Delhi's unnecessary chaos

Lack of centralised help is costing too many lives

Weeks after the second wave of the pandemic hit Delhi, the city continues to be in chaos. Hospitals are still overrun, individuals are frantically acquiring medicines for their families and friends, and people are standing in line for hours in the hope that their oxygen cylinders will be refilled. The police are going after oxygen “black-marketing”, adulteration is rife, and desperation is growing. Meanwhile, the Union and state governments are bickering in court and on social media about how much oxygen Delhi will receive and how it will be transported. After an ultimatum from the Supreme Court, the Centre said it had complied with the order and supplied 730 MT oxygen to Delhi. No government has done well when faced with a pandemic that stretches administrative and health care resources. But, even by these standards, what has happened in Delhi is abysmal.

Justice D Y Chandrachud pointed out in the Supreme Court on Wednesday that, judging by reports, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) “has done some remarkable work, and not disrespecting Delhi, but we can maybe see what was done by BMC”. This is good advice. The various institutions responsible for Delhi — from the Union government through the home ministry, through the state government, down to the various municipal corporations — have failed to pick up the best practice scenarios developed elsewhere in the country. For example, in Mumbai, there are war rooms in every municipal ward staffed by public school teachers that are responsible for triaging patients and then assigning them to a hospital with vacant space. In Ernakulam in Kerala, a technology-enabled war room allows the number of beds of various kinds to be monitored and patients to be assigned accordingly. In Delhi, meanwhile, relatives and friends of patients have to take to social media to ask where there might be a bed free. It is unclear why no agency, from the municipal corporations up, has been willing to set up a similar system in the city.

Other aspects of the BMC’s response, according to reports, are also going un-replicated. In Mumbai many patients are being called by officials to check whether hospitalisation is necessary and if they should arrange a bed. Teams from the corporation are sanitising buildings that have Covid-positive patients. The Maharashtra government has a group of expert doctors that are providing advice to medical practitioners on when and how to use drugs like remdesivir, thereby reducing the overwhelming demand for its use. The Delhi government has at least announced an online portal where those Covid-positive patients who are self-isolating can arrange for the refilling of their oxygen cylinders.

The pandemic has exposed larger questions about the governance of Delhi and accountability to its residents. A city with multiple centres of power has been unable to create even one centralised service or helpline number that would end the crowdsourcing and scrambling for assistance. It seems that Delhi has too many governments and not enough governance. This is not even a question of political parties: After all, one party runs the state government, another controls the three elected municipal corporations. Two sections of the city —the cantonment and New Delhi — have additional administrative arrangements. But, put together, there is a crushing lack of efficiency and accountability. Both the Central and Delhi governments need to get their act together soon.