A successful hotelier is making a roaring business but prefers to dine at a luxurious hotel close by for fear of risking his health if he ate at his hotel. This analogy can be applied to our leaders who are doing exactly the same as the hotelier. Several leaders including Chief Minister Yediyurappa and Leader of the Opposition Siddaramaiah are now infected with the Coronavirus. Union Home Minister Amit Shah is in quarantine.

As discussion rages around the removal of Chief Minister Yediyurappa from his post, BJP leaders have clarified ‘that there is no question of a change in leadership.’ The moment the Yediyurappa-led BJP government completed one year in office, one faction presented a proposal for ‘leadership change.

The developments witnessed in Dakshina Kannada district over the past few days have exposed who actually controls the law and order situation in the district. When the deputy commissioner (DC) warns miscreants not to take the law into their hands, the DC not only receives open threats to life but also gets transferred within two days of having issued the warning. People’s representatives who are supposed to extend support to the DC, assigned with the responsibility of maintaining the law and order in the district, choose to not react, thereby extending their silent support to the anti-social elements. These developments have raised several significant questions and triggered anxiety among the people of the district whether the Sangha Parivar is a sub-branch of the police department.

To combat the Coronavirus, the entire country has been under lockdown for the last two months, but the lockdown has hardly been of any help to stop the community spread of the virus. It has, however, wrecked economic havoc in the life of the common man with the country finding itself in social and economic shambles. Further, using the lockdown as a pretext, the police brazenly committed atrocities against the common man which was reported widely in the media. The country needs at least one or two years to recover from the impact of the lockdown.

The affidavits being submitted by the police about the Delhi violence have now become a subject of discussion with several social activists alleging that police investigations into the Delhi violence have not been impartial. The affidavits reveal that out of those who were affected in the riots, about 80 percent were Muslims who suffered injuries and loss of life and property. At the same time, the affidavits also reveal that Sangh Parivar targeted their ire not only on Muslims but also on Dalits.

The Coronavirus is impacting not only the physical health of people but also the mental health, posing innumerable challenges to society. It is testing the strength of human relationships by shaking its very foundations. The manner in which bodies of the victims of the Coronavirus infection are being disposed in various places show us that it is not only important for people to protect themselves but also ensure that humanitarian values that form the bedrock of a civil society are also protected and nurtured. 

If democracy falls victim to an  ‘autocratic’ virus, its first symptoms are seen in the police department. When the police repeatedly take law into their own hands, it should alert us about the state of the heart of our democracy – the Constitution. If the behavior of the police with the common man in various parts of the country is observed over the past five years, people are forced to question whether the police are working as protectors of the Constitution or whether they are rowdies clad in khaki uniforms. Added to this, the police are seen increasingly playing a direct role in communal riots.

When the Coronavirus had still not yet entered India, and the world was trying to grapple with its onslaught, our ‘astrologer scientists’ had gone several notches ahead by researching and even discovering a medicine for the virus. The geniuses of Sangha Parivar and several politicians issued public statements that drinking cow urine could save people from the Coronavirus. Even as cow urine and cow dung were being touted as effective barriers for the entry of the virus into the country, the number of Coronavirus infected people was increasing.