India’s very important people have been late to realise that there are no exclusive passes out of the coronavirus pandemic. The virus has r...
India’s very important people have been late to realise that there are no exclusive passes out of the coronavirus pandemic. The virus has raged across the globe, claiming actors, athletes, ministers, vice presidents and a president’s wife. There was no reason it should have changed when it arrived in India. In fact, the well-heeled and well-travelled were its passport into the country.
So many well-heeled and well-travelled fell back on the best practices of VIP culture: use a bit of “pull” to do some “setting” to skirt the rules.
Take the Indian Railways bureaucrat in Bangalore who tried to check in her son at an officers’ rest house, hiding his travel history. He had returned from Germany through Spain, both severely affected countries, and tested positive for the virus five days after he landed in Bangalore. Or the top police officer in Kashmir who let a relative slip out of a VIP exit at the Srinagar airport and evade quarantine. The 67-year-old woman became the first person in the Valley to test positive for coronavirus, a couple of days after having returned to her home in crowded downtown Srinagar.
If bureaucrats are under the fond impression that the virus will not touch their loved ones, what explains doctors? The 19-year-old student who flew...
