As the pandemic comes home across the country in mounting numbers — there are as many as 306 districts now with positivity of 20 per cent or higher — there is no one in the House. The response to a national crisis such as this one needs to draw in all the people’s representatives, across states and whichever their party. The House must reopen its doors, even if virtually, to ensure that the executive does not remain confined to echo chambers of its own making. Now BJP president JP Nadda has shot off an agitated letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi as a riposte to the CWC’s criticism of the government’s Covid response. In a shared crisis that respects no boundaries, physical or political, partisan responses are terribly inadequate, and even counter-productive.

Source: Indian Express May 11, 2021 21:56 UTC