‘Varkkadam’ a situation often mentioned in Sangam literature is a persistent drought season for more than a year. In Varkkadam situations, the king summons civilians to emigrate his country because small kingdoms are not sustainable for such a long droughts and the king would prefer to wear the embarrassment of announcing ‘Varkkadam’ rather than letting civilian starve and die. There will always be an opportunities of life for people who emigrate to neighbouring and distant states in India. Because of weather pattern dissimilar to the geographies of India, there has never been a situation of drought all over Indian subcontinent.
During the series of drought in British Raj, the reason for famine deaths was not that weather was bad all over India but the intentions of rulers and policy was bad, thus it was a human induced famine. At those times our situation of health and economy was far lower than any poorest country of resent history. So we really have no equivalent to give an example. The life expectancy of ‘19 years’ during the zenith of British Raj would give a clue about our pathetic situation. India was not only dealing with economic drain but was also struggling with ‘epidemic drench’, the only surplus import of colonial rule. Cholera, Plague, Spanish Flu, Measles one after another, diseases have been arriving in Indian shores and eating out lives. The poor Indians left to fight epidemic diseases with superstitious beliefs alone.
After Independence the pseudo-socialist policies did bring improvement in condition but it was far away from what can be called as ‘development’. In 1991 when this country was in the brink of third stage of socialism, the Indian government faced balance of payments crisis with a soaring debt level and an alarming decrease of forex reserves. Fortunately, we had an intellectual Narasimha Rao as Prime Minister and an economist Manmohan Singh as Finance Minister to save this country from default. Literally the gold reserves had to be transferred to IMF as collateral security to obtain an emergency loan. The liberalisation policies were so inevitable to a situation that the opposition parties had to accede to it and Vajpayee government had to continue the plan set by his congress predecessor.
The situation now is very different, Coronavirus has forced a complete lockdown on India in an unprecedented manner. By far the lockdown in India is the harshest in the world. The economic impact being directly proportional to the degree of shutdown and thus should be the economical and stimulus package. However in reality the support and stimulus package announced by Indian government is so far lowest to GDP ratio, if we minus the credit assurances from the package of Modi, it is barely 0.9% of GDP that goes as fiscal stimulus or direct benefit to the public. Announcements by Nirmal Sitaraman is not only disappointing to the common public but also to the Industrialists as they are expecting lowest demand for non-essential products once the lockdown is over. It has been more than two months since the lockdown started and every time when PM and FM appear on television are bringing us advise and disappointment.
Narendra Modi is not facing ‘Varkkadam’ like weather that ancient kings had to face with the embarrassment; neither Modi is in the situation of Narashima Rao to fly off the gold reserves to foreign banks to secure a loan. We now have a normal weather with enough water for harvest this year, have abundant Forex and Gold reserves that is one of top ten in the world and our granaries are literally overflowing thanks to those ‘wise’ predecessors. Why is the government hesitating to provide financial relief to the section of society impacted most? What steps government would have taken to prevent migrant crisis? How does the future look like? The Corona situation clearly exposes following facts about India: unimpressive economic stimulus package, insufficient public health care system, incoordination of national and state institutions and last of all an unrepresented working class in a democracy.
Interpreting the economic package exposes the underpinning principle of central government, which is anti-socialism. Narendra Modi government is following capitalism and privatisation policies with a marginal exception of socialist policies in direct transfer of benefits. While hard-core capitalists like Trump and Johnson are now silently adopting socialist measures to protect their people’s income during this difficult time, is there a valid gain in defending anti-socialism for country like India, which has largest economic inequalities? The package, while allowing credit to different scale of industries and business fails to address the core problems on the ground. First, for the organised sector employees, only solution provided is through EPF. This government is making provisions to withdraw employee’s own saving of personal emergency/retirement and is naming it as relief? Organised sector employee in this country is always living with a big threat of job loss and the threat is now more than ever; the government had offered only word of advice to industries to keep employees. Second, for the unorganised sector workers, all the government has given is just a hope that indirect stimulus credit given to industries and vendors will keep money circulated to their hands. While there is a prevailing question about how many industries or vendors are ready to adventure new credits from banks, the number of workers ‘might’ benefited from this measure are just limited to essential sectors like retail and SME manufacturers. Third, millions of workers are not part of organised sector and neither are of working in essential sectors. Artisans, weavers, crafters, people who are reliant on service industries, like transport, tourism and festivals are desperately looking for some income. For them the hard part is only about to arrive as there is not going to be demand for their work and their service even after the lockdown lifted completely, owing to the social distance rules and people restricting their spending to essential commodities for coming months. What kind of remedy do they have from this package? What is more pathetic is when asked about them; Nirmala Sitharaman said the government has no database of them.
