India Under Lockdown
Is everyone staying safe at home?
Through March, as we saw cases spring up all over the world, there was looming dread of when Covid19 would arrive in India and immense doubt on how we had no active cases till early March. Three weeks later, we’re at 900+ cases today on 28th March with 20 deaths, and with reports of how we are not testing nearly enough. There were and still are assumptions such as scorching summers or Indian immunity may spare us, but how will we know! This needs to be taken as a distant claim of hope rather than a safety net that allows for reckless behaviour. We all still got to stay home. For 21 days initially but mostly longer.
But what if you can’t even get to your house to begin with?
Kudos to the government for bringing in stranded students and expats from China and Italy. It was planned for — in detail — in order to keep them and thus us, safe. In comparison, we already saw mad rush at the railways stations right before the Janta curfew that took place on 22nd March. Workers from the informal sector were crowding trains to go home last week. Instead of chalking out a plan for a safer commute for the working class, those still in cities were pushed into a further stranded state by the announcement of a lockdown with a 4 hour notice. #demonitizationdejavu
India has 120 million migrant workers, many of which have walked/are walking more than 100 km to go home
A person’s capacity to deal with his life’s daily stresses and an instant shock like Covid19, are proportionate to their assets of various kinds (see below). It is our government’s responsibility to increase this capacity of absorbing this shock, as much as it is to prevent outbreak — in the time of a global emergency.
The government has introduced a 1.7 Lakh Crore Economic package under a scheme called “Pradhan Mantri Gareeb Kalyan Yojana”. I do not understand it in terms of its monetary scale, but it amounts to 5kg of rice/wheat + 1 kg pulses, with a meager cash transfer of 500 INR per HH. Read here a response that specifies the deficit of this package with its exclusion of those outside the PDS, construction workers, migrant labour and more.
A country like India cannot pull off a 3-week lockdown at such short notice. It had to be more planned with extra measures in place for the marginalized. What lies ahead is a challenge beyond what we have ever known, at the same time exposing how exclusionary governance and perils of unchecked capitalism have failed us. We cannot find solutions to tackle it from the same system.
Please consider contributing in anyway to organizations working to provide food and other necessities in this emergency.
