“We kept on moving.. moving moving.. showed no signs of slowing down.. up, up, up we go!”
Last month, a music video titled ‘Up We Go’ was released as the ‘Kerala Anthem’ as a tribute to the much hyped “Kerala Model”. In the video, Kerala Chief Minister Comrade Pinarayi Vijayan is shown leading the way with Comrade ‘Coronavirus Slayer’ KK Shailaja behind him and others like Congress MP Shashi Tharoor following them.
The video showed how KK Shailaja and the Pinarayi government in Kerala has been leading the fight against the Wuhan Virus flashing pictures of articles from the Al Jazeera, Huff Post, The Guardian, etc.
KK Shailaja was elevated to the status of a Messiah by a few media houses both inside and outside the country. In May 2020, BBC interviewed KK Shailaja on Kerala’s success story in containing the Chinese virus.
In this interview, the ‘corona slayer’ made several factually incorrect statements while responding to a question about number of COVID19 deaths and even called the Goa state, a Union Territory.
She belittled the efforts of other states like Goa in the interview saying that it had no hospitals to which Goa CM Dr. Pramod Sawant gave a strongly worded response in a series of tweets. He mentioned that Goa has outstanding healthcare facilities with Goa Medical College being one of the oldest and finest medical colleges in Asia, where for decades, large numbers of non-Goan patients from neighbouring states were getting treatment and also corrected Minister Shailaja that Goa is a full-fledged state and not a Union Territory.
After floating in the air amidst the hollow adulations, the ‘rock star’ Health Minister has finally landed coming to the grips of reality. Over the past few days, the Kerala Model has been seeing a spike in the number of Wuhan virus cases. Yesterday, the state saw 1725 fresh cases of the Wuhan virus. Kerala has hit more than 46,000 cases overtaking Madhya Pradesh which has more than 45,000 cases. It is to be noted that Kerala has a much lower population (3.5 Crores) than Madhya Pradesh (8.5 Crores).
On top of this, the ‘rock star’ Health Minister KK Shailaja has said that she expects the cases to rise at a pace of 10,000-20,000 per day.
However, the PR agents of Pinarayi who were glorifying Comrades Pinarayi and KK Shailaja and the so called success of the ‘left politics’ and “Kerala Model” have gone on mute.
The lines from the music video ‘Up We Go’ – “We kept on moving.. moving moving.. showed no signs of slowing down.. up, up, up we go!” – and the picture of Comrades leading the way has now gained an ironical twist.