‘Supreme Court: Kin of Covid victims entitled to compensation’ Indian Express

 “Why should we take responsibility for an act of god?” ask bewildered leaders.

In insurance parlance, Covid-19 is called an ‘act of god’ and payments are dealt with accordingly, but what measures were taken to protect citizens, how quickly and how effectively done, become ‘acts of man’ the Supreme Court seems to be telling the government.

When a bus driving along the ghats or other mountainous terrain falls into a gorge, and passengers die, our governments rush in and compensate the next of kin with lakhs of rupees as relief. This is not done as we would like to believe because the government is kindhearted or compassionate, but because those in charge know safeguards needed to have prevented the accident were not adequate or roads were badly maintained, or the vehicle was not up to the mark.

Whatever it is, the compensation given means the government takes responsibility for something it did not deliberately do, but for which it shares the blame.

I remember three years ago in Chicago, with temperatures touching minus twenty degrees, I bundled myself up in the warmest of clothing and together with a relative of mine, cleaned the pavement in front of our home, of snow and ice. Even as I struggled to push the noisy machine up and down the pavement and felt my nose would fall off in the bitter cold, I knew that anything I suffered would be less than the damage that would have to paid by us if somebody slipped and fell outside our home.

The snow was an act of god, but the responsibility to prevent accidents was mine!

And today that is what the Supreme Court is asking, “How did you handle the pandemic?”

“We lit candles and clapped our hands!”

“That’s fine, but if people died after that, you compensate them and their families!”

Most governments think that the repercussions of their actions are seen only in election results. How they handled a flood or a riot is seen in how the voter votes, and for many years that’s all that mattered. But with courts now stepping in and saying, “Take responsibility!” suddenly it’s going to be more than convincing people at the polls.

Yesterday was Doctor’s Day, and even as we call them ‘frontline warriors’, remember with all the medicolegal cases they face, they take responsibility for so called lapses even as they save lives!

I don’t envy the government for the situation they are in, but with this, will come a new kind of thinking when parties go to the polls, where hopefully they will ask themselves, “Are we capable of looking after the country?”

Because, if they aren’t, there will be hell to pay, even if they term it, acts of god..!

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