 Hello and let's talk about the COVID-19 situation in Delhi. The capitalist emerges as one of the epicenters of the disease in the country with a number of cases reported on Monday evening standing at 1,647. Now there is an improvement over the past few days when the number of daily cases had crossed 2,000. The total number of cases is close to 43,000 while the number of deaths is at 1,400. The numbers are only one part of the problem. State health facilities do not seem to be inspiring a lot of confidence in the people. Many have resorted to private hospitals which are charging a bomb. There is also the problem of testing. Testing rates came down dramatically earlier this month although the situation seems to be improving now. We talked in news clicks, Praveer Pulkastar on some of these issues in Delhi. Thank you Praveer so much for joining us. So yesterday we did see that the numbers reported by Delhi there has been a bit of a decrease although in the days preceding that they were almost the highest number being reported for a consistent number of days. There's been a lot of questions raised about how the Delhi government and for that matter central government are handling the issue. There's been the question of poor hospital facilities. There's been a question of a general lack of clarity in terms of strategy in dealing with the issue in the capital city. So could you first talk about what you see as some of the issues that are being faced by Delhi's people? The first thing that I think we should register is that the lockdown was a complete failure in the sense that it has not stopped the growth of the infections. And what we have seen in other places with such a draconian lockdown that we had, we should have seen the numbers at least flattening significantly. Now all that we have seen is numbers not rising as fast as it is projected in some models but we haven't really seen a slowing down of the growth. Now in Maharashtra we'll find a little bit of slowing down of the growth. The doubling rate is now about 20 days instead of 14 days. But we have 40 days of doubling rate in Gujarat, in Delhi, in Tamil Nadu, more in fact in Tamil Nadu and Delhi than in Gujarat. Gujarat's probably flattening little. So what we have seen is the growth of numbers has been very significant and that's because as I've already, people have already pointed out that it was a botched lockdown that was done. It did not address the fundamental issues that were needed to be handled in terms of really keeping the people in the places where they were. We had huge problems because people felt they had to go back home. They were without food over here or any other systems over here. And that of course did break down the lockdown. Now coming back to the issue, what a lockdown should otherwise have done. It should at least have strengthened the health system. Now if you look at the health system numbers, terms of beds and so on, Delhi, it appears there are still beds available, vacant beds available, the Delhi Government Act shows vacant beds are available, but they're primarily available in two hospitals where people don't want to go. It's Lopnaik, Jyaprakash Hospital, the LNJP Hospital, which used to be a good hospital once upon a time, so I really don't know what the issues there are. And of course the Guru Teng Bahadur Hospital, not a particularly, shall we say, hospital known for its efficiency, but that also seems to be mostly empty, the beds are lying empty. So it does seem that the Delhi Government did not address the issue of how to strengthen the hospitals in times of COVID. People went there, they had to wait for three, four hours for the tests. Quite often they had to go back, come back the next day or look for other hospitals and you cannot imagine a person with the oxygen cylinder waiting for three to four hours outside the hospital, these are not scenes that should be seen in front of any hospital and this was the scenes in front of some of this hospital. So a complete failure of the Delhi Government in addressing the hospital system itself in terms of what needed to be done, the smooth flow of people coming to the hospital, those who are suspected COVID patients, meaning they are showing clear symptoms to be segregated, tested very quickly, admitted very quickly, others separated, tested for those who have come for other purposes, separated, and those who have basically come for contact purposes, they have been in contact with somebody, they want to get a test done, separate them. So all these are seems to be elementary measures which a hospital should take. But from what I gather, from the reports that News Greek has, this is not what was happening. So in fact, people had to go from counter to counter and if you were not infected, even if you had come for a test, you're likely to go back infected and contribute to the problem instead of solving the problem. This is the, in a very small way, this is what seems to be happening. The Delhi Government did something even worse. They reduced the number of tests and we have discussed this earlier that the number of tests which were there, say, in the month of May per week, when you come to June, you suddenly found, find that though the numbers of people infected that are doubling or tripling from May to June, you find that the tests have actually decreased per week. So