India paying the price for choosing divisive issues and ignoring substantive ones

More than two weeks into lockdown and the strain shows. We are now in a quandary between fighting the virus and fighting the effects of a world that has stopped.

Food, income and occupation are all essential and they cannot be provided by everyone sitting at home. Yes, certain areas have been marked out as “essential services’ but across societies and nations, we see the same problems. Those essential services need planning, action and movement to reach the inactive.

And if the lockdown continues, the future looks disastrous. Our civilization has not been built on staying put. At the same time, human social interaction is what the virus depends on. Think of every cliche about impossible choices, and we are living them.

We now also pay the price for picking emotive issues over substance when it comes to choosing our elected representatives. Racism, Islamophobia, xenophobia and majoritarian supremacy might excite people’s conversations and propel their worst insecurities, but they do not give you extra ability to deal with a major health catastrophe that really doesn’t care about your bigotry, hatred and prejudice.

Governments led by “strong” rightwing leaders have been the worst prepared for a global pandemic and the most irresponsible. They have, in a pattern, claimed their own lands were immune based on some ethnic, historical, cultural, geographical, climactic privilege. They have propagated nonsensical cures for something for which there is no cure as yet. They have been arrogant and refused to listen to experts. And they have been exposed as having no contingency plans in place.

In India, we see various state governments better prepared and more forthcoming about their actions. The problem immediately is the lack of coordination. All-party meetings and Central coordination with state chief ministers took place only after the lockdown began. We know the disastrous effect of this gross and criminal irresponsibility on India’s migrant workers. Many are still trapped, with little food or shelter.

The Central government had the time to prepare a video of a graphic image of Narendra Modi doing yoga. It had the time to put together a parallel fund for people to donate to. It had the time to set up Modi’s various speeches to the people of India about ringing bells, clapping, lighting candles. But it did not have the time to organise itself to deal with this virus.

It ignored doctors and their needs, which is the most criminal transgression of all. The financial package it came up with is too little, too disorganised and too scatty to make any dent in the hardships people are going through. We now see the effects of cutting spending on public health and overspending on war.

A small group of women in Bhind, Madhya Pradesh, rushed to their banks to withdraw the Rs 500 paid by the Centre into their Jan Dhan accounts. Social distancing was not maintained so the police shoved them into vans and kept them in custody for five hours. They were released on bail bonds of Rs 10,000. This is the reality of India. And no amount of banging thalis and singing songs is going to change that.

The economic situation needs more, if India is to survive. Developed nations have put together strong welfare packages to tide people over. India so far has come up with pittances. Let us not forget that our economy has been on a downward spiral for almost four years now. States have not been paid their dues, whether Central allocations or GST. The notice for “immediate” disbursal has only come now, when we are in crisis mode.

Some economists have talked about a partial lift of the lockdown, of allowing some industries to restart or at the very least, for some plan to work out how we are to survive post-Covid19. These are the sort of people who are ignored by Government of India because it is in permanent publicity mode.

There is a tide in the affairs of men, to quote Shakespeare’s Brutus via Agatha Christie, when a society needs to wake up and look beyond the obvious. We have reached there now. We need more international coordination. We need more internal coordination. Perhaps, we even need, gasp, a “national government”, inviting more political parties in.

Because what we have now, is just not working. And if we don’t do something soon, most people won’t even have pots and pans left to clang.