India’s anti-COVID strategy is premised on a mistaken idea and a pretence | Sanjay Srivastava

The Indian Express

India’s anti-COVID strategy is premised on a mistaken idea and a pretence

Epidemics are social dramas whose plots are made from the bricks and mortar of local material. An understanding of this will tell us who lives, who dies and what kind of society emerges.

Written by Sanjay Srivastava | Updated: April 1, 2020 9:37:05 am

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On Tuesday, the flow had almost ceased at the Gujarat-MP border that had seen a sea of migrant labourers for almost a week. (Express Photo by Gajendra Yadav) The odd thing about an epidemic is that though it might be global in nature, it is impossible to understand its impact without paying close attention to the local conditions within which it circulates. Calls for global solidarity in a time of crisis are well-meaning. However, epidemics are social dramas whose plots are made from the bricks and mortar of local material. An understanding of this will tell us who lives, who dies and what kind of society emerges in the wake of a calamity that no poor country is equipped to handle.
The most significant aspect of life in countries such as India is informality — of jobs, living arrangements, healthcare, mobility and much else. We know, for example, that around 90 per cent of the population works in the non-formal sector, around 20 per cent of Indians are internal migrants (the vast majority moving across district and state boundaries for informal employment) and that, in many of our major cities, as much as 40 per cent of the population lives in informal settlements. Informality is the state of life beyond regulation. It is also a condition of great helplessness, where the capacity to exercise choice over one’s destiny is limited. For the majority of India’s (and the world’s) population, informality is not a staging post on the way to formality. It is a persistent condition of life with no indications of a dramatic change.
Yet, in India, we seem to have decided to not address the context that is most relevant to the conditions of life that have the greatest relevance to the majority of the population. This is the population that has no choice but to stay outdoors, live 10 to a room and be mobile as a livelihood strategy. There can be no universal strategy — or computer simulation — that can provide solutions for the present crisis. For, there is no “universal humanity”. While we share biology, we are fundamentally distanced by the histories that produce the social and economic conditions within which we live. This calls for specific strategies for dealing with COVID-19.
Editorial | Exodus of migrant labour from cities is an enormous human crisis, and an impending economic one
First, the issue of livelihoods. This has, so far, been primarily addressed through an anti-virus strategy that is premised on the idea that India is primarily a land of formal offices, industrial establishments and hotels. Indian cities contain some 10 million street vendors and street vending — just one form of informal work — makes up approximately 15 per cent of the urban workforce. If we were to add the circuits of interdependence — family members and those part of the product supply chain — then, according to sociologist Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay’s estimates, street vending is second only to agriculture as a source of livelihood. Our cities are, then, spaces of intense and involuntary intermingling and a ban on such activity is a matter of further immiseration for millions. Should the government not have consulted bodies such as the National Hawkers Federation for policy measures that take account of the kind of cities we have rather than the imagined ones?
Second, while Indian cities are home to long-term rural migrants, these are not populations who have severed ties to their villages. They return home for a variety of reasons, the most significant being in moments of catastrophe such as slum demolitions, illnesses and job losses. And, of course, now the virus. The village is the hospice of the city. It provides treatment, rehabilitation and healing to the city’s underclass, returning them, without charge, to the city as an endless supply of labour. As might be imagined, circular migration is the highest among the poorest of urban populations and Muslims, Scheduled Castes and Tribes form the largest number of such migrants.
Opinion | At the stroke of midnight on March 24, India suspended ‘politics’. The effects will stay with us
Those who have no means of support in the city head home to the village in times of hardship. While some complain that circular migration holds back urbanisation, were it not for this extraordinary and constant to-and-fro movement between the city and the village, the former would be overwhelmed with the debris it makes out of the bodies of the urban poor. As the poor build the city (literally, since the construction industry is the largest employer of seasonal migrants), their key hope of relief from its misery is the ability to retreat to the village. Under current circumstances, they neither have the means of survival in the city nor are able to return to their villages. And those of them who have managed to scramble back will continue to live — for how long, who knows? — in the shadow of a virus they might carry. But they are out of sight of the broad-brush policy of lockdown.
Notwithstanding the persistence and overwhelming evidence of informality as a social and economic fact — across cities in particular — processes of policy-making and governance are based on the pretence that the model most suited towards administering people and places is one that borrows from an ideal-type. That is, while the actually existing conditions of urban life might call for methods of governance based on a localised understanding of actual conditions of life, what we invariably get is aspirational policymaking. Aspirational policymaking —we want our cities to become like Singapore and New York, so we think we can apply their policies at home — has little concern for the common good. It is based on the spurious idea of an India that must keep pace with the “global” world through acting “globally”. We build gated communities to keep problems out, rather than deal with them. Similarly, the consequences of aspirational policy-making are rarely considered. For, like much else, the task of dying and suffering is easily outsourced to those who can be locked out.