Even before the pandemic, the Indian Public Health system was in ICU already. Over the decades, health investment by Indian government is lowest in the world in health expenditure to GDP ratio. Large part of population forced to tolerate unhygienic, substandard treatment from public hospitals whereas rest of the population is resorting to private health care putting their household income to strain. While it is true that the treatment of Covid-19 is not charged, it is high time the country should consider changing the course of our health system. It is shocking to see that even such a lethal epidemic has not changed the heart of central government to increase the health investment. While the Ayushman Bharath scheme is trying to bring a sizable population under Insurance coverage, there is no better time to stress the importance of public health institutions than this pandemic era. Public health system is in forefront of fighting such epidemic now and will be in future too. Our strength in public health system are our doctors, human resource and network. We have built them through our prolonged learnings from past epidemic experience like Cholera, Leprosy, POLIO, AIDS etc. However, we are lacking behind in structural and financial resources. The package from Finance Minister is having an eye washing statements for improvement of Health system in the country. Hope for change in near future diminished.
It is a very good sign that PM is discussing with CMs during different stages of lockdown; however, that synergy did not pass down to length and breadth of the bureaucracy. There is nothing negative about different states following their own suitable model; but we do need to mention that crack was clearly visible in transport, migration management and in medical research institutions. ICMR, NIV, Ayush Ministry, NDMA were all working hard but were they working coherently? The chaos around migrant (mis)management is very evident of disowning responsibility and blame game of different institutions. The bureaucracy burden we have built over time is biting our ability to act swiftly despite of having all the resources. To unite multiple medical institutions and to streamline response, it is time to consider reinstating the Indian Medical Service (IMS) and to set high procedure and standards for not just COVID but for all type of treatments and disasters.
Repeatedly Modi and Mrs Sitaraman are offering sympathy, empathy and their heart to migrant workers. What we are expecting from them is solution. Railway is running train for migrants without food and water despite of the fact that there is not a single canteen open en route. Government responds critics saying their preference is life survival during pandemic. Survival without dignity is not a life. Albeit that the government claim of survival is fast fading away when we count number of life lost so far in migration. How did we arrive to such a desperate situation? How did the millions of labours and migrants lost voice and representation in the power corridor? Many of the migrants are from hard-core right wing support belt and presumably, many would have supported politicians of religious identity too. What did they get in return? In a secular constitution, is there anything the government can favour for religious blocks? In USA and in UK the working class organised themselves as political group and later evolved to become Democrat and Labour parties respectively. In India, working group is losing their political ground every day. Vote bank politics is vital and inevitable in a democracy; however, it should be on the lines of socio-economic differences rather than religious identity.
Prime Minister is responsible to prevent citizens from sufferings. Considering the destructions of demonetisation and Lockdown, it looks the contrary is true. Every time the government is asking people to bear the sufferings of ill implemented policies. In return, all it has to offer to people is advice. We do not have to handover those who lost jobs with thousands of dollars like the western countries does. However, why is our government feeling comfortable with just free dry rations? Nationalism is not one-way beneficial route wherein the authority reaps the benefit by evoking it. It is two way, the country and the government should share the burden of people in difficult times. Last week, Attorney General of this government argued in apex court that people of this country should give regards and loyalty to the government for what it has done so far. Let the Attorney General say this on face of a migrant who walked hundreds of miles barefoot, a labour who lost her job and an artist who is unsure of his next meal, let his concise realise the moment of truth.
-Prakash