But inefficient ambulance services with unscrupulous drivers who want to get their paychecks without doing their jobs are unnecessarily putting more lives at risk.

Over coffee, looking at sunrise in Nagarkot, my brother as usual made a savage comment, “One time I see you all nice and hanging out with a friend and next you are all cold and not talking to them, why are you so mean?” I took a sip of my coffee and replied, “I am not the Greek God Atlas to take the entire burden of the world on my back and walk. If people constantly give me negative vibe, I think I don’t want that friendship. I couldn’t choose a brother but I can choose my friends.”

At three different coffee meetings a colleague I was friends with kept on complaining about how her husband doesn’t look after her and her needs, how she doesn’t have friends, how mundane life is, the sacrifices she has made and lack of appreciated, and how my life is so full of excitements and events. At one point I couldn’t take it and asked her what is one thing she does to make a difference or to solve the problem. There was a surprised glare and no reply. I asked her if she expects me to intervene and solve her problems to which there was no reply as well. That day I realized how much we all love to complain and not do a thing to solve our problems. Maybe we enjoy playing victims and get attention.

After a few weeks I realized I was avoiding her. It was not intentional but my reflexes were that I didn’t want to be around people who keep acting miserable. My Grand Aunt once told me, you will be the company you keep, so girl, choose your friends wisely. It did not make sense when I was 11 but at 40 it makes all the sense in the world.

Psychologists say people impersonate the friends they keep. We pick words, behaviors, antics and values of our friends or people we are close with. So it is important to choose wisely. Our brains are mostly attracted to negative thoughts but there are ways to channelize them.

First and foremost, it is fine to avoid negative people. I don’t have a precise deifinition of negative but I mean anything that exhausts you or does not let you grow into a better person. It is absolutely okay to let it out of your system. Sometimes it could be a toxic relationship or marriage or just a friend who keeps complaining about everything and not doing anything about it. Your mental health is more important that anything and anyone else. People might find you rude or selfish for moving on, but trust me, this is for your own good.

Last year, when the world was first hit by Covid, people thought it was a hoax. Some considered it a biological weapon and some thought it was a conspiracy to control population. We stayed home, we tried to survive, thinking it would all be over. We all were looking for a chance to survive so that we could get back to normalcy, even if it would be a new normal. Life suddenly became more precious than anything else. Family and friends started becoming dearer. People staying home learned to cook, to bake, learned a new skill. Staying positive was difficult but not impossible.

But the second wave feels like a second fracture on your already plastered bone. People we know are getting infected faster than we thought, our loved ones are dying. We are all equally scared and feeling anxious. We still don’t have a choice but to hope and try to stay positive. We have to hold on to that little hope that we will survive this. For that, your mental health needs to be on constant check.

A few basic coping strategies then. Practice gratitude for all the good things around you. It could be a plate of decent meal, or a family that is annoying but healthy, alive and together with you. Calling your close friends and appreciating their presence in your life each day also helps instill positive thoughts in your mind. Above all, right now, cut yourself off from people who add negativity in your life. It could be a friend who shares unnecessary fake news on social media (block them, it is okay), a friend who keeps whining about not been able to go out, or a relative who only talks about death numbers in your WhatsApp group. These are things you can right now avoid for your mental peace.

Watch the sunrise or the sunset, read a good book, call at least one person you care about each day. Be that person people can draw positive energy from in this time of crisis. And a little selfishness makes this world a better place—by adding one positive person to it. I would say let us become selfish for a change.