On Survival and Revival
In his column for The Indian Express, former Union Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, draws up a list of nine keywords related to COVID-19 to mount an attack on the central government’s response to the pandemic. Describing the prime minister as the “Commander” and citizens as “foot soldiers” in the battle against the novel coronavirus, Chidambaram argues that centre has thus far fallen short on policy, economic and social grounds.
The Poor: The proportion of the population that has been left to fend for itself for 21+19 days. Their survival does not appear to be a priority of the central government. Chief Ministers are at their wits’ end. Hunger is widespread, malnutrition is entrenched. Why the government cannot allocate up to Rs 65,000 crore (out of an expenditure budget of Rs 30 lakh crore) to provide cash support to up to 50 per cent of the families, is a mystery.
Gandhi at the Time of the Spanish Flu
Goaplkrishna Gandhi, in his column for The Telegraph, raises a question that offers pertinent insights into effectively handing a crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic: what would Mahatma Gandhi have done now, were he alive?
Thumbing down pages of history to analyse Gandhi’s responses to the Spanish flu in 1918, his grandson puts forth five suggestions, including the need for the centre to “recognize the integrated experience and inherent good sense of” the citizens and “seek public counsel on the measures particularly as related to restrictions.”
Gandhi was at his intense best when dealing with illness and epidemics, finding some quirky but very specific, practical and demanding ‘solutions’, in which the enforcing of hygiene regimes was central. Though actuated by his own sharply developed sense of the physical body’s working, he was very consultative — seeking and considering the advice of medical practitioners, both ‘Western’ and ‘Traditional’, but keeping well away from superstitious, ritualistic or irrational nostrums.
A Long, Grim Summer
In her column for The Indian Express, Tavleen Singh proffers a grim reminder that “an ugly summer lies ahead because there are other battles to fight.”
Laying down the spectrum of attendant challenges that need to be addressed once the novel coronavirus is slightly under control, Singh, in a sharp critique of the machinations that have left India bitterly divided, warns that “the battles that lie ahead will not be won if we are distracted by violence, hatred and communal tensions.”
A grim, ugly summer lies ahead because there are other battles to fight. As soon as the virus is brought slightly under control there will be the economic problems. They are huge. It is not just small businesses that have started hurting already, big businesses have as well. And, there is so far not the faintest sign of a strategy to deal with what could be the worst recession India has faced since 1947. From Modi’s ministers too many comments of the helpless kind have begun to come.
In Times of Crisis, the Role of the Opposition
In his weekly column for The Hindustan Times, Chanakya chooses to explore a pertinent aspect of governance during a crisis: the role of the opposition.
Describing the responses to the COVID-19 pandemic across the political spectrum as “a spirit of cooperation that is unprecedented in recent times”, the author argues that constructive opposition has to begin with the premise that the government’s intent is noble. “But this does not mean it has to support each measure; instead it should remain vigilant and provide constant feedback,” he cautions.
In normal times, in any democracy, especially in a parliamentary democracy like India, the Opposition’s job is to ruthlessly critique the government, point to gaps in each policy decision, speak up for those who are not being heard in decision-making, mobilise both grassroots and elite opinion against the ruling dispensation, and eventually, through elections, displace the party in power and win a democratic mandate.
Reading the Mind of Perplexed Migrant Labour
Julio Ribeiro, former police commissioner of Mumbai and DG of Punjab Police, writing for The Tribune, argues that while Prime Minister Modi has chosen “life over livelihood”, “unfortunately, half of our people live on the margins of existence.”
Offering a novel suggestion to the mass migrant crisis that appears to be spiraling out of control, Ribeiro suggests that a calendar for reunion with families can still be drawn. “Can the laws be tweaked to dock every party with 75% of electoral bond money and use it to fly migrant labour home?” he asks.
The PM’s advisers should have anticipated this reaction. The signs had appeared in the earlier phase of the lockdown. In Delhi, migrant labour, housed in shelters meant for the homeless, burnt down two such shelters to attract attention to their plight. In Surat (Gujarat), migrant labour, hailing largely from Odisha, came out on the streets and set public and private property on fire to voice their protest.
