Senior
Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Sunday lashed out at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led central government’s response
to the COVID-19 pandemic, saying that India has become a “poster child for the worst-case
scenario.”

Speaking during
the sixth day of the Lok Sabha’s ongoing Monsoon Session, the Thiruvananthapuram
MP said that the government’s ill-conceived strategy to contain the virus flattened
the wrong curve.

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“Shutting
down every productive activity in the name of flattening the curve meant only
that, in the words of Rajiv Bajaj, ‘we flattened the wrong curve’,” Tharoor
said.  

“COVID rose
and the economy collapsed. India has become a poster child for the worst-case
scenario, we have the worst of both worlds. We have neither managed to limit
the spread of the virus nor have we managed to keep the economy afloat. GDP for
the first time in 41 years will actually shrink,” he said.

Tharoor
censured the economic relief package announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi,
saying that it inspired little confidence as new fiscal amounted to only Rs
1.86 lakh crores. He also noted that much of it had already been included in
the union budget for 20-21.

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Tharoor said
that the central government was more interested in toppling the Madhya
Pradesh government instead of curbing the spread of the coronavirus, adding
that while the people expected the government to “lead them out this darkness,
we have sadly witnessed an unconscionable betrayal of the concerns and aspirations
of the people.”

“Instead of
mature and proactive governance, we have collectively witnessed a fundamental
breakdown in government machinery these past few months.”

Tharoor
noted that a lack of effort from the government to reach out and consult with
other stakeholders, particularly the state governments and opposition “before
embarking on their flawed plans” was a mistake. 

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“As early
as in May, the Indian National Congress along with like-minded parties had come
together and offered a series of constructive suggestions to the government,
which were invariably ignored,” he said.

He
highlighted the lack of an advance warning prior to the imposition of the
lockdown as another flaw in the government’s COVID strategy, saying that the government
has a “remarkable pension for shock and awe tactics rather than mature
leadership”.

The
Congress leader singled out the government’s handling of the migrant crisis,
saying that not only did their failure cause a lot of pain to lakhs of fellow
citizens, it also undermined any initial gains from the lockdown as the
displaced workers took the infection from urban centres to remote parts of the country.