Category: Opinion

Covid-19 – What Rest of India May Learn From Kerala

By Amit Sengupta

Fighting an epidemic like Corona requires scientific temper, humanism and a spirit for inquiry and reform. I strictly follow scientists and experts than those who eulogise on the imagined benefits of cow dung and cow urine.
–KK Shailaja, Health Minister of Kerala

As early as late March this year, impossible things were happening in Kerala. An old couple, aged 93 and 88, were admitted to the Kottayam Medical College. Their son and his family, upon return from Italy during the last week of February, had infected the elderly.

Placed in the high-risk category by international standards, considering the high mortality rate of older people globally due to the pandemic, they were already inflicted with multiple ailments, typical of old age. The man had heart and breathing problems, which deteriorated into a heart attack in the hospital; he was put under a ventilator.

Indeed, when the entire health system in the country and world over had put their hands up on old patients, especially those above 60, the medical staff and doctors at the Kottayam Medical College successfully saved the lives of the husband and wife. Kerala Health Minister KK Shailaja ‘Teacher’ was directly in touch with the hospital staff, assuring total support of the government, and successfully implementing the policy of decentralized micro-management. Almost a month later, a warm farewell was given to the couple by the hospital staff as the two left for their destination to Pathanamthitta.

ALSO READ: How Covid-19 Will Change Our Lives

Indeed, India’s first three positive cases were reported from Kerala, in just about two days in early February this year. The three patients were discharged, totally cared, after 15 days.

Why Kerala has become a model state has many outstanding reasons of current and long-term achievements. For instance, the same health minister led from the front in 2018 and 2019, to combat the Nipah virus outbreak.

During the devastating floods in 2018 and 2019, the entire Kerala, the state, its citizens in the rest of India, and those working in the Gulf, pooled in resources even as the central government gave a pittance as relief. The state machinery worked from the grassroots onwards, one step forward and two steps back, and painstakingly managed to resurrect the ravaged landscape into a new and pulsating entity. Even secularism was strengthened when religious places opened their compounds for prayers, shelter and food for all concerned, even while the waters of the flood roared outside.

This is an era of the information, and we are so proud of the global village. That America is a democracy is proved every day when US President Donald Trump, who hates the hostile free press in his country, holds a press conference on the dot, and answers the most difficult questions. He does not always indulge in a monologue, like the rare ‘speeches’ of the president for life in China, Xi Jin Ping, of what is clearly a totalitarian advanced capitalist nation-state.

At home, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not addressed a single press conference since May 2014. And in the current bleak scenario, both his home minister and health minister seem to be decisively missing.

Even an otherwise accessible ‘aam aadmi’ chief minister like Arvind Kejriwal, ground reporters crib, is refusing to answer questions, not even on Whatsapp or in a digital press meet. He diverts questions, and reportedly indulges in a one-way discourse, thereby consolidating what is a total information clampdown, on good or bad news, or what is in store for the people in Delhi and elsewhere.

Not so in Kerala. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has spoken to the media almost every day with regular updates, good and bad, about the state health scenario. Mostly, it is good news, and future projects. The state government, indeed, had agreed to ease local transport for workers, open book shops and restaurants, but the Union home ministry reportedly shot it down, for reasons only they know.

ALSO READ: Langar In The Time Of Coronavirus

Indeed, it will be worthwhile to give credit to the low profile, hard-working, straight-talking, simple and stoic chemistry teacher-turned-politician called KK Shailaja ‘Teacher’.  A hands-on minister, she is at the frontlines with her resilient mantra of ‘science over superstition’ in the most highly literate state in India. In that sense, once can draw parallels the ‘woman of science’ – Germany’s Angela Merkel.

According to reports, as early as in the month of January, when the first ominous signs were emerging from distant Wuhan in China, the health minister noticed the ‘alarm calls’. Her first reaction was that there were students from Kerala out there, perhaps trapped. “I sat together with the health secretary and discussed what to do because we knew a lot of Malayalee medical students were in Wuhan. We had the experience of Nipah, whereby we could not identify the first patient before he transmitted it to four family members.”

Hence, emergency measures were taken from the beginning even as help was reached out to the students. The airports in the state were kept on high alert from the beginning; this reporter was stopped for enquiry at the Kochi airport in early March. What is the origin of your destination, I was asked. When told that it was Delhi, they let me pass, even as foreigners were quarantined in comfort.