it seems that they wanted either to artificially show lower numbers or they actually did not have the tests. And I don't know why. Is it the Settled Government failure, Delhi Government failure? These are things being completely kept opaque at the moment. And therefore, we have an issue that we know the tests are less, but we don't know why and no explanation has come from either of the two sides. And then you have the number of infected per test really going up. You see, the two critical issues are at this stage what the Kerala Health Minister said, it's not a question of only testing. You have to test, you have to track, you have to isolate, you have to treat. These are the basic minimum things that you have to do. Therefore, you need to strengthen the hospital system to be able to do it. And you read the system on the ground, which is our volunteers and the government officials working together to see that you can test, track, isolate, and treat. So this is the things that need to happen. But instead of that, we seem to have been satisfied with a few apps and having press conferences every day. And now, of course, we have the government in the docs. Supreme Court has passed strong remarks on its handling of the issue. And then it has got a very simple statement saying, we are going to open up testing to whoever it wants. The question is not that. As a government, are you making the tests available to the people? Are you making the tests available at a price that people can pay? So this is a part of the larger public health system. If your hospitals are not able to handle the epidemic, have you put a cap on the private hospitals? Will you take over some of the private hospitals? There's no point in taking over small hospitals. You need big hospitals to be able to treat it. Now, I also find that they've declared Barahindra, which is a MCD hospital, to be also a COVID hospital. Will you see that their conditions are better than what we know them to be? So that actually people can go there. So that actually makes difference. So the whole issue is really handling the health dimension of the epidemic and be to be able to track the people, identify quickly, separate them, and then treat them. And I must end with the final word. Delhi is not just the city. There is Gurgaon, there is Noida. They are really parts of Delhi. The urban continuum is very much there. And if you see Gurgaon, the test numbers seem to be quite poor. In fact, I'm told that the test numbers indicate now that 50% of those tested are positive, which means the tests are really, really way down. And that's how Gurgaon is keeping its so-called numbers low. I don't know about Noida. There are a lot of containment zones which have seemed to have come up there. But I do not know how aggressively they're being tested and what the health facilities there are, because as I said, it's really the greater Delhi area that we're talking about, which also includes Faridabad, Gurgaon, as well as Noida, which as you know is in UP. So all of these have to be taken together when we talk about Delhi. And I'm afraid that we are looking at a scenario, but even if government does not impose a lockdown, people voluntarily are starting now to create social distancing, traveling much less. The fear is palpable in Delhi. You can see it writ on their faces. You see even people who are driving inside cars, also wearing masks, something which you would not have seen even during the lockdown when some people could travel. So you are seeing a turn decidedly for the worst. You are seeing a scenario that the government machinery needs to be far more proactive than it is now, and you need really the government to now look at the health system, which in a week or two weeks is going to reach a situation where there'll be no beds available, even in the hospitals, which people do not want to go into at the moment. So I think we are looking at a very grim scenario, and it's only now they're talking of adding temporary hospitals, something we should have been done four months back. Thank you so much for being with us. In our next segment, we talk to Leslie Xavier on mental health and sports. Over the past few days, you've seen a number of conversations on the topic of mental health, and the field of sports is key both due to the pressure sports persons face and the image that is projected of them in the popular media. Here is what Leslie had to say. Leslie, thank you so much for joining us. So we've had in the past couple of days a lot of conversation about mental health in various fields, and there's been some conversations in the field of sport also. And like you were mentioning, Sao, while we were talking some time earlier, sport and mental health have a very complicated relationship also, because like you said, a sports person in some senses is also seen as a paragon of good mental health, and a lot of, they held up as role models of certain values, which are of strength, of willpower, of confidence, and these are the narratives that are continuously spread. But in actuality, we understand that the situation is much, much more complex. So could you first start off by talking a bit about that aspect, that how the picture that is presented often in media narratives is not that simple. So it starts, the fall starts from there. So if you look at the biggest sports