India: Beware of a lopsided lockdown | Jean Drèze (26 March 2020)

The Hindu
March 26, 2020 00:02 IST

Beware of a lopsided lockdown

  Jean Drèze

The poor seem to count for very little in the Central government’s curfew plan

“I am willing to go hungry if there is no other way to stop this virus, but how will I explain that to my children?” We heard these poignant words two days ago from Nemi Devi of Dumbi village in Latehar district, Jharkhand. Her son and husband, both migrant workers, are stranded far away. In village after village, many other women expressed similar worries. And that was even before the Prime Minister announced a drastic 21-day lockdown, from Wednesday.
The enormity of the coronavirus crisis is gradually dawning on India. For you and me, it is still in the future. But for many informal-sector workers and their families, the crisis is already in full swing: there is no work, and resources are running out. Things are all set to get worse as the privileged hoard with abandon and food prices go north.

Also Read

Dressing a wounded economy

 Hopefully, the Central government’s decision to impose a 21-day lockdown will prove right in due course. But the lockdown (a virtual curfew) is crying out for relief measures, including income support for poor families. As it happens, most of them already receive a limited form of income support: food rations under the Public Distribution System (PDS). Under the National Food Security Act, two-thirds of Indian families (75% and 50% in rural and urban areas, respectively) are covered. In most States, including the poorest, the PDS works — not perfectly, but well enough to protect the bulk of the population from hunger.

Use excess food stock

The PDS is the country’s most important asset in this situation. It is essential to keep it going, even to expand it, in terms of both coverage and entitlements. Fortunately, India has gigantic excess food stocks. In fact, it has carried excess food stocks (more than twice the buffer-stock norms) for almost 20 years, and this is the time to use them. Nothing prevents the Central government from, say, doubling PDS rations for three or even six months as an emergency measure. That will not make up for most people’s loss of income, but it will ensure that there is food in the house at least.
Some bold steps are required to make food distribution effective. For instance, biometric authentication (fingerprint scanning) is best removed at this time — it is a source of exclusion as well as a health hazard. Distribution needs to be staggered and tightly supervised, to avoid crowds and cheating at the ration shop. Dealers who are caught cheating must be swiftly punished. All this is well within the realm of possibility; the main thing is to release the stocks without delay.

Also Read

A long road: On India’s 21-day coronavirus lockdown

 Having said this, the PDS is not enough. For one thing, many poor people are still excluded from it. Large-scale cash transfers are also required, starting with advance payment of social security pensions and a big increase in pension amounts (the Central government’s contribution has stagnated at a measly ₹200 per month since 2006). Here, one possible hurdle is the payment system. Many pensioners collect their pension from “business correspondents” (BCs) – a kind of human automated teller machine (ATM), who dispenses money on behalf of the bank. The problem is, unlike ATMs, most BCs use biometric authentication rather than smart cards. And mass biometric authentication could accelerate the transmission of the novel coronavirus.

Payment arrangements

Ideally, biometric authentication should be abandoned for now. Even if it is not, many BCs may vanish for fear of infection (most of them are poorly-paid employees of poorly-regulated private entities). Under both scenarios, something has to be done to ensure safe crowd management at the bank. New payment arrangements are also possible. For instance, social security pensions could be paid in cash at the panchayat bhavan on a given day of the month, obviating the need for everyone to go to the bank: this has been done in Odisha for years, with good results. Cash could also be disbursed, with due safeguards, through anganwadis or self-help groups. Cash transfers need not be limited to social security pensions. Revamping the PDS and social security pensions would go a long way, but a significant proportion of vulnerable families are likely to fall through the cracks. Further, food rations may prevent hunger but people have many other basic needs; they will need money to cope with this spell of unemployment.
Coronavirus | Interactive map of confirmed coronavirus cases in India
There are several possible ways of extending the reach of cash transfers beyond pensions. For instance, money could be sent to the accounts of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act job-card holders, or Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) beneficiaries, or PDS cardholders. How these lists are best used and combined is a context-specific question, perhaps best handled at the State level (my sense is that in many States, the MGNREGA job-cards list is the best starting point).
Coronavirus | Pandemic fallout revives talk of universal basic income
These are just some examples of possible emergency measures. Many other valuable suggestions have been made, relating for instance to midday meals, community kitchens and relief camps for stranded migrant workers. The first step is to make relief measures an integral part of the lockdown plan. Failing that, it may do more harm than good. For one thing, a hungry and enfeebled population is unlikely to fight the virus effectively. A constructive lockdown should empower people to fight back together, not treat them like sheep.
Finally, Centre-State cooperation is essential. Many State governments have already initiated valuable social-security measures, but they are far from adequate. The Central government, for its part, has been struck with inexplicable paralysis on this. Adequate relief measures require big money (lakhs of crores of rupees) from the Central government. Implementation, however, should be led by the States. They all have their own circumstances and methods. The Central government is unlikely to do better on their behalf. If it foots the bill, that will be a good start.
Jean Drèze is Visiting Professor at the Department of Economics, Ranchi University

India: The finance minister’s Covid-19 relief package is helpful, but there are gaping holes in it | Jean Dreze (28 March 2020)

The Economic Times

View: The finance minister’s Covid-19 relief package is helpful, but there are gaping holes in it

​​How are they supposed to feed themselves and their families for 21 days, possibly much longer, without any work opportunities? Rickshaw-pullers, construction workers, migrant labourers and many other groups are also at risk. Some are already on the brink of starvation.

