Shuddhabrata Sengupta

Narendra Modi’s appearances on television in COVID-19 times bring with them apprehensions of the continued trotting out of mindless tasks like pot banging and candle-lit blackouts. But there was reason to believe his address on the morning of April 14 – which came on the day that the three-week lockdown announced by him was earlier scheduled to end – would have had something of substance. As it happens, it did not. In this 25 minute address, the most important thing he said was that the lockdown would now be extended till May 3. It takes roughly three seconds to say that. This is why it becomes necessary to break down what he said, or left unsaid, in the 1497 other seconds of time that he had at his disposal.

Modi began on an upbeat note, informing citizens that with their help, and under his direction, India had performed much better in comparison to other countries in combatting the COVID-19 pandemic. This was an upbeat message, but it wasn’t the truth. We have simply no way of knowing whether India is doing better or worse in terms of cure or containment of the COVID-19 disease, because there is no real testing programme underway to know the extent of the spread of the infection in the general population. Is the Government of India’s obstinate refusal to expand testing simply a measure designed at keeping bad news out of the public eye?

His second untruth consisted of telling people that his government had taken timely action to make sure the entry of people from countries where the virus had spread was restricted. In fact, temperature screening for people arriving from China (where COVID-19 began) were put in place on January 17, two months after the outbreak of the disease in Wuhan, and a ban on arrivals introduced in the first week of February.

Travel restrictions from four other countries – Italy (which at that point of time had the second highest number of COVID 19 cases in the world), Iran, Korea and Kapan – were put in place only on March 3, and from other countries on March 13.

A March 9 report in the Business Standard stated that Delhi airport had two thermal scanners and 33 temperature measuring devices, and Mumbai airport had 25 infrared thermometers. No airport in the country had adequate deployment of doctors or medical staff for tests. Many reports indicated that quarantine facilities, where they did exist close to international airports, were abysmal and arbitrary, often insanitary and unhealthy.

The Government of India, contrary to Modi’s claim, was clearly not prepared. Precious time and resources were wasted on making arrangements for Trump’s visit in the fourth week of February. Ruling party leaders were stoking communal passions in Delhi at the end of February, and until the third week of March, the BJP as a party and key ministers were more engaged in toppling an elected government in Madhya Pradesh than they were in thinking about a pandemic. The government that they managed to cobble together in Madhya Pradesh still does not have a health minister.

Two days after the WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on March 11,  the Union health ministry  put out a confident statement that the disease was not going to be a cause for a national public health emergency in India. This breezy confidence, which was also evident in the health minister, Dr. Harsh Vardhan’s speech in Parliament on February 10, extended to claims about the availability of PPE kits and other essential equipment and supplies that we now know were clearly untenable.

In fact,  the Protective Ware Manufacturers Association of India sent letters asking for guidance for the production of PPE kits and masks to the Health Ministry in early February. We also know that these letters went unanswered. We further know that the orders for the production and procurement of PPE kits by the concerned Ministries (Health and Textiles) were not in place till March 24. Flip Flops on export controls over export of essential drugs (in response to Donald Trump’s threats of ‘retaliation’ if India did not release Hydroxychloroquine stocks to US demand) have been the norm rather than the exception.

To call all of this ‘timely and prompt action’ would hardly be accurate.

Now let’s deal with the rest of what Modi said. He said seven things. Seven banalities that constituted the anti-climax of his 25 minute address. If Hannah Arendt had known of Narendra Modi she would have had to think not just about the ‘banality of evil’ but also about the ‘evil of banality’.

Out of the seven steps recommended by Modi, six are things that you don’t really need a prime minister to tell you about. Five of these six things are actions and attitudes that any sensible human being would undertake in a situation like this.

They are as follows: ‘care for elders’, ‘wear masks and stay at home’, ‘think about poor families’, ‘do not terminate the services of workers’ and ‘respect doctors, nurses and people who clean’.

The sixth – ‘boost immunity by taking hot drinks’ – is an unproven measure, despite the prime minister or the health ministry’s endorsement. Taking hot drinks at a time like this can probably do no harm, but it certainly won’t do much good either.

Not one of these six specifies what the government is doing, intends to do, or is capable of doing. Prime ministers are elected to do the job of telling citizens what a government is doing or planning to do, not to tell citizens to be nice to the elderly and drink hot drinks.

Only one of the seven steps has a concrete dimension, and that is step four – the command to download an intensely invasive surveillance application, the ‘Aarogyasetu App’, so that the state can achieve a tighter degree of  control over citizens lives, movements  and actions. That was the real point of the ‘Seven Steps’ or ‘Saptapadi’. The rest was sugar coating.

