Ganga Narayan Rath
“Anna Chinta Chamatkarah,” goes on Sanskrit expression. “Vubhukshitah Kim Na Karoti Papam,” goes another. Loosely translated they mean ‘A hungry stomach knows no bound’ and ‘A hungry person can commit any sin’ respectively. India’s working class, currently under a lockdown, appears to be training themselves for a battle with authorities, guided by these age-old homilies. With no work, no money, no food and no transport to return home, they are forced to make huge sacrifices for the rest. It is time we decoded the compulsions of an economy battling a host of factors, some man-made and some, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, unleashed on mankind by a distraught nature.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to introduce a lockdown may be recorded in history books of our nation. But it also runs the risk of being reduced to a footnote if urgent steps are not taken to relax the lockdown and allow the sweating masses to earn their livelihood as they face a Catch-22. It must be noted that the freedom to work from home cannot include a farmer, a petty trader, the mathadi workers in the APMCs across the nation, the newspaper vendors, daily wage workers in cities, auto and taxi drivers, the ubiquitous push cart vendors supplying items of daily need, including ready-to-eat snacks and finally the construction workers building houses that they can never dream to call their home anytime soon but considerably contributing to the gross national product of our nation. There are signals that the lockdown may be extended by two more weeks, especially when some state satraps who had earlier warned the violators of lockdown with shoot-at-sight orders having now upped the ante with a ‘save lives now, can save economy later’ prescription. Really? Where was the concern for lives when the police in India’s most populous state played holi with a mass of fleeing workers not with traditional colours and pichkaris but with disinfectants and water-jets?
India’s ‘patient zero’ consisted of about fifteen lakh foreign returnees who came to India in the 45-day period preceding the lockdown. In accordance with the WHO prescription, our success in controlling the spread depended on tracing, testing and treating this huge group of citizens. It was assumed the authorities would use the 21-day lockdown to reasonably satisfy themselves that none of these returnees became transmitters. However, the present picture does not seem to be satisfying. Given the limited number of testing kits at our disposal and the difficulty in acquiring more from abroad, can we reasonably expect this task to get over with a fortnight’s extension of lockdown? Besides, when the lockdown is national, every State is following its own protocol in tracking, detecting and isolating these suspected carriers. Some States are not even publicising the district-wise position thereby keeping the public under constant fear of the dreaded virus. As we delay in our effort to ‘test, test and test’, the second stage of the pandemic is now morphing into Stage 3. Transparency demands that the authorities lay bare the facts and figures before the nation to seek justification for any extension of the lockdown, if that is the thinking now.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to take the current and past leaders into confidence on the future course of action to face this cryptic virus, anyway, has proved his statesmanship and his desire to adopt a consultative approach. The social and economic impact of the shutdown no doubt will be many times more than any event in living memory. But when the nation continues its war with the invisible enemy, strategy demands that we do not force a battle with our visible family members and friends. The nation, by taking away livelihood of nearly 130 million working class populace, is effectively creating a famine-like situation for these less
fortunate souls.
We do not have the benefit of hindsight and history. Our war rooms have no manual or blue books to guide us in this war. Only our combined strength and grit can help sustain the war against the invisible enemy. In this uncharted journey, we cannot afford to belittle anybody’s self-respect and the will and right to live. Yes, we are dealing with so many unknowns at a time.
Our scientists and researchers are under immense pressure to find or stumble upon a solution. Till that happens, let us not create a wedge in our society by barring our own countrymen from survival by denying the right to engage their hands which keep all of us ticking and alive. If we fail to rescue them from this existential crisis, we would be converting our own people into Rohingyas in their own land.
The world is not going to be the same after lockdown. There will be new structures, processes, disciplines and new manuals for industry. We have to learn to continue our daily occupation with social distancing at its core. All non-essential commuting can be suspended. Trains can start with half the load. Shops can open with lesser service staff. Units can reconfigure to produce with denuded strength. White collar workers must continue to work from home for some more time.
Equipment can be redesigned to reflect the new work ethos and procedures. To support all these innovative processes, regular salary earners including the pensioners paying income tax, must voluntarily come forward to take a haircut till the economy is restored to its pre-pandemic position.
There are thus umpteen possibilities. We can keep human beings under a lockdown. But we must take care to ensure that humanity is not locked out.
©The Billion Press
The writer is a former chief general manager of the Reserve Bank of India. Views are personal.