ET CONTRIBUTORS|

Last Updated: Mar 28, 2020, 10.03 AM IST

By Jean Drèze

Even as the novel coronavirus continues to spread, a humanitarian crisis is looming over India. Just think about, say, landless agricultural labourers -- there are more than 14 crore of them ( bit.ly/2UEpsxw) -- who live in the shadow of hunger at the best of times. How are they supposed to feed themselves and their families for 21 days, possibly much longer, without any work opportunities? Rickshaw-pullers, construction workers, migrant labourers and many other groups are also at risk. Some are already on the brink of starvation.

The relief package announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday, Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Package (PMGKP), is a step in the right direction. But this package is more modest than it sounds. Indeed, the budget has been padded. For instance, by including Rs16,000 crore of pre-committed Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) expenditure, and Rs5,600 crore for Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) scheme wage increases that had already been notified by the rural development ministry on March 23 ( bit.ly/39l17SI).

The release of excess foodgrain stocks is billed at so-called economic cost, when in fact, their opportunity cost is much lower. (This is an old accounting anomaly for which the FM is not responsible.) And the funds being sought from construction workers’ welfare funds don’t really belong to the Union government. If we focus on novel relief measures funded by the Centre, the budget is likely to be closer to Rs1 lakh crore than Rs1.7 lakh crore.

The relief package rightly builds on food rations, as well as cash transfers. The food-related measures are largely welcome, including the doubling of foodgrain rations for an initial period of three months, and the addition of pulses to the public distribution system (PDS). Many poor people, however, are still excluded from the PDS -- all the more so as GoI is still using 2011 population figures to calculate state-wise PDS coverage under the National Food Security Act. Using projected 2020 population figures, instead of 2011 figures, would make it possible for state governments to issue a good number of new ration cards. Even if this happens, it will remain important to supplement food rations with cash transfers.

The PMGKP’s framework for cash transfers, however, is far from perfect. First, social security pensions for the elderly, widows and the differently abled have received short shrift once again. GoI's contribution to social security pensions has stagnated at a measly Rs200 per month since 2006, despite repeated appeals for more. It should have been raised to Rs1,000 per month at least, on a permanent basis. Instead, pensioners are getting a meagre one-off grant of Rs1,000, at a cost of just Rs3,000 crore.

Second, the case for using women’s Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) accounts as the main destination for emergency cash transfers (worth Rs31,000 crore) is not clear. The list of MNREGA job cards would probably be a better choice. That list consists mainly of poor households, and is fairly comprehensive. The PMJDY list includes many middle-class individuals, and excludes many poor people.

PMJDY accounts were opened en masse in a tearing hurry, and many of them are now suspended, or seeded with wrong Aadhaar numbers, or unknown to the account holder, or stashed with black money. The job-cards list is more transparent, reliable, well-tested and pro-poor than the PMJDY one. Also, it is a natural complement to social security pensions, since pensioners are mostly out of the workforce. Its main limitation is that it is a rural list -- if it is used, a different list (PMJDY or other) would have to be used in urban areas.

Third, the cash-transfer amounts are small. The PMGKP allocation of Rs31,000 crore for transfers to PMJDY accounts covers a monthly allowance of Rs500 per month for about 20 crore recipients, for an initial period of three months. It is impossible for a family of average size to survive on Rs500 a month.

Whether it is food or cash, the disbursement system will be a huge challenge ( bit.ly/2UmyFeL). With adequate resources, however, this trio -- PDS, social security pensions and other cash transfers -- can go a long way in building a safety net. But some people are bound to fall through the cracks. To avoid a tragedy, the relief system needs a fourth leg -- emergency lines that can be accessed anywhere by anyone who is at risk of hunger.

There is some experience with emergency lines. The ‘KBK districts -- Kalahandi, Bolangir and Koraput -- of Odisha used to have feeding centres for destitute persons in rural areas, until 2015 when GoI pulled the plug on this valuable scheme. In Jharkhand, gram panchayats (GPs) have an emergency fund of Rs10,000 to help anyone who is at risk of starvation. In Rajasthan, GPs used to have two sacks of grain for the same purpose. Many states have community kitchens where anyone can get a simple, nutritious meal at a nominal price.

These arrangements are just a fraction of what is required today, but they show the way. Building on these experiences, effective emergency lines can be put in place. State governments are best placed to do this (some are on the job). But the central government must provide resources, starting with foodgrain -- the godowns are overflowing. Support for emergency lines is a gaping hole in the finance minister’s relief package.