In addition, Modi announced a period of intense scrutiny of ‘Lockdown Violations’ till April 21 and encouraged vigilantism to enforce the lockdown. All of this helps us zero in on the real message in Modi’s speech, which was to tacitly encourage vigilantism and snitching on ‘lockdown violators’ within a given deadline (of April 21), and of building consensus for the voluntary usage (by citizens) of an app for the state’s surveillance of citizens. This is what he really wanted us to hear.

You’ve now heard the Seven Things That He Said. Now let’s talk about the Seven Things that He did not Say. They are, as follows:

1. Utilisation of existing food stocks for people in food distress

2. Expansion of testing (India has abysmally low testing even now).

3. Procurement of PPE kits, ventilators and other essential equipment

4. Security of employment for people in contracted and casual forms of work, or, immediate monetary and material compensation in situations of distress.

5. Safe and humane transport for migrant workers to their homes wherever possible and necessary.

6. Measures to combat fake news and hate speech that targets minorities and vulnerable communities.

7. Anything about how the post lockdown industrial and economic recovery can be thought through.

Let’s spend some time talking about just one of these seven things, although each one of them deserves extended discussion.

Modi did not say one word about, or against, the baseless and evil stigmatisation of sections of the population (Muslims, people from North East India) as well as of people who have unfortunately contracted the disease, that his followers are resorting to in alarming ways as their response to COVID-19.

His silence means that he is tacitly endorsing the informal apartheid and violence that his followers are adopting with regard to Muslims. In Facebook pages, and in countless WhatsApp groups, people who sport titles like ‘We Support Narendra Modi’  punctuate their Jai Shree Ram’s, pop quizzes on Modi’s childhood and proclamations of war on China, with hatred against Muslims, and increasing calls to boycott Muslim businesses and vendors. These amplify the hatred that is already spewed on mainstream TV channels by Modintoxicated anchors.

A terse but timely message to stop indulging in profiling Muslims as ‘carriers’ of COVID-19 or as ‘bio-terrorists’ from the prime minister could have gone a long way in controlling the baser instincts of his followers. But the fact that he chose not to do so means that he is signalling to his troops that they can continue to look for scapegoats, and can continue to humiliate their fellow citizens in the name of undertaking ‘patriotic’ duties as ‘Corona Warriors’.

This is the way that a consensus designed to normalise totalitarian measures that should be unacceptable in any democratic society is being set in motion. Modi took 25 minutes of all our time to send out this message. He did this in the name of the working poor, while invoking the memory of Dr. Ambedkar, because April 14 was his birth anniversary. There can be no greater insult to the legacy of Ambedkar’s reasoned and ethical legacy. We will remember this day as one of betrayal, and as a sign of things to come.

(Shuddhabhrata Sengupta is with the Raqs Collective in New Delhi.)

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[We give below an extracts from another article related to the above theme – Editor.]

COVID-19: In the Land of a Heartless Lockdown

Subodh Varma

Prime Minister Narendra Modi expectedly announced an extension to the countrywide lockdown till May 3 in yet another speech to the country on Tuesday. He argued that India had managed to beat back the deadly coronavirus pandemic till now due to the three weeks long lockdown and other measures, and urged yet more “restraint, penance and sacrifice” from Indians.

There is another dimension of the lockdown, however, that has been brushed under the carpet by the Modi government and the urban elite. It is the impact of such lockdowns on the people, the sudden yanking away of income sources, the empty grain stores, the inability to pay for common items, even if available, the loss of jobs, and the looming uncertainty of the future weeks, as things look like worsening.

How was this human dimension handled during the first three weeks? And has any amends been made, lessons learnt for the coming days till May 3?

Sheer Indifference to People’s Livelihoods

Partial estimates put the joblessness rate at nearly 24%, as estimated by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE). Nearly 50 million short-term migrant workers have lost their work and over one million migrant labourers are stuck in shelter homes far from home, according to an affidavit filed in the Supreme Court. Although a slew of relief measures for the poor people were announced both by the Centre and state governments, they are highly inadequate and there are huge gaps, preventing these measures from reaching those who need it. The Modi government admitted in the Supreme Court that in 13 states, NGOs provided food to more people than the state governments. Most migrant and rural workers are likely to descend into even harsher poverty. In urban areas, lakhs of formal and informal sector earners – whether employed by others or self employed – have suffered a catastrophic loss of income. The government’s feeble attempts to use funds from Employees’ Provident Fund and other such sources to somehow deliver some measly amounts to people through cash transfers have not been efficient, nor are they sufficient. Meanwhile, the government is reportedly readying plans to increase the working hours in a day to 12 hours to boost production with a smaller workforce. That means a death knell for a large number of workers and also immense losses and onerous exploitation for those who do work. And of course, they are pushed to exposure to COVID-19. But then, the government is doing this at the behest of big businesses, and workers are expendable.

