Life In The Time of Covid- A Struggle of The Marginalised
The current pandemic once again laid bare the second-degree treatment of poor, backward and marginalised communities.
On March 8, around 8000 members across the world attended a Tablighi Jamaat Congregation held in Delhi. The “Popular Media ‘’ labelled it as a Super Spreader event of the CoronaVirus. Some News Channels even went to a greater extent and called it “Corona Jihad.” For months, reports about the Muslim Preacher’s misconduct made rounds on Social Media. Without clear evidence, people who attended the congregation were discriminated against and even tortured by the system. Apart from the public anger, these attendees also faced backlash at an institutional level. Many were confined into tiny houses.
Such discriminatory acts did not stop against marginalised sections. According to one report by the BBC from March 31 last year, officials in hazmat suits sprayed a group of migrant workers with a chemical solution after these workers returned to Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh. This incident came into light when a Times of India journalist posted a video on social media writing, “Who r u trying to kill, Corona or humans? Migrant labourers and their families were forced to take bath in chemical solution upon their entry in Bareilly.” It was not just one-off the harsh realities that millions of migrant workers faced when they returned to the villages after the country imposed a lockdown in March last year. Another report published in the Hindustan Times said that 198 migrant workers lost their lives in road accidents within two months since the previous year’s lockdown. An NGO, SaveLIFE, had compiled these numbers. These deadly accidents resulted from the mass exodus of millions of workers who lost their livelihoods in cities and had no alternative except to return to their homes.
This pandemic filled everyone’s lives with precariousness, poor and rich alike, as each of us has been affected by this raging virus somehow. Many people in private-formal sectors were thrown out of their jobs. Many self-employed people also lost their livelihoods. But, only a particular group of people, including but not limited to Dalits, Muslims, LGBTQ, and others, were subjected to an existential crisis.
Mass Migration of millions of footloose labourers gained international media coverage. Many walked bare feet for hundreds of kilometres, empty-stomach, and sometimes thirsty. The precarity of their situation can be understood by the fact that even after spending years in urban centres, they could not secure persistent and secure livelihoods, that a two-month halt completely broke their backs. These migrant workers were often scapegoated and dubbed as super-spreaders by the middle-class elite.
Sam Pitroda of Congress said that the middle-class did not come forward in these testing times. Instead, their apathetic attitude towards migrant workers exposed the rift between the poor and the rich in our country. But, the second wave of the pandemic especially highlighted how everyone could be precarious if the system fails to deliver. In this phase, the highly resourced sections of the society also struggled to find ICU beds, arrange medical oxygen, and ultimately watched loved ones losing their life battles. It further emphasised how precariousness permeated the lives of everyone in the second phase.
Today, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought down even the wealthiest countries to their knees. The pandemics might be the dominant form of mass extinction as predicted and described by Achille Mbembe’s concept of Necropolitics.
Necropolitics posits that marginalised and vulnerable sections of society are economically and politically managed through their direct and indirect exposure to death. Viruses such as this can become great excuses to get rid of the vulnerable sections of society like the elderly and diseased people. Recently, during the height of the second wave, in Uttar Pradesh, many dead bodies washed up to the shores of the river Ganga, and some bodies even floated down several kilometres to the neighbouring State of Bihar. These bodies were never identified and cremated instantaneously by the authorities. The two states, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, collectively have a population equal to the United States, which has so far witnessed more than 6,00,000 deaths due to COVID-19.
To put it in perspective, UP and Bihar have only reported around 35000 fatalities resulting from the virus. Given the day-light difference in the medical infrastructure between the US and these two states, one might easily conclude that this is a gross underreporting by these states. Many people died at home in villages and small towns; they never got tested and thus never included in the official data. According to a report in the New York Times, India’s death count is highly deflated, and it might have recorded around 6,00,000 (equal to the US) deaths going by a conservative estimation. Still, a more likely projection put this number at 1.6 million. If it is true, it will definitely tantamount to the hidden wiping out of thousands of people and a form of ‘Necropolitics,’ as suggested by Mbembe.
It is evident that this virus initially mainly affected the rich countries, which prompted them to develop vaccines at an incredible pace. On the other hand, millions of people die in Africa and Asia every year due to TuberCulosis (TB), but scientists could develop no vaccine so far. There are many socio-political reasons behind it. Moreover, the precarity of many low-income countries can not be captured better than the stark inequity in the worldwide distribution of vaccines. As per the Covid World Vaccination Tracker of the New York Times, even less than 1% of people have received at least one dose of Covid Vaccine in many African countries (Benin, Chad, South Sudan, etc.).
In Contrast, many wealthy countries in Europe (Belgium, Denmark, the UK, etc.) have inoculated 50% or more of their population with at least one dose. War-torn Syria and Yemen have partially vaccinated only 0.6% and 0.9% of their people, respectively. Collectively only 0.9% (far below the world average of 22.6%) of people have received at least one dose in low-income countries as per Our World In Data project of Oxford University. These data perfectly sum up the precarity of marginalised communities worldwide.
The current pandemic once again laid bare the second-degree treatment of poor, backward and marginalised communities. And, hidden annihilation of some sections of society, along with the perpetual vulnerability of specific groups during this Crisis, demand a thorough analysis of these circumstances that have put these communities in a long-lasting peril.
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