Emergency lines have to be put in place <right away> -- within a few days, not a few weeks. Horrendous stories have already started pouring in of people going hungry, notably among migrant workers who are marooned all over the place. This is not the time to ask for their ration card or Aadhaar number -- they must receive immediate, unconditional public assistance.

All this is about income support. Needless to say, much else ( bit.ly/2WReNSH) needs to be done by way of humanitarian relief, including effective health services and nutrition programmes for children (largely discontinued today as anganwadis and schools are closed). As and when the situation improves, MNREGA will also become important again, both for immediate relief and for economic reconstruction. The government’s action plan must urgently move beyond the limited measures initiated this week.

The writer is visiting professor, Department of Economics, Ranchi University, Jharkhand

(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are that of the writer. The facts and opinions expressed here do not reflect the views of www.economictimes.com.)

Pakistan - Karachi: Why the Covid-19 crisis is an urban crisis

Dawn

Why the Covid-19 crisis is an urban crisis

Approximately 60% of Karachi's population lives in informal settlements with limited access to water and sanitation. 

 

Karachi Urban Lab   Updated Mar 30, 2020 08:46pm

 

As we brace ourselves for the Covid-19 epidemic in Pakistan, we are being told to wash our hands and self-isolate. What if you are unable to do any of these things? According to the Census 2017, Pakistan's population is 207.8 million with an urban share of 75.6 million. The United Nations asserts that in 2015, 45.5% of Pakistan's urban population was living in informal settlements. Thus, an estimated 34 million people in Pakistan live in katchi abadis or urban informal settlements, where water is scarce for the most basic of needs.
In Karachi — a city of over 16 million — approximately 60% of the population lives in informal settlements with limited or no access to clean water and sanitation. Let us compare this — for a moment — with countries being devastated by Covid-19. For example, Italy and Spain, where there is almost universal access to clean water, sanitation, soap and antibacterial gels. Even with their comparatively tiny populations, the virus has spread and killed at a pace no one could imagine. So with northern health systems on the brink of collapse, will the spread of Covid-19 in Pakistan bring urban informal settlements to the frontline of the crisis?
The threat to Pakistan is palpable. As we anxiously await the impact while self-isolating, the voices of the most vulnerable are barely audible. What health threats do the 34 million people living in Pakistan’s informal settlements face? What does this mean for the spread of Covid-19 across the country? How can we leverage data for designing urgent planning interventions that will actually work?

Access to water

While the instructions for containing the spread of the virus sound fairly simple — wash your hands for 20 seconds with soap multiple times a day — it is not an easy task for the majority of Pakistan's informal settlements that are water deprived. Access to water varies massively. People living in Karachi's Machar Colony, an informal settlement at a considerable distance from the city centre, pay Rs7,000-8,000 a month in water purchased through tankers and other informal means. Residents of Gharibabad, near Karachi's PIDC, spend over Rs5,000 a month on the same. For poor households, this is a very significant portion of their earnings. The idea of using that water repeatedly for washing hands is a luxury. Here are some basic calculations on daily water use for maintaining hygiene:

Just for a single month, a household of eight would then require 750 additional gallons of water. This constitutes half of a 1,500 gallon tanker, which costs at least a minimum PKR2,500 in a typical informal settlement. The additional financial cost for basic protection against Covid-19 by washing hands, would then be around PKR1,250 per month for the family. While the figure does not seem very high in isolation, it becomes a critical portion of their income in the absence of earned daily wages amidst the current lockdown. Can a low-income family in an informal settlement even be capable of providing for this additional water expense in times when the same amount would be needed to buy essential food items?
Cost alone (leaving aside logistical factors such as water availability, transportation, waiting lines) — to perform hand washing as per government recommendations — points to the absolute urgency of making cheap water provision a top priority for informal settlements. Without that intervention, the virus is likely to spread like wildfire, the consequences of which are hard to imagine.
Such a sorry state of our existing water infrastructure is indicative of the larger problem. A 2016 International Development Research Centre (IDRC) report investigated the state of infrastructure in Pakistan's urban informal settlements. It concluded that a drastic overhaul is needed in urban planning and services to enable infrastructural upgrading, especially for public health and access to decent work. Unsanitary environments, in densely populated areas, have devastating a impact on health and livelihoods. For too long the health and social needs of such populations have been invisible. Now — our lives are more interconnected than ever — without addressing their needs, the whole city is at risk.
This brings us to the second recommended measure: social distancing. Let’s look how practical this measure is, using existing spatial and household data.