Meanwhile, the Right To Food Campaign has compiled reports of at least 45 deaths, which includes deaths due to hunger, exhaustion and accidents of people walking back to their homes, police atrocities, inability to access medical services and suicides. Poor people are struggling to get food even from the PDS shops since supplies are erratic and many do not have ration cards. Along with the migrant workers and rural poor, urban slum dwellers across states are struggling to get access to food and ration as often they do not have ration cards. The Modi government announced that poor people would get 10 kg of rice or wheat, and 5 kg of pulses. According to the latest PIB statement, a total of 2 million metric tonnes of food grains have been unloaded by the states during the lockdown. But the government data shows that there was a surplus of 77 million tonnes with the Food Corporation of India. Pulses are also available in NAFED [National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India] stocks, but they are unable to transport them to the needy. In fact, food should have been distributed across the board to everybody, as demanded by the Right to Food Campaign and the Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, irrespective of whether they have a ration card, with 10 kg of grain, 1.5 kg pulses and 800 gram cooking oil per month per person for at least six months.

The state governments are at the forefront of the struggle to look after the people because the Modi government has only been making sweeping declarations, leaving the former to implement them. But the already cash-strapped state governments are struggling to do the job. The central government has notified the release of Rs 11,092 crores to the states under the State Disaster Risk Management Fund for combating COVID-19-related relief measures. However, the state wise distribution of the funds shows that there is discrepancy in allocation if determined on the basis of the number of COVID-19 cases. Maharashtra with the highest number of cases has been allocated Rs 1,611 crores, while Kerala which had the second largest number of cases till April 3 received only Rs 157 crore.

Healthcare System Still Not Ready

One rationale for having a lockdown was to allow time to boost the healthcare system’s preparedness to meet the pandemic challenge. What has happened on that front?

According to the Jan Swasthya Abhiyan analysis, 33 companies are approved for getting the rapid antibody testing kits that can do a test for just Rs 400. As per latest reports, orders have been placed but consignments (mostly from China) are delayed due to quality testing and also procedural delays. Besides these, some 27 PCR kit suppliers have been approved mostly from abroad. The actual supply is unknown. JSA says that the need for the future is unclear but may be “upward of 10 million test kits” per year. Given this scale of need, the Modi government is way behind in procurement. Hence, testing is very poor.

The Modi government botched up the testing procedure by first announcing that private entities could charge Rs 4,500 per test – something that was too exorbitant and a clear sign of bias towards the private sector avarice. When the Supreme Court intervened to take the other extreme and ordered free testing, the government is now thinking of reimbursing the private entities, something they could have thought before.  The number of labs doing testing for COVID-19 is now reported to have increased to 223, of which 157 are in the public sector, and 66 in the private sector. Daily testing rates were low but now have reached about 15,000 per day. With this low level of testing, it’s impossible to even know how much the disease has spread.

The government’s statements indicate that orders have been placed for 1.74 crore PPE sets and N95 masks. Till this happens, the huge shortage in N95 masks, coveralls and other PPE will continue, and health workers will continue to suffer themselves, and even become a source of transmission as happened in Bhilwara.

Most orders for PPE (34 out of 39), were placed only after announcement of the lockdown, a full two months after COVID-19 made its appearance in India, and 24 of these were placed in April 2020, JSA has pointed out. Deliveries, both imports and domestic, are lagging far behind the orders, production against some of which has barely begun. The government has announced that it has placed orders for 49,000 ventilators. The exact delivery dates are uncertain. A six-fold increase in supply of oxygen purchases is reported since February 1, but there is no news on oxygen concentrators.

Although government statements say that a large number of designated hospitals, isolation beds and ICU beds are ready, JSA has pointed out that there is no corresponding increase in the number of health personnel, minor equipment, major equipment, and skills. “Moreover, this threatens to have a crippling impact on provision of other routine essential health services, especially in the tertiary level public hospitals,” JSA said in a statement.

So, in sum, the first three weeks of the lockdown were an unmitigated disaster as far as the lives and livelihoods of common people are concerned, and adequate preparation for meeting the coming challenge of the pandemic victims too has not been done yet. Perhaps, the time (till May 3) will be better utilised than the past three weeks. Perhaps it will be worse. We will know by May 3.

(Subodh Varma is a senior Indian journalist.)