New Delhi: External affairs minister S Jaishankar in an interview to a leading daily admitted that there is politics around the current pandemic situation. “Sadly you are right, I wish it wasn’t so but what I can say is when it happened in other countries including the UK when the pandemic hit our society very hard, there were questions, there were arguments, and there was a lot of second-guessing. You should have seen it coming and it is not unique to India. It happens in other societies as well. In our case, yes, I am very conscious of our own debate. That’s something I hear and (am) involved in every day. People have spoken about elections. Obviously, we are a democratic country. You don’t stop elections in a place like India “he said.
He also asked the media to stop highlighting the negative news about the pandemic to stop spreading fear amongst the countrymen. He said, “I think we need to put a pause to it. We have a serious national crisis. The fact is societies are defined by their abilities to come together when you deal with a crisis of this magnitude. It is a war. What happens when there is a war, people come together as a society. So I would hope very much that we should do”.
He also hinted that the world is in crisis and that we all must come together to fight the virus. He said that people who opposed lockdown now want it due to the severe situation. “The fact is that we are facing this problem due to two variants B1617 and B117. They had really hit us very hard. They are far more virulent than viruses we saw last year just look at our numbers. I remind you where we were in February. At the end of February, there were less than 10,000 (new) cases. Today we have 3,50,00 cases. Today you can say you should have seen it coming. Let’s face it. You and I live in the same society; we saw societal fatigue with a lockdown. Today people are urging lockdowns on people who are opposing lockdowns earlier, Jaishankar said in the interview.