Density, space, data

The most critical input for tackling urban issues is data. What data sets do we need right now? To phrase it another way: what data-sets — open access and appropriate for secondary analyses by independent researchers or institutions to supplement the meagre data visualisation capacity of all tiers of government — actually exist, for Karachi, and for urban Pakistan?
In Sindh province, the government estimates that there are 1,414 katchi abadis out of which 575 are in Karachi and 408 in Hyderabad. A 2008 World Bank study indicates there are a total 902 katchi abadis in urban Punjab; 65 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 55 in Balochistan and 52 in Islamabad. With these sparse, and potentially out of date figures, we can roughly estimate a total of 2488 informal settlements across Pakistan's major urban centres. This data excludes the numerous goths (approximately 900, as per an Orangi Pilot Project study and the Karachi Strategic Development Plan 2020, that dot Karachi's periphery; areas that are rapidly transforming into peri-urban settlements), with no clear planning regulations, no formal mechanisms for service provisions, often needing to tap into (siphoning) water and other public utilities to survive.
In cities like Karachi, there is a double deficit: data on informal settlements is either not collected regularly, and if it is, it is not disaggregated — especially on social indicators such as health. How can the various tiers of government tackle this crisis through emergency plans if they do not have realistic and up-to-date figures on the number of people living long-term in a ward or district? What about the number and type of built structures they occupy? Their proximity and interaction patterns that could facilitate the spread? The capacity and effectiveness of the infrastructures serving them? Without this data relief planning for Covid-19 becomes a guessing game at best. This provides loopholes in the relief mechanisms — loopholes that can be exploited for populistic provision rather than for where the need is highest.
The most comprehensive and reliable data on demographics in Pakistan is supposed to be gathered by the population census. Yet, reflecting on the methodology adopted for the 2017 census, this crisis demonstrates the ineffectiveness of the data: it collected de jure data on Pakistani citizens, counting them in the wards/districts displayed on their CNICs, and not where they were actually living. Such data quickly becomes irrelevant for subsequent studies, and especially unusable for detailed analysis on the realities of lives and processes in urban Pakistan. Take the Covid-19 crisis: how can governments generate epidemiological models to predict its spread in populations when there is no existing or reliable data about them?
Based on work done by the Karachi Urban Lab over 18 months and spanning 13 informal settlements in different districts of Karachi, our findings reveal that people are living on plots as small as 20 square yards. Households have an average family size of eight to nine people, but barely accommodate a single room with a slab for a kitchen and a toilet. In locations where people have expanded vertically, household sizes go as high as 30 people per 80 square yards of plot. These household numbers are higher than the average represented in the 2017 census. The reality is that social distancing is almost impossible to implement in these settings. This kind of population density rings alarm bells for the safety and security of these urban residents and for the spread of Covid-19 across Pakistan. Coupling this constriction of available space for the vast urban majority with a city-wide curfew or extended lockdown hours spells disaster for people forced to confine themselves to tiny, dense, interior spaces. In cases of smaller plots or higher densities the scenario becomes even more unnerving. This, coupled with studies which show that 88% of the housing stock in the city consists of plot sizes 120 square yards or less, lies in strong contrast to people living in houses sized 400-2000 square yards constituting only 2% of the housing stock.

Health and vulnerability

Dozens of informal settlements in Karachi have been under the threat of eviction for the past 18 months. More than one thousand households have already been rendered homeless in Karachi's District Central. Our ongoing and participatory research with residents, shows that about 40% of households in informal settlements have at least one family member who requires special medical and social care. Adding to the staggering numbers of immunocompromised individuals, there is a diversity of medical, physical and social healthcare needs. About 70% of the persons who need care can be categorised as persons with chronic illnesses who are facing a heightened risk of contracting Covid-19.

The news of Covid-19 — added to eviction anxieties — has created very high levels of psychological stress amongst residents in informal settlements. The distress of managing the food, water and healthcare needs of the family had already reached unprecedented levels but now the lockdown is leading to further disruptions and distress disorders. Psychological research repeatedly shows that stress weakens immunity.
Women and girls are particularly vulnerable to these stressors and their impact. They are most likely to be trapped at home and absorbing significantly higher levels of care work during the lockdown. Levels of violence against women and girls have spiked in the lockdowns in China, the UK and the USA — there are real concerns about the safety and security of women and girls across Pakistan, but especially those in crammed households suffering immense precariousness.
The insecurity, uncertainty, and stress puts residents of informal settlements at high risk of immune-compromisation, compounding their vulnerability to Covid-19. They are at the frontlines of this crisis.

Long-term planning

The Covid-19 pandemic should be an urgent wake-up call for urban planners, bureaucrats and policymakers in Pakistan, to invest substantially and meaningfully in understanding and levelling out the highly unequal access to urban infrastructure services. Fragmented governance and lack of accountability at multiple layers of government have hindered inclusive planning efforts for decades. Residents of informal settlements can no longer be invisible to policymakers — as they are a critical part of the functioning of the city, and as some of the most vulnerable people, they deserve due attention.
Simply put, the long-term effects of Covid-19 combined with impacts of climate change, will take place in sites and at scales that involve populations which have never been accounted for in previous planning efforts. Here is a list of both urgent and long term recommendations:

1. Restore the local government system across Pakistan.
2. Immediately establish a coordination committee of representatives from provincial/local governments, NGOs and community leaders.
3. Include and account for high numbers of persons with healthcare needs.
4. Document up-to-date numbers and generate spatial data on populations in each ward, with particular emphasis on informal settlements.
5. Prioritise emergency budgets to upgrade existing water infrastructures and include emergency provision of cheap and clean water in informal settlements.

