#dnaEdit: Feverish every year

The outbreak of dengue, chikungunya and viral fever epidemic in Delhi has stoked the annual ritual of political blame games but there is no attempt to probe deeper and understand the structural malaise that is gnawing at our cities. Last year, when the fever season began, the blame was pinned on the failure to pay salaries of Delhi’s municipal sanitary workers prompting them to go on strike at a critical moment. This year, Delhi’s top administration, including the Lieutenant-Governor, chief minister, deputy chief minister and two other ministers have been pilloried for travelling out of the city for long periods when they should have guided the source destruction activities and public health network. The situation is hardly different across the country when such situations arise. The political leadership becomes an easy target for public and media anger, and perhaps rightly so, but there is no attempt made to turn the discourse towards the livability of our cities and the ability of the city’s infrastructure to handle the tremendous strain placed on it. Merely blaming the political leadership forces them to do some firefighting until the epidemic peters out in a few weeks and public outrage subsides, while the difficult job of overhauling service delivery and basic infrastructure is postponed indefinitely.

The response to vector-borne diseases is wrong at multiple levels.  Despite a much-hyped Swachh Bharat Mission, its urban component has been an absolute failure with no change being achieved in preventing littering, scientific management of municipal sewage and  improving drainage facilities. The average Indian city dweller’s focus on personal hygiene is quite at contrast with the lax regard for domestic and community hygiene.  India has a glowing example of one of its filthiest cities, Surat, where a plague broke out in 1994, which is today one of India’s cleanest cities.  The two IAS officers who took charge as Commissioners of the Surat Municipal Corporation  in the aftermath of the plague, SR Rao and S Jagadeesan, forced the SMC to invest in water treatment plans, revamp the city’s solid waste management, erect dozens of new gardens, and impose hefty penalties for spitting and littering on roads. It took a traumatic experience for Surat’s administrators and residents to unveil these measures which are the norm in any developed society.

What is shocking about the fever epidemic that has struck Delhi this year is the gap between reality and the official reporting mechanisms. According to municipal corporations, Delhi has recorded around 1,100 cases each of chikungunya and dengue. However, the number of patients thronging government and private hospitals and clinics with chikungunya-like symptoms raises suspicions of underreporting of the incidence of this disease. Far stranger is the controversy over whether chikungunya caused five deaths in the Capital or these deaths were the result of chikungunya exacerbating the medical conditions of those with serious ailments. The Delhi health minister may have been seeking to allay fears about the virulence of the chikungunya infection, but the failure on every front makes such statements appear callous and a justification for dereliction of duty. In response to the viral outbreak, the municipal corporation has commenced fogging operations. No studies have been done to understand the efficacy of these fumes in destroying mosquitoes and the impact that these chemical-laden fumes, which even contain carcinogenic substances like DDT, have on the human body. Caught between dysfunctional civic bodies, politicking and short-term measures, Indian cities are failing to produce the ecosystem that can help pull people out of poverty and improve the quality of their lives. Perhaps, the onus is on the media to drive the discourse in the direction of long-term solutions.