When Prime Minister Narendra Modi yesterday compared India’s current energy crisis to its battle against COVID-19, the intent was to project a image of national resilience. However, for millions of Indians, the comparison has acted more like a trigger than a balm. As 25-day waiting periods for LPG refills become the new ‘lockdown,’ and queues at petrol pumps mirror the desperate lines of the second wave, the nation is forced to ask: Are we witnessing a triumph of spirit, or a repeat of the planning failures that left the most vulnerable to fend for themselves?
The Sudden Lockdown That Brought India to a Halt
The first shock came with the nationwide lockdown in March 2020.
The announcement came with only a few hours’ notice. Overnight, the country stopped. Trains stopped. Buses stopped. Markets closed. Factories shut down.
For many businesses and salaried employees, it meant disruption.
For daily wage earners, it meant the sudden loss of income.
For migrant workers, it meant the loss of both work and shelter.
For families with patients, it meant panic.
India has tens of millions of migrant workers who travel from villages to cities in search of work. When the lockdown began, many suddenly had no job, no wages, and no transport to go home.
What followed will remain one of the most painful chapters of that period.
Men, women and children began walking along highways to reach their villages. Some walked hundreds of kilometres. Some pushed elderly parents in handcarts. Some carried small children on their shoulders or on wheeled luggage.
Many collapsed from exhaustion.
Some died in accidents on the roads.
One tragedy shook the entire country. Near Aurangabad in Maharashtra, a group of exhausted migrant workers slept on a railway track, thinking trains were not running. A train passed over them early in the morning.
They were simply trying to go home.
Those images still haunt the memory of the country. They forced people to ask a very simple question. Could a lockdown not have been planned with a little more care for the poorest citizens?
Migrant Workers’ Long Walks Become a National Trauma
Another disturbing memory of that time was the manner in which lockdown rules were enforced in many places.
Videos circulated across the country showing people being beaten with sticks by police for stepping outside. Some were punished. Some were humiliated publicly.
In a time when people needed reassurance and compassion, many encountered fear instead.
At the policy level, too, some responses appeared strangely symbolic. Citizens were asked to beat utensils and light lamps as a show of solidarity. While the intention may have been to boost morale, families struggling for food, transport and medicines found little comfort in such gestures.
Hospitals Under Strain as Pandemic Exposes Weak Systems
The healthcare system was also under severe strain.
Doctors and nurses repeatedly spoke about shortages of protective equipment in the early months. Many hospitals did not have enough masks, gloves or protective suits. Testing kits were limited. Healthcare workers continued their duty despite serious risks, and many of them themselves became infected.
Then came the devastating second wave in 2021.
Hospitals ran out of beds. Families went from hospital to hospital searching for admission. Oxygen cylinders became a matter of life and death. Desperate appeals flooded social media. People begged strangers for help to find oxygen, medicines or a hospital bed.
Outside crematoriums, long lines of vehicles waited.
The country has rarely seen such grief in recent times.
During these difficult months, society itself stepped forward. Volunteers arranged oxygen cylinders. Community groups organised food distribution. Individuals used social media networks to help complete strangers.
It was the compassion of ordinary people that carried many families through those dark days.
Tablighi Jamaat and the ‘Corona Jihad’ Myth: A Narrative of Exclusion
But another wound was inflicted during that period. Instead of treating the pandemic purely as a public health crisis, political narratives and sections of the media began blaming Muslims, particularly the Tablighi Jamaat, after a congregation at the Nizamuddin Markaz in Delhi was linked to early infections.
Soon, the entire community began to be portrayed as responsible for spreading the virus.
Hashtags like “Corona Jihad” began circulating. Rumours spread rapidly. In several places, Muslims faced harassment, boycott of businesses, and open hostility.
At a time when the country needed unity, suspicion was allowed to grow.
Courts later observed that many of the criminal cases filed against Tablighi Jamaat attendees had little basis and that, during a calamity, authorities sometimes look for a scapegoat. But the damage to social trust had already been done.
The pandemic years also unfolded against the background of the 2020 Delhi riots, which had already left dozens dead and many families displaced. For people who had already lost homes and livelihoods in that violence, the lockdown only deepened their hardship.
Even the Supreme Court of India had to step in at different moments to question aspects of pandemic management, particularly the treatment of migrant workers and the oxygen shortages during the second wave.
All this is part of the same history.
To remember the COVID years only as a success story is to forget the long walks on the highways, the silent hospitals without oxygen, the families waiting outside crematoriums, and the fear that entered millions of homes.
Energy Crisis Raises Questions About Crisis Preparedness
And now the country is being told that it will overcome the present energy crisis in the same way.
But the early signs are already worrying.
Reports have already emerged that nearly 20 percent of hotels and restaurants in some cities have shut their kitchens because commercial LPG cylinders are not available, and industry groups warn that far more may follow if supplies do not stabilise. The government has invoked provisions of the Essential Commodities Act and extended the waiting period for LPG refills to about three weeks in order to manage the limited supply.
People have begun rushing to book cylinders.
Queues are appearing at petrol pumps.
There are reports of LPG cylinders being sold on the black market.
These are early signals of anxiety spreading through the system.
If the COVID years taught the country anything, it is this: a nation’s resilience should not mean that citizens are left to struggle through a crisis on their own while symbolic gestures and reassuring speeches continue.
Indians have always shown patience when they see sincerity and competence.
This time, too, the country will endure, Insha Allah.
But one sincerely hopes that the present crisis will be handled with better planning, deeper empathy, and far greater honesty than what many people remember from the COVID years.