This report has been co-authored by Adam Abdullah, Maheen Arif, Soha Macktoom, Arsam Saleem, Muhammed Toheed, Dr Nausheen H Anwar, Dr Gulnaz Anjum and Dr Amiera Sawas.
Header image: People reach out to get a charity food handout during a lockdown after Pakistan shut all markets, public places and discouraged large gatherings amid an outbreak of the coronavirus disease in Karachi, Pakistan on March 30, 2020. — Reuters

India: When people are hungry and feeble, they are not well placed to revolt - Jean Drèze

The Caravan

When people are hungry and feeble, they are not well placed to revolt: Jean Drèze

The Caravan

30 March 2020

Jean Drèze, an economist, during a conference in Delhi in August 2019. According to him, to deal with the COVID-19 lockdown, “We need an emergency facility in every state where people can go and get some food on the spot, without having to show ration cards or any documents.”

Anushree Fadnavis / REUTERS 

 

Hundreds of thousands of migrant workers and scores of poor people were left in the lurch on the night of 24 March, when the prime minister Narendra Modi announced a 21-day lockdown to combat COVID-19. The lockdown, which began within four hours, forced migrant workers to leave urban dwellings and make their way back home, without any state assistance. It led to an almost-complete destruction of economic activity across the country, with trillions of rupees wiped out in a market crash.
On the second day of the lockdown, the union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a relief package of Rs 1.70 lakh crore under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana to provide the poor with food and funds in their bank accounts. Several experts have criticised the government for it. In a letter to the central and state governments, 635 people—including prominent academics, civil society activists, and policy analysts—appealed for a minimal set of emergency measures to deal with the crisis. According to them, the relief package of Rs 1.70 lakh crore is less than half the amount required to fulfil the minimal emergency-measures.
Among the people who endorsed the letter was Jean Drèze, an economist and activist who works as a visiting professor at Ranchi University. In a conversation with Kaushal Shroff, a staff writer at The Caravan, Drèze spoke about how in the coming days, access to food and earnings for poor people would rely on the functioning of our public-distribution system, which is under tremendous stress.
We do not know when the COVID-19 crisis will subside. It may last for months, even one year. Its economic impact will depend on how long the threat of the virus will last. In the best-case scenario, even if the health crisis subsides in a few weeks, the human costs will still be enormous but the economy may recover fairly quickly after that. If the crisis lasts much longer, with periodic lockdowns of varying intensity, the economy is likely to go downhill because there are going to be ripple effects. Businesses will go bankrupt. Then, banks will suffer because they will not be able to recover their loans and we may see a financial crisis. Meanwhile, health services will be overwhelmed, and perhaps other essential services too. It is a pretty frightening situation, both economically and in terms of the humanitarian impact.

Socially, all kinds of pathologies may develop if the crisis lasts. For instance, as people get scared, residential colonies will barricade themselves, expel persons suspected of infection, or there may be food riots—all kinds of things. Let’s hope that it does not go on for too long.
In the short term, a lot depends on whether the public-distribution system continues to function. The PDS can prevent hunger to a large extent, but it is under tremendous stress. The system does not function in a vacuum, it depends on the rest of the economy to keep the food moving. If the food is to move, you need transport, communications, spare parts, oversight, a working administration and so on. It is going to be difficult to ensure that the system delivers adequately in this situation.

In a worst-case scenario, where the PDS breaks down in some areas, there may be food riots. Except that India, for some reason, is a country where people do not do that sort of thing easily. Even the migrant workers you have seen on the television screens for the last few days—you sometimes wonder why they are not raiding the godowns or the local shops. Poor people are used to taking a lot of things lying down—when people are hungry and feeble, they are not necessarily well placed to revolt. But food riots could happen, who knows.
The lockdown is already turning into a humanitarian disaster. Transferring money through Pradhan Mantri Kisan Yojana, pensions, et cetera will take time. Even if the transfers are made quickly, people are unable to go to the bank right now. When they are allowed to go, banks may be overwhelmed, as they were after demonetisation.
The government should immediately release food stocks. It has huge food stocks. What is preventing it from releasing those stocks? There are nearly sixty million tonnes of wheat and rice in the godowns of the Food Corporation of India—that’s just before the wheat harvest, when the stocks normally rise further, sometimes up to eight million tonnes or so. That’s more than three times the buffer-stock norms, the level of stock that is sufficient to meet the operational requirement of foodgrains and exigencies at any point of time. Releasing this could ensure that there are food-distribution centres all over the place.
There are always people, starting with migrant workers, who fall through the cracks of the established social-security schemes. We need an emergency facility in every state where people can go and get some food on the spot, without having to show ration cards or any documents. It is sad to return to the nineteenth-century methods of famine relief that were later replaced with more dignified public works, and then with the public-distribution system. But I don’t see any other way of preventing starvation for now.
As told to Kaushal Shroff.

