Only a government in need is a government indeed:

Viruses constantly change through mutations. New variants of a virus emerge over time. Sometimes the new variants disappear immediately and are short-lived while other times, they persist for long. It is normal phenomenon that virus of any kind keeps changing its forms which we call variants. The change in form changes its severity which we call mutation—a change in a DNA sequence of a virus.

The December 2019 China’s Wuhan-originated Coronavirus—infamously known as the Covid-19— is now suspected to have gone many more alterations in its second wave with tags such as the UK variant (first detected in UK) , the South Africa variant (first detected in South Africa), and the Brazil variant (initially identified in travelers from Brazil).

The above variants are widely acknowledged as the UK variant, the double mutant variant, and the triple mutant variant depending on the severity caused on the patients infected. The double mutant variant of Coronavirus —the B.1.617 variant — has been labeled as a variant of concern by the World Health Organization (WHO) and is observed highly transmissible but moderately resistant to antibodies with low severity among those who are vaccinated. The triple mutant variant or the Bengal strain is a new variant of the Covid-19 virus that has been detected in India.

Experts say this variant is more infectious and is spreading rapidly. Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead for Covid-19, believes that this variant—the altered form of the double mutant variant— spreads more easily than the original virus and there is some evidence that it could paralyze some of the protections provided by vaccines. There is, however, no doubt that shots are still considered effective.

The B.1.617 variant is one of the causes driving India’s current crisis resulting in superseding the global record for daily deaths (FYI: the highest figure of daily deaths was 4,475 and this record was set on January 12, 2020 in the United States. India, however, reported a record 4,529 deaths on May 19, 2021. The Corona crisis has been rising steeply in India and its Covid-19 fatalities have jumped six-fold over the last month.

The ever rising Corona crisis in India has followed the so-called ‘Roti-Beti’ relations with Nepal and is creating havoc with ever increasing death tolls every other day. The infection graph has skyrocketed with positivity rate almost around 50 percent—one of the highest positivity rates in the world. The experts suspect that the Covid-19 pandemic is sliding into a devastating crisis. Every day’s death toll is awfully increasing.

A very few elderly people that have somehow been vaccinated with the first doze of Covishield—the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines produced by the Serum Institute of India locally— are at risk for they have not got their second doze even almost after three months.

Amidst a global empirical evidence that unvaccinated people bear the brunt of the pandemic most, vaccines in Nepal are not available simply because of red tape, indecision, indifferent attitude, and concentration of attention of the people at the helm only on politics that fetches power, prosperity and property to oneself.

Our Constitution has made a provision of a President not to comply with what the PM wants but to abide by and safeguard the Constitution itself. The House of Representatives is dissolved for a second time in five months. nepali’s are very much sure of themselves that the new government—if to be formed at all—would have been much worse than the incumbent government in every respect given the track record of the leader that staked claim to forming the new government with the signatures of as much as 149 lawmakers. But as we follow a polity that counts the quantity—the arithmetic in the Parliament — the president should have pondered over the majority signature and initiated for verifying it if she has had any doubt. She did not do it for she wanted no other to replace Oli. What a longing for Oli? How come that Bhandari is ever set to corrode her image for him?

Robbing the prerogative of the Parliament at midnight by not letting it reach a conclusion whether it could form a new government with someone other than Khadga Prasad Oli as the PM is something very much ill-suited action. Bidya Devi Bhandari’s role is under scrutiny for being Oli’s accomplice right from the beginning she assumed the office of the President. Call it an irony that she never bothered to look back and mend her way of doing things not even minding that the latter has used and abused her over and over again for his political gains.

Oli has been using and abusing the President time and again for his interests. The oath text goes with a set of given format. No one can escape it. But Oli dared do it and skipped the phrase ‘I vow’ having disobeyed the decorum of the institution that was administering the oath of office to him some days before. It simply shows Oli’s style of presenting oneself a juggernaut—someone superior to anyone and everyone— in the country. Nevertheless, he alleges the others that disrespect for the President is disrespect for the republican system. Why should nepali’s bear such a system which makes the President a puppet to the PM?

People are fed up of watching the ‘Sheetal Niwas-Baluwatar’ play episode —an episode of the series that shows the monotonous play of the two defending one another for no valid reason— for not even an average act. Enough is really enough! Stop all this and put all your efforts in getting vaccines.

People awaiting the vaccines fear the fear of an unnatural death. It is what killing them while alive. A few days back, Sara Beysolow Nyanti—the UN resident coordinator in Nepal— tweeted ‘Is the world listening? Send vaccines to Nepal now’. The tweet has so far not been able to call the attention of the super powers including European Union and the United States of America which in normal times keep vying to impose their interests on us with an ill intention of developing Nepal a region of their strategic importance.

These countries have most of the vaccines and are making a vaccination drive also amongst the children and adolescents who are mostly not the risk groups. They seem not encouraged to extending their cordial support to us at a time when nepali’s are dying for want of oxygen, hospital beds intensive care services and the much needed jabs for inoculation. nepali’s caution the so-called super powers— that control most of the vaccines— that catastrophes leading to mass killing anywhere around the globe is a curse everywhere.

CEPI (Coalition for Epidemic preparedness innovations), GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations), UNICEF and the WHO have been committed to providing Nepal with 13 million doses of vaccines under the COVAX facility. But India’s Covid-19 crisis has severely affected the COVAX provision and the Serum Institute –the largest single supplier to the COVAX facility—has stopped its planned shipments upon the suspension of exports in March. But do something substantial to get the vaccines the government must.

The most serious issue at present is not whether the authorities can afford to get enough vaccines for the entire people, but whether they can afford to seeing people die for want of vaccines. Government is needed to rescue the people when they face a crisis that lies beyond their reach. If government keeps becoming as helpless as individual people, what is the essence of a government? What if people then demand a nation without a government ? Stay mindful that only a government in need is a government indeed.

Comment