It’s a known fact that public health and safety is the primary responsibility of the State. And this being the case, sufficient fund is allocated to the concerned departments. For instance, the Home Department which includes the Police is entrusted with the task of ensuring security and protection of life and property. Similarly we have the Health department which has its core competence—health care and prevention. There are other departments which also deal with the health and safety issues in some form or the other. The point that we are concerned is the capacity of these public institutions to deliver and whether the funds being generously allocated are utilized towards the stated objectives. But then the question of credibility comes into question when those who are running the affairs of the State are themselves either not confident of these government institutions or looking for some supernatural help to rescue their own inefficiency and failings.
To elucidate, there has been two specific incidences—the recent scare over the swine flu and the uncertainty created by the series of earthquake. Both are issues of public health and safety and therefore deserve appropriate attention by the concerned departments. However, to be honest, it appears to be that our State is not prepared to deal with any eventuality that may arise if there is an outbreak of a disease or if a devastating earthquake was to take place. And this conclusion is based on what is actually the ground reality, although publicly the departments will paint a ‘good feel everything’s fine’ kind of picture, which is hardly the case. The kind of standard response that is given out especially by the political class is clearly not impressive at all. Given that considerable amount of time and money has been spent on the so called disaster management and mitigation programmes, to be unsure of the actual level of State preparedness is worrisome.
And to top it all, the lackadaisical attitude and false notion carried by some of our leaders only goes to show the non-seriousness and in effect the poor level of preparedness of many of our public institutions when it comes to the bottom-line i.e. performance. First it was the Chief Minister when he made a remark about higher immunity level among Nagas. Following his leader, the Health Minister said “As long as we are healthy and our immune system is strong, this virus cannot attack us”. Isn’t this sheer irresponsibility on the part of our politicians to create myths in the face of the growing world-wide health concern posed by the H1N1 virus? Should we then become complacent knowing that our immune system is so strong that we don’t care about our failing public institutions? Rather than rely on unscientific assumptions and myth making, we should give importance to preparedness from possible disasters or health emergencies. We must learn to separate fact from fiction. And if we do this perhaps our attitude towards many of our problems will be seen in its correct perspective, one that is based on rational and not on unfounded claims.