India: urgent appeal for assistance to migrant workers who are unable to reach their homes due to the 21 day lockdown – free food, medical care and sanitation

This is an urgent appeal for assistance to migrant workers who are unable to reach their homes due to the current lockdown – free food, medical care and sanitation at the very least. The sudden imposition of a 21-day all-India lockdown on 24 March 2020, at just 4 hours’ notice, has led to horrific consequences for many. This decision, taken without proper planning, completely overlooked the disastrous impact it would have on 90 percent of our labour force. Extremely disturbing reports of the plight of lakhs of migrant labourers in different parts of the country keep pouring in. [ . . . ]

http://www.sacw.net/article14279.html

India: Corona Lockdown: Why have the poor been dumped to save the affluent

HardNewsForeign Policy

Corona Lockdown: Why have the poor been dumped to save the affluent

Was the PM misled by the diabolical vested interests to impose lockdown? Or this government has chosen to willfully disregard the suffering of tens of thousands of working masses in India?

Sanjay Kapoor

Mar 27 10 min read

 

Was the PM misled by the diabolical vested interests to impose lockdown? Or this government has chosen to willfully disregard the suffering of tens of thousands of working masses in India?
The country is now in a claustrophobic lockdown. Prime Minister Narendra Modi made it clear that this scenario should be treated as a ‘curfew’. The police in every state has thereby predictably read the orders correctly and is brutally beating up, harassing and chasing down migrants and workers, men and women, who are trekking long, tiring, hungry and thirsty treks to their distant villages and small towns — mostly on foot. This is because the government has absolved itself of all public interest responsibility, except brutal policing, and is not providing public transport to ferry them back home.
TV and newspapers show images of hungry and emaciated men and women, young and old, and little children with pots, plastic bags and beddings on their heads and shulders, walking on empty, metalled roads and highways, often barefoot, heading towards their distant destinations, marks a tragic and heart-rending site, reminiscent of forced migrations during war, riots, mass killings, epidemics and famine.

Indeed, their villages would be at least welcoming compared to the violent hostility and heartlessness displayed by the cities that they are leaving behind, and where they build and sustain rich and middle class urban homes in all their comfort, and provide day-to-day, multiple services. Here, they were seen as a threat by sections of the selfish and insulated upper classes – as the carriers of Coronavirus, with which they had nothing to do.
How are the poor, hardworking, unorganized working classes in Delhi and in the Hindi heartland, responsible for this global pandemic? This question has not been answered by the government in its briefings or in the belated Rs.1.75 lakh crore financial stimulus that the government has announced. Quite clearly, nothing from this seemingly bloated stimulus will reach the poor. What is really making impact is the hard work some of the states like Kerala, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Orissa, Jharkhand and Chattisgarh are putting to ensure that the poor do not go hungry after the central government’s thoughtless act.

In the manner the BJP-led central government in Delhi has gone about handling this unprecedented national crisis — there are uncanny fears that there will be thousands who might die, not due to Coronavirus, but hunger

As millions began to head to their home from distant towns and workplaces , the big question that has been raging ever since Modi spoke to the nation and announced the lockdown, came back again with its stark contradictions — did the government think through this decision?
Did they really calibrate the virtually total collapse of the economy, the disruption of supply and transport chains, the destruction of livelihoods and jobs, the suffering and pain of those inflicted by the disease, the collective social phobia of impending doom, and the tragic loss of lives?
Seems definitely unlikely. This is similar to that of the dramatic decision of demonetization in 2016, which epitomised total lack of preparation and disregard for the mass and individual trauma that people would have to go through to access their own money deposited in banks. For days, poor people stood in long queues trying to take out their hard-earned income. Lakhs lost their jobs. Many small-scale industries simply shut. Some died while standing in the queue. Others walked miles in rural and tribal areas to deposit the little cash they had preserved in their homes.
The tragic lessons of demonetisation was clearly not kept in mind when Modi took this dramatic decision that could see many more deaths due to starvation, joblessness and deep penury, than what will be caused by the virus. Does this government, indeed, realise this grave mistake they have made, or will it move on, with its usual arrogance and disregard for consensus?
IT IS POSSIBLE that his government took a decision based on wrong data and similarly flawed estimations of how the country would react to the pandemic. These are questions that only this secretive government that has access to data can answer — which they are loathe to release to analysts so that the nation can come to informed decisions- could answer.
If one goes by ICMR data, then, on March 25, the total number of people infected by this virus, which has Chinese origin, was 581 out of the 24,254 that were apparently tested. This has to be compared to the 5,900 cases that were tested on March 13 yielding 78 patients who tested positive.
While the number of infected have been growing – pushed up by the return of many Indians from different countries where Covid19 is raging, there is no community transmission till now. According to ICMR, the numbers of infected are stabilizing even when they are testing more people. ICMR has not strictly followed the protocols of the WHO and pharma lobbies that want testing to be increased to prevent its spread. Instead, India is targeting those with travel history by targeting airports and the hinterland and trying to see whether it can chase down every carrier.
Due to indifferent testing and checking at the airport, some like the Bollywood singer Kanika Kapoor of Lucknow, escaped and indulged themselves among celebrities, politicians and common people, raising fears of a horizontal spread of the virus; interestingly no one has been reported to have been infected. Not a single person she took selfies with, partied or played holi with, has been blighted by the virus, as of now, unless there are cases, which have been camouflaged or suppressed.

