Dear Editor,
Swami Aksharananda’s letter to your newspaper alleging that Muslim places of worship have been over represented in the sites chosen for the distribution of COVID Relief and administering of COVID vaccines has touched a nerve as evidenced by the letters in the dailies and comments on social media. As expected, the discourse has quickly descended into a parting of the sea, with the defenders of the Irfaan Ali’s government alluding to the Swami’s comments as being an unnecessary intervention in the attempt to address a serious threat to the nation’s well-being.
What is missing in their analysis is their willingness, to so soon forget the other (and perhaps more serious) threat to our national well-being – that of social stability. While the Swami’s observation that the sites chosen may be an over-representation of the worship places for a specific religion, and may be anecdotal, the government’s response via Dr. Leslie Ramsammy was especially disappointing. The doctor/scientist is no stranger to statistics and could have, in his letter to your newspaper, provided the data on numbers of Masjids versus government health centres versus government schools that could have been used instead.
Not so long ago, when many were up in arms against GECOM choosing private residences of people of a certain ethnicity in preference to government schools/buildings as places of poll, one would have hoped that what was good for Peter was also good for Rajpaul. The stakes are too high for the government to even appear to favour one sector of our society, our nation is fractured along race as emphatically and empirically illustrated by the last elections. The effort of forging a national identity where everyone – irrespective of race, class, creed or religion has equal access to the halls of power – must begin with President Ali and his Cabinet.
If the Swami’s observation is correct, the government must quickly own up to a strategic mistake in a fractured society; sensitivity to cohesion must be paramount. This is where social impact assessments that measures the impact on ethnic, religious and gender groups should be a vital factor in program evaluation of any government undertaking, even if it is a national emergency like COVID, but it is not too late to put this in place.
Sincerely,
J. Singh
