On August 10, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Chennai Andaman and Nicobar (CANI) optic fibre cable for high-speed internet across the islands.  While the project, once complete, aims to “transform lives” in the island, offering facilities like telemedicine and digital diagnosis, here’s what the ground reality is with regard to health infrastructure in the island, at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic is raging.

Given below are certain figures on August 14, published in the government’s local mouthpiece, The Daily Telegram, which has been in print since the 1920s:

The star (*) represents the fact that home isolation is followed in all islands of the archipelago where the disease has spread.

From this data, the total number of COVID-19 cases comes to 1,091, and the same report puts the number of deaths at 22 so far. Although the rate of death is increasing daily, and the total confirmed cases are reported as 2,037, the rate of tests per million is still 69,463.

As is clear from the data above, there is only one in 694 persons being tested even when wider testing is required. Even when beds are available, if only as few as a measly 300 for a population of more than 5,00,000, the hospitals are still keeping COVID-19 patients under home isolation.

At a time when COVID-19 cases are rising by the hundreds in the islands, the contagion has reached far-flung islands of Nicobar faster than the high-speed internet. However, the Andaman and Nicobar Administration have not made a single new infrastructure to tackle the rising number of cases.

The already existing private hospitals are being used as administrative centres but admit only selected patients.

Overall, mismanagement by the administration looms large. The District Commissioner’s office has started employing doctors from the AYUSH department to tackle symptomatic and serious patients.

There is only one government hospital, the G.B Pant Hospital, which has closed its doors after the steep rise in COVID-19 cases admitted for treatment. As a result, several patients suffering from other serious illnesses and due for surgeries are now languishing at home.

In times like these, the only measure that seems fit to the administration head — Lieutenant Governor D. K Joshi and Chief Secretary Chetan B. Sanghi  — is to implement a strict lockdown and impose hefty fines on people who open their shops to supply people essential goods and services.  There has been no initiative by the administration to build proper medical infrastructure and increase the test rates.

Even providing medical services, such as ambulances to rush the patients for medical assistance, seems hardly a concern, all under the pretext of following COVID-19 protocol.  In fact, poor ambulance service is one of the most critical causes of casualties in the islands.

For instance, on August 8, a junior engineer, Biswajit Das, a resident of Prothrapur, contacted the emergency control number 102 requesting for an ambulance. He was directed to the nearest primary health centre (PHC)  Garacharma, where he complained about fever and inability to breathe. His request for a COVID test was denied. He contacted 102 again, which only promised him medicines but did not provide these. Das was reportedly told that there was only a single ambulance and it was busy with other patients. He was asked to travel from Prothrapur to Garacharma to get the medicines.

At night, Das had to drive himself to the PHC, from where he was referred to G.B Pant Hospital. He was given medicines there and then discharged the next day without any test being done. He was also told to strictly isolate himself for 14 days even though this had nothing to do with his illness, as per reports.

On August 11, Das had to call the police and two of his neighbours as he was barely able to stand.  Amid all this, he collapsed and died. The police had to call for a mortuary van because the ambulance refused to take his body to G. B Pant mortuary.

Incidentally, this only medical facility in the islands is also a training ground for MBBS students. Senior doctors are reportedly busy doing management and administration work that should ideally be overlooked by a team of civil servants. This has lead to huge discrepancies between the ground reality and the official reporting of cases, the rate of testing and the dismal state of patients.

According to reports, DANICS (Delhi, Andaman and Nicobar Islands Civil Service) is very stingy about disbursal and release of funds, as these dispensed to Union territories only after directives from the Central government.

The only other hospital in Andaman is a defence hospital, INHS Dhanwantri, which is off limits to civilians, further expanding the gulf between the civilians’ lack of representation in the administration while defence personnel and bureaucrats hold important positions, such as Lieutenant Governor and District Commissioner. The defence hospital is basically an inaccessible luxury health resort, reserved for VIPs, high-ranking army personnel and their families.

Below are some pictures that speak volumes about the abysmal and unhygienic condition of medical facilities, such as the COVID-19 ward of G.B Pant Hospital.

If these images are not enough evidence of the negligence of civil servants in the A&N administration, then a report in the non-government local daily, Phoenix Post, on Kayenat Islam, who lost her brother Nazrul Islam on August 16, will shed more light on the matter.

In the report, Kayenat is reported as saying: “We wonder as to how a govt. hospital can be allowed to function without sufficient doctors and nursing staff in a place like Andaman where people have no other option to fall back on. There was virtually no serious attention paid and the behavior of some health staff in the COVID ICU ward was ruthless. While the oxygen level of the patient was discernibly dropping, the staff in the ICU behaved indifferently without arranging for the cylinder support immediately as if to tell the patient partly that it was a futile exercise.”

What is more astounding is that even after confirmed casualty of Nazrul Islam from COVID-19, no efforts were made by the administration to track the infection by testing his family members. There were also no steps to sanitise their house. “We made repeated requests to the authorities, no one answered our calls. Finally, we asked a private firm to get our house sanitised on payment basis,” said Kayenat.

As of now, no one seems to be tracking the spread of corona transmission in A&N Islands, which is the need of the hour. Nor do officials seem interested in stemming the spread of COVID-19 by putting a complete stop to all ships and flights. Instead, a ban on free road travel has been imposed. This shows the vested interests of the administration to fly in and out of the islands while local islanders are inconvenienced and are not even being provided an ambulance in time to save lives.

Coming back to CANI, Joshi and Sanghi stated that it would boost the island’s economy, provide jobs etc. Ironically, even with this project being given the green signal, connectivity in most parts of the islands remains unaffected, primarily for two reasons. First, because there is no proper construction of mobile towers in places where there are settlements of people. Second, because it is led by public sector BSNL, which has been destroyed by successive governments.

So, the hapless have not’s of Andaman and Nicobar will have to bear, like a beast of burden, the responsibility of a bankrupt public telecom corporation on whose infrastructure the private telecos ride piggy-back, while the elite haves enjoy the benefits of this much-touted ‘game changer’ of Modi’s Digital India.

The writer is a research scholar at the Centre of Theatre and Performance Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, and hails from Port Blair, Andaman. Views are personal.