Did the government really calibrate the virtually total collapse of the economy, the disruption of supply and transport chains, the destruction of livelihoods and jobs, the suffering and pain of those inflicted by the disease, the collective social phobia of impending doom, and the tragic loss of lives?

This brings to the fundamental point — why was the lockdown speeded up when we hadn’t prepared for the safety of vulnerable migrants, daily-wagers, small-scale entrepreneurs, and unskilled and skilled labourers?
If the lockdown was considered necessary to prevent the community transmission then surely it should have gone through, but  couldn’t the announcement of lockdown — or curfew – wait till the central and state governments had done the basic stuff of providing food, community kitchens, shelter, monetary insurance, health facilities, transport, for its large floating population.  An erudite Professor of Public Health from University of Harvard, Hemant Patel, has similarly wondered why with no community transmission and low spread and deaths, our government chose to use the sledgehammer.
TO REITERATE, OUR domestic migrants do not present danger to anyone — they do not carry the virus and they deserved to be sent home to their villages with dignity — if they wanted to leave. The same respect the nation has afforded to those returning from abroad and who constitute the threat of passing on the pandemic to others.
Not a single court has come to the rescue of these wretched of the earth, as they did in favor of some Indian students stranded in Kazakhstan. Why couldn’t the state governments with their heart in the right place, like Kerala, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bengal, Punjab and Maharashtra, be brought on board to put together a national plan to prevent a human tragedy that is staring point-blank at our country?
ANY SENSITIVE PERSON not brought up on the Darwinian principle (propounded by Herbert Spencer) of the ‘survival of the fittest’, would weep at the women and children in Delhi standing in front of a TV reporter with folded hands saying that they want food. And this is stark starvation in the capital of India during the time of excess and plenty, including huge stocks in the government go-downs.
Lockdown has thrown out of gear established supply chains of essential commodities as  more than 5 lakh trucks these goods are waiting to unload them in markets and mandis at various border check points. The hungry drivers and their helpers are being brutalised by the police.One wonders what the advise the police got from Union Home Ministry?
What is apparent is that in their hurry to take this cold-blooded, arrogant and anti-people decision, they chose to rely on the flawed scenario built by lobbies that use British, American and European data  and impose it on Indian reality. In the past they had done it in the case of HIV-AIDs, Swine flue and SARS- predicting millions of deaths and devastation of our old civilization. It is these lobbies that have introduced dodgy experts to influence the discourse in India to show how bad the condition was and that the only thing that needed to be done was to furiously increase testing and lockdown the country till the world awaited the vaccine. One such expert showed Kerala alone having 80 lakh positive patients. In the estimation of this expert, who is not a disease expert,  millions will be infected in the rest of the country by the months of  April-May. By March 25, according to this calculation, the infected would be in lakhs. ICMR report of March 25, as elucidated above, shows only 600 odd have tested positive.

This brings to the fundamental point — why was the lockdown speeded up, like demonetization, when we did not have a single window to look after our vulnerable migrants, daily-wagers, small-scale entrepreneurs, and unskilled and skilled labourers. After all who leaves their villages to work in the cities?

Why was this particular health economist, with links to multinationals, allowed so much play in the Indian media, and by whom? What was the ulterior motive behind this hysteric propaganda of collective doom? Sources in the health ministry and the government are not unfamiliar with their ways and are taking their advise with a pinch of salt. If India emerges relatively unscathed from the virus then it would realize the criminal implications of this organized scare mongering that tried to change policy prescriptions of the country by ushering in technologies that violate individual’s privacy and are not subjected to democratic scrutiny. These experts were also used to trash China and obfuscate the influence the big pharma lobby has over the WHO.
There was obvious obfuscation from these lobbies about Coronavirus and how it is confined to a narrow geographical latitudinal bands and also how virus struggles to survive in temperatures beyond 25 degrees Celsius. Certain other facts were hidden to spread fear. Sections of the media, funded by these vaccine/corporate lobbies, are guilty of hiding facts and have resorted to fake news to buttress their point of view.
In the manner the BJP-led central government in Delhi has gone about handling this unprecedented global and national crisis — there are uncanny fears that there will be hundreds of thousands who might die in the wake of Coronavirus, not due to the pandemic, but due to hunger. Surely, India deserves better governance and an effective and sensitive government that is cognizant of its responsibility towards the country’s most vulnerable.