India head of the global capital markets of Bank of America succumbed to Dengue — Government’s obsession on the well-marketed swachh bharat may be the real culprit
Sanjeev Jha, the 34-year-old India head of the global capital markets of Bank of America, succumbed on Tuesday to a rare disorder of the immune system seemingly triggered by the dengue shock syndrome at Lilavati Hospital reported Times of India [1] on the 8th of September. Various other news websites also carried the same story[2,3,4,5] Shocking it was to see that the high flying successful alumnus of IIM Calcutta passed away at such a young age.
I opened up the government website to examine the number of Dengue cases (Published by the Directorate of National Vector Borne Diseases Control Programme). The number of cases[6] in the last two years is 229,079 (2015: 99913 + 2016: 129,166). This is higher than the total in the five years preceding it 213,753 (2010: 28,292 + 2011: 18,860 + 2012: 50,222 + 2013: 75,808 + 2014: 40,517). The only significant change in 2014 is Modi coming to power and implementing the well-marketed swachh bharat. In two years, Modi government has 15,326 more dengue cases than the five years of previous Manmohan Singh government.
The thought appeared — Data do not lie, could swachh bharat be one of the root causes for increase in Dengue cases?
Lot of money was collected from tax payers in the name of swachh bharat but its seventy two page guideline[7] document (revised on 1st August 2017) does not mention mosquito even once. Its objectives are clear and only serves to burden the middle class tax payers.
It is a shame to see that the taxpayers (like Sanjeev Jha) are losing their lives to Dengue but our government is busy collecting money from taxpayers and giving contracts to toilet builders. This reminds me of the story of the foolish tree climber[8] who cut the branch that he was sitting on and broke his limbs.
Modi government is effectively taking all the money from middle class taxpayers, funding his well-marketed schemes at the cost of the welfare initiatives of the taxpayers. We Indians get infected with Dengue in spite of spending 4,400 crores[9] of rupees in mosquito repellents. With the marketing push given to the swachh bharat initiative, there is probably no one left in the government to check those tiny little vampires that suck your blood out — every single day. Those mosquitoes kill the same taxpayers who have paid for the swachh bharat initiative. They can solve this problem but they won’t unless the Prime Minister’s office does something about it. By the time swachh bharat succeeds in 2019, many more Sanjeev Jha’s, youth from humble background, heads of banks, multinational corporations, business houses would have succumbed to those mosquitoes. We will read about them in the newspapers and do nothing.
World health organization[10] states that the best preventive measure for areas infested with Aedes mosquito is to eliminate the mosquitoes’ egg laying sites — called source reduction. Lowering the number of eggs, larvae and pupae will reduce the number of emerging adult mosquitoes and the transmission of the disease. In fact, the community participation is the key to dengue prevention. As every household aims to reduce vector density, the transmission rate will decrease or maybe even stop. Somewhere along the line, because of Modi’s marketing abilities, the government and press has become blind to the increase in diseases that are taking the lives of honest taxpayers. No public reporting was done when the number of Dengue cases crossed the milestone of one-lakh infections within a year — for the first time — in 2016. Everyone is busy marketing their success while honest taxpaying citizens die in private hospitals due to mosquito bite.
Save yourself — Let us pay the swachh bharat cess, let us pay the FMCG companies for mosquito repellants, let us pay the hospital bills for dengue treatment and then remain silent. For some, it is silence for eternity - tears pour down the eyes of their friends and family members.
References:
6. http://nvbdcp.gov.in/den-cd.html
7. http://www.swachhbharaturban.in:8080/sbm/content/writereaddata/SBM_Guideline.pdf
8. http://www.uexpress.com/tell-me-a-story/2001/8/5/the-foolish-tree-climber-an-east
10. http://www.who.int/denguecontrol/faq/en/index7.html
Disclosure: I must disclose that Sanjeev Jha was my classmate at IIM Calcutta. I know him personally and am frustrated about Dengue. This information is disclosed so that the readers can consider it while going through this article.