person in India at the moment, Virat Kohli, the Indian Cricket Team captain, he's been, I mean, he portrays himself as this alpha male. So everything is perfect, strength, aggression, mentally tough, a tough competitor, a fighter. I'll take on anything in the world, he bounds me, I'm gonna hit you the next fall or six. So that kind of image is portrayed. But when you look at Cricket Team, the Indian National Team, it's a bit more complicated because we don't have 11 Virat Kohli's playing over there. Now some things might work for Virat Kohli, but it needn't work for, say, Ravi Chandranashwin. Because we are all, I mean, as individuals, hardwired differently. We all have our strengths, the weaknesses, and also how we look at the game in a cerebral way. So Ashwin is a thinking cricketer, they say. He thinks of challenges in a highly technical way, how to beat the batsman with his spin, with his variations and all that. Virat Kohli might be looking at it in a way how to play with his mind, how to get into his mind, how to be so aggressive that he, so I'm speculating here, but it's clearly portrayed, that's how the Indian skipper wants things. So he has his own set of players who is busy trying to mold in his image, but not everybody is mentally set up for that. So what happens here is there are a lot of players who look at things differently. They are under a bit of a mental strain because they have to maintain this persona. And it's not as simple as that, as simple as keeping an aggressive frame of mind and going all out and playing, because in life when you look at it, and let's transcend the playing field. So in the playing field, you have 100 hours being played in a one-day match, for instance, or 40 hours being played in a T20 match. And you can probably hold up that persona to perform at the most on the edge, being aggressive about it. But the moment you step out of the field, it's a different ball game altogether, because life is not under the overs. Life is not well defined in the set of time-bound rules that sport gives. So these players find themselves at sea, many of them find themselves at sea because when real issues creep up, they can't cope with it because their mental strength or mental fortitude or physical attributes are primed to perform on the playing field, on the giving day in a set parameters. And life doesn't give you that kind of set parameters. And now when you look at these uncertain times, the, I mean, the forget parameters, there's nothing for you to have a yardstick for you to perform, I mean, or keep yourself sane. So, but to also go into the issue in terms of some of the challenges sports person's face and what exactly can be done in terms of addressing them. The first place I think an open conversation about it is often missing in many circumstances. There's no real, there's very little talk about, say mental health challenges. I mean, there's a lot of talk about fitness, there's a lot of talk about ups and downs in careers, but there's very little honest conversation about mental health challenges as sports person's face. So yeah, recently two cricketers, two former Indian cricketers came out, say that they had grappled with depression at some point in their careers. And there, I mean, one is Praveen Kumar, fast forward, another one is Robin Utthappa. So Praveen's case was, he was, when he came out around in Jan or something like that. Yeah, it was in January this year. So he was saying, and he lives in Meera, saying he had nobody to talk to, because nobody would understand what I am talking about, what I am feeling, because he said that he was hearing voices, he couldn't understand what is happening with him. He was always on the edge, always angry, always in some sort of aggressive frame of mind. And then one fine day he took his car out and he went on to the highway near Aridwar. He just parked his car and he was gonna use his gun onto himself. He was gonna shoot himself. Then suddenly he saw the picture of his kids and he decided not to take that extreme step, came back, he addressed this issue, he spoke to experts and he could deal with it, he could come out to such an extent that he can be open about it to the media. And that is a big step for a sports person because when you open up about a weakness, that can be held against him in the next team selection for instance or even in a job for Praveen Kumar's case, he is more or less stopped playing so he could have a coaching career. But who would want a mentally weak coach to lead a side? So these are questions that creep into the player's mind when they have to address mental issues, even address physical issues, beyond that because since mental issues are much more, I mean less defined and very subjective issue, they are scared to address it even if the team has experts or even if an entity like the Sports Authority of India has psychologists in the panel to address these, no player would be open about it unless they trust the system, unless they know for sure that it won't be used against them. And like I said in the first point that we addressed here, sport, the mental 42 that you need or mental strength that we spoke about on the sporting field is very different from what these players face or what the players or what we need as individuals outside the playing field. And while maintaining this persona of