Debashish Mitra
March 26, the day after the national lockdown, the country reported 657 cases of coronavirus and 12 deaths. On the hand, across the world around 470,000, 114,000 people recovered, while 21,000 deaths were reported. Sixteen days into national the lockdown, India reported 6725 cases – 10 fold increase, 227 deaths – almost 20 fold increase, ( source: covid19india.org), while the figure across the world stood at 1,600,000 cases, 356,000 recoveries and 95,000 deaths ( source: worldometers.com). In the same period, we saw the catastrophic consequences faced by the migrants in major Indian metros, locked out and thrown out of the cities, walking back hundreds of kilometres, braving all kinds of miseries to get back to their villages. Many that made it were locked out and put into quarantine and, with no evidence, hosed like carriers of a deadly disease, and scarred for life. The remaining urban poor were made to stand in line for welfare and charity, everywhere, or locked in to fend for themselves. Stories of the grim tales of economic wastage being visited on the many, under the notion that ‘live today, there can be a tomorrow’ are too many to be documented.
However, a deeper analysis of data shows an interesting outcome. Globally, of the 1.6 million cases, almost 76% are from the top 20 developed economies in the West, with similar numbers for recoveries and deaths. In India, the pattern is similar. Almost 67% of the cases are from the more developed states and 43% from the major metros and cities – the figures go to 50% if you add the state capitals and other major industrial towns. (See table) The question that begs itself is, then why this panic? Is it a panic of the rich, and the well to do? Nations or cities? After all, they are the ones who travel far and wide and frequently, so would carry the virus. Not the poor and local worker unless s/he is in infected by working for such people. This was seen in Mumbai, where a part time domestic help contracted the virus in a home of one such traveller. Was creating the current atmosphere of fear which is paralysing people across the board justified? It has turned landlords against doctors and nurses, apartment dwellers against their domestic help and created a frenzy of fear and locals against migrants, exacerbated by the much touted 500 million smart phones, invoking social media policing, and tearing apart an already fragile social fabric.
India is primarily a rural economy in terms of people employed – more than 700 million are engaged by agriculture. In states like Odisha, 80% are employed in it. The Rabi harvest is crucial for food security of the urban dwellers and the poor as most of the wheat, pulses, tomatoes potatoes and onions are harvested now – the main sources of food for the masses as well as large number of fruit crops like mangoes, melons, grapes to name a few. This has been severely impacted by the administrative lockdown and ruthless implementation by the police in many parts of the country, creating the planned fear psychosis, preventing people from coming out to work, especially in the more rural and backward areas. As a result, we are seeing a situation where prices are crashing for the farmers as they can’t move their produce, while prices rising in the cities, as the produce doesn’t reach in quantities to meet the demand. Given that the virus spread seems mainly to be urban and metro phenomena, was the sudden, unprepared national lockdown necessary? The kharif or rain fed harvest is the source of food security for the small and marginal farmers, as due to lack of irrigation, they depend on the monsoon. This is the time when rice and the minor millets are sown, which feeds them through the year. As the lockdown, like Demonesitisation has come at the crucial interface of the two, the consequences on the rural poor, the farmers and the urban poor and lower middle classes will be disastrous. Whilst formally agricultural operations are allowed, the fear psychosis is preventing resumption of full scale operations. The urban missive of maintaining ‘social distance’ while undertaking farming operations or asking farmers to combine transport using mobile apps, continue to show how far removed urban India is from its rural countryside, that feeds it. Clearly, as far as security is concerned, no one knows how a family sleeps in a village hut, or how close one hut is to another in villages. Achieving social distancing within a village is like convincing an investment banker in Gucci shoes to go and live in one.
Is there any established medically proven definition of what is the right lockdown, social distancing or maximum safe numbers together? Social distance varies from 1metre to 2 metres or more, group numbers range from 2 to 20, from no exemptions for families from the same home to complete exemption, there is no one way. The key is measurement and testing. Measure the temperature, test and quarantine if found to have the virus. Not this one size fits all approach, being practiced currently. The statistics and rates of growth in number of the cases show this too. If the same number is taken against state-wise populations and its distribution, the decisions of lockdowns and their extensions look even more questionable. Take Odisha, it has 48 cases as of date in a population of 43 million. Of the 48, 36 are in Bhubaneshwar and Cuttack, which have a population of 2 million. When 80% of the population is engaged in rural work and even in these cities over 50% are daily wage earners in the informal sector, how is extension of the lockdown across the state justified? The decision on closing education institutions in the cities and places of worship and entertainment is understandable, but why the rest? Protecting lives at the cost of livelihood is a question that needs serious thinking and consideration. Whilst it is understandable perhaps that since there is a correlation between the medically vulnerable category and the senior leadership of the country – the virus didn’t plan for the latter!
Contrast leadership ages in the top 20 countries of the world, who have almost 80% of the cases, this kind of national panic, despite significant deaths of the elderly is not visible. Has age of leadership got something to do with the nature of decision making? Whilst stories of industrial China starting up and Japan not closing are well known, it is perhaps less known that factories in Italy and other parts of Europe are working and never stopped despite their very significant numbers of infections and fatalities. If we have panicked with such small numbers, it is difficult to consider what will be the administrative outcome as numbers continue to rise, as they must. It seems that all thinking has gone into preparing for hospitalisation to prevent fatalities. Not to work on simple control mechanisms that allow people back to work and also get the governments’ badly needed revenues going. For example, by a simple method of checking the temperature of every employee working in the factory, a small food processing factory in semi rural Karnataka has resumed work, 100 employees are back and all are secure as everyone is tested every day. Any case found with fever is reported to the district health authorities for further action. The company works with contract farming and has just rolled out a 3,000-acre sowing plan which will involve 18,000 farm workers. It exports and, as exports have been allowed, it has begun shipments, earning valuable and badly needed foreign exchange. There must thousands of such units lying closed, which can be re-opened with simple controls of checking temperature and feeding to the government healthcare system. The same thing can be done with establishments like offices, call centres, and other elements of the service economy. It is safer, surer and easier to track at the place of employment for health of employees, than firing shotgun like and shutting down localities as and when a case is discovered. What we are seeing is the unfolding of a version of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s famous Gulag Archipelago. We can call the targeted lockdown approach the ‘Rona (weep) Archipelago’, as hundreds of small islands of population are locked down, amidst the seas of the others, free to move.
The virus will spread and then be contained, like its predecessors have and successors will. This is already visible in the top 20 developed countries mentioned. To do so successfully, requires pragmatic and courageous leadership, not the encouragement of panic and fear. Panic of possible death and fear of the police batons. For the common folk, locked out of work, and locked into cramped spaces with nowhere to go, life is truly a the choice between two unpredictable factors – the devil of the virus and misery of the administrative deep blue seas.
As Nelson Mandela said, “The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear”.
Can we shake of this induced fear, take firm, but measured steps to get back to work, and take back our freedom, from ourselves?