The ‘Revolutionary in the Garb of a Scientist’
Writing for The Indian Express, Amitava Chakraborty contextualises the history of hydroxychloroquine in India through a key but forgotten figure of the country’s freedom struggle - Prafulla Chandra Ray.
A scientist and freedom fighter who was “conscious of the impact the setting up of a factory would have on India’s knowledge reserve,” Ray had established Bengal Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals Ltd in 1892 which produced chloroquine during the days of the Raj and is today poised to make hydroxychloroquine - seen across the globe as a ray of hope against the novel coronavirus.
Established in 1892 with an investment of Rs 700, Bengal Chemicals was among colonial India’s first step towards self-reliance. With Dr Amulyacharan Bose, his student and a successful medical practitioner, Ray moved to create a thriving enterprise that would help prevent an economic disaster by providing jobs to the younger generation.It was, however, in a setting similar to April 2020 that resolved Ray to take the company to greater heights.
Ease Shutdown or We May Get Worst of Both Worlds
Expending no time in getting to the crux of his hypothesis, Swaminathan Iyer begins his Sunday column for The Times of India with - “Forget caution, India should rapidly ease the Covid shutdown to revive the economy.”
Contesting the effectiveness of a stringent lockdown as opposed to adopting other measures of enforcing social distancing, Iyer strongly cautions against a “gradual easing” of the lockdown, warning that doing so “may give India the worst of both worlds” - health wise and economically.
An exception was socialist Sweden, which encouraged social distancing but avoided any shutdown. Compared with European countries with shutdowns, Sweden’s infection and death rates are middling. It alone has saved its economy while avoiding a medical disaster, and medically outperformed many shutdown countries.
A Virus, Social Democracy, and Dividends for Kerala
Patrick Heller, professor of sociology and international Affairs at Brown University, undertakes a critical assessment of Kerala’s strategic response to the COVID-19 crisis in his essay for The Hindu.
Explaining that the onus of containing the spread lies in the efforts of the states, he analyses how Kerala went about flattening the curve, implementing measures in slowing the spread and addressing welfare consequences. Heller’s primary insights indicate that Kerala has managed the crisis by building on legacies of egalitarianism, social rights and public trust.
In Kerala, the social pact itself emerged from recurrent episodes of popular mobilisation — from the temple entry movement of the 1930s, to the peasant and workers’ movements in the 1950s and 1960s, a mass literacy movement in the 1980s, the Kerala Sasthra Sahithya Parishad (KSSP)-led movement for people’s decentralised planning in the 1990s, and, most recently, various gender and environmental movements.
To be Born a Sikh...
Writing for The Tribune, Ira Pande recalls her growing up years in Nainital, admitting that the current pandemic has enabled her to better appreciate the financial sacrifices of her parents and in-laws towards fostering compassion and camaraderie in their respective communities.
Looking at how the current crisis has shaped up and the humanitarian cries for help it has raised, Pande “applauds” the Sikh community for “not bothering to ensure whether they have Aadhaar cards or wear a turban, they have fed thousands of poor and homeless people in the spirit of sewa that is their central tenet of belief.”
I want to ask all the holy men and women of all other religions whether they can’t follow this splendid example. The great Hindu shrines alone can bail out all those migrants who have lost their jobs and homes. Instead, one hears with disgust how medical teams and health workers are beaten up and attacked, how poor vegetable vendors are chased away if they are members of a particular religion and how members of one community go after members of another for fear of contamination. Do such people even deserve to be called human?
How to Learn to Stop Worrying and Love WFH
In his column for The Times of India, Indrajit Hazra offers a passionate defense of the benefits of working from home. He argues, albeit cheekily, that what started as a knee-jerk reaction by companies to the COVID-19 pandemic actually makes sense economically for organisations and is technologically a bridge that has long been crossed.
Hazra supplements his arguments with a Standford University study from 2015, which found that workers of a Chinese company “utilise worktime far better, are far less distracted, take shorter breaks, and take less time off.”
Of course, many of our employers — especially those who were once goers themselves — will come up with ‘but it’s not in our DNA!’ or ‘culturally, we work from offices, not homes’. They wouldn’t sound too different from what our communists did in the 1980s when opposing computerisation, that imperialist (now they would have said ‘fascist’) bogey that was to turn India into an unemployed middle-class wasteland.
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