an infallible sports person, they're just, it's a shallow crust and it can easily be broken once real life situations catch up with them. And as far as now is concerned, when things are opening up and when action has not started, sporting action has not started, training itself has not started at all and cricket establishment or the Sports Authority of India or the Indian Olympic Association, they're talking about some certain sport getting into training, Southern athletes getting into training, but still the point that they are addressing is more the physical side of it where they need to be sure that the players don't get infected, they need to be sure that the players don't get injured, but they are not talking about in what mental state these players would be coming out after a three month period of lockdown and many of them being away from their families and their families in some cities where things are spiking and so that, so it's a very complex issue and it needs addressing. And the authorities are not doing it the right way in the sense they should look at it in a much more holistic approach where it's not just about creating avenue for the player to open up, but creating avenue in such a way that to give that confidence to the player that this is okay. Like I was mentioning about grassroots and coaches getting equipped to deal with- Yeah, because I think two issues like you pointed out is one is that, like you just mentioned, there's a perception that any kind of conversation about this is a weakness. And second is the idea that, very wrong perception of course. And the second is the idea that if I do this, my career is gone for a toss. Like if I talk as a player, I can never be a coach. If I talk as a coach, no one. So in order to address both of these, I would think that, and from the very beginning, it needs to be done. I think which is what you are reaching as to starting to talk. Yeah, so at the grassroots level, coaches focus on getting the basics, right? That's the cliche talk that we hear from any grassroots coach or any grassroots program. So if you're a footballer, they'll teach you how to kick and run with the ball and understand the game and understand passing and trapping and all these things. But there should also be a, I mean, the coach, I mean, and it's a very important role. So for instance, when we talk about education of kids, we talk about kindergarten teachers or primary teachers. But one of the papers that they learn as during their teacher training course is child psychology. And the child psychology that kindergarten teacher learns is different from the child psychology a beard teacher learns. And I have done my beard, so I understand that difference. TTC course and the beard course. So this is education as well. Sport is education because there is a lot of training involved and you are training young minds to become champions at one point or young minds to become healthy individuals in a healthy society. So sport is a social building activity. And so you want to focus not just on making a great goal scored out of a boy, whether he reaches the higher leagues or whether he reaches the national team or whatever not withstanding, you want to develop him with a healthy mind and a healthy body. So the grassroots coaches should have some kind of training to address the mind aspect of the game. So a simple thing like when competition happens and I used to wrestle. So before I entered the bout, I would feel tremendous pressure because it's an individual sport and it's a win or lose situation and you are to blame if you lose and you are to blame if you win also. So it works both ways. And a simple thing from my coach is saying that it's okay to be tensed. And you can deal with it. The moment you enter the bout, you will be relaxed because once the bout starts, you will flow into it. So, but nobody says that. You realize that after the bout saying that, yeah, after it started, it was fine. But then the cycle continues and it slowly builds on you that pressure that there is no release well and you don't understand what is happening with you and this is a sporting scenario I'm talking about. While a larger picture is whether you are acuping the kid boy or girl to deal with pressure situations, real life pressure situations that will arise later in life. So sport at the grassroots or sport training even at the IS level, it's not about performance as such which is sadly what it has become but it's also about building a healthy system that everyone can tap into and everyone can aspire to reach a healthy state of mind and healthy state of body. So that is the focus that should be there. And to get that focus, you need to address both the factors, the physicality of it as well as the mental side of it. And then when I mean, see again, life is not perfect and a lot of things can come up and mental state of being is different for different people and all that, but at least the player, when this hits you, you would be ready to be open about it and have conversations or address it by talking to experts and things like that. So that is the culture that we need to develop. Thank you so much Desi for talking to us. Thanks. That's all we have in this episode of Let's Talk. We'll be back tomorrow with the latest news developments from the country. Until then, keep watching NewsClick.