ALSO READ: ‘Choked Toilets, Smelly Linen. Quarantine Was Jail’

In top international tourist destinations like at the Kovalam beach resort near Thiruvantharam, or at the bustling Fort Kochi with its exquisite sunsets, old churches, Chinese fishing nets and huge ships sailing into the horizon across the Arabian Sea, there was a heightened state of awareness about the epidemic. Social distancing was being practiced without any overt formality, and the foreigners were treated with utmost respect and friendliness, with the local administration going out of their way to make them comfortable. Indeed, most foreigners have reportedly chosen to stay back.

Kerala’s discharge rate is very high. The mortality rate too is low. Said Minister Shailja: “Coronavirus mortality rate in Kerala is below 0.5 per cent, but in the world it is more than 5 per cent. In some places, it is even more than 10 per cent. Most of the people who are in isolation in the hospitals are stable and very few are in critical stage. We are treating them with utmost care. The discharging or cure rate is also very high in Kerala because of our systematic work. We evaluate everything every day.”

Sources in Thrissur inform that the virus has been declared almost totally controlled in Thrissur, Kottayam and Idukki. This is no mean achievement when the entire world is reeling under the pandemic.

The latest is the robot, as in China. Now ‘Nightingale-19’, designed by young innovators with the solid backing of the health department, is being used to provide food and medicines at the health centres in Ancharakandi in Kannur district. This is also a first in a ‘model’ state, where atleast 4 lakh migrant workers, designated with dignity as ‘guest workers’, have been given rations for three months, comfortable shelters and health care and counseling. In that case, there was no crisis in Kerala, when it came to the ‘guest workers’. So much so, ‘Opposition’ MPs, Mohua Mitra and Shashi Tharoor, joined in to speak to the Bengali workers directly through video, in Bengali, asking them to feel comfortable and not to worry at all.

Indeed, this can only happen in Kerala.

Langar In Coronavirus Times

Langar In The Time Of Coronavirus

By Pankaj Molekhi

It started with ₹20 and has grown into billions now. It is what Guru Nanak, the founder of GurSikhi, called Sacha Sauda. Now during the Coronavirus pandemic, while others have locked down, Gurdwaras around the world have opened up, preparing meals and feeding the vulnerable, the elderly, those at the front line and anyone who is unable to pay for or get the supplies to feed themselves. The number of meals a day are staggering.  During this bleak time, the Nishan Sahib (the Sikh flag) flying proudly at a Gurdwara has become a beacon of hope to millions around the world.

From Amritsar, Delhi, to as far places as United States (notably in California and New York), United Kingdom, Australia and many other countries, Gurdwaras have been busy preparing and distributing langar (meal cooked in a Gurdwara) packets.

Anyone who has been to a Gurdwara knows that langar is a remarkable feature of the Sikhs. There is no charge and there is no feeling of having received charity. In most large Gurdwaras, langar is available from early morning, in some cases as early as 5 am to late night, up to 10 pm in some.

ALSO READ: How Coronavirus Will Change Our Lives

During this Covid-19 crises, preparing the langar, packing them into take away boxes, distributing them safely during this period and delivering them takes up more logistical management than the conventional langar which is offered on the Gurdwara premises. It needs a good number of people to cook, pack, deliver and then wash the cooking utensils. But one thing that can be said for Sikhs is that there is never a shortage of volunteers when it comes to Gurdwara-led service initiatives.

The origin of this goes to Guru Nanak, who was born in 1469. At a young age, he was given twenty rupees by his father to go and buy some goods and then sell them in the village for a profit, in the hope of making him into a businessman. On his way, Guru Nanak met some people who were hungry and wore torn, unwashed clothes.  Guru Nanak spent the rupees for feeding them and buying them clothes. When asked by his father, Guru Nanak said that he had spent the money on Sacha Sauda, ‘true trade’ which was more useful than making money.

“Guru Hargovind Sahib, the sixth of our ten Gurus, said, ‘Garib da muh, Gur di golak’,
which means loosen your purse
strings to serve the needy.”

That was instituted into langar by the second Guru, Guru Angad Dev ji in 16th century and has become a feature of Sikh Gurdwaras since. Today, Sikhs around the world spend billions of their own earnings to run langars in Gurdwaras.

Kulwant Singh, a trustee at Guru Maneyo Granth Gurdwara in Slough, United Kingdom, explains it beautifully: “Among the basic tenets of Sikhism is an edict that says in the times of a crisis, leave everything you are doing and get involved in the service of the vulnerable. Guru Hargovind Sahib, the sixth of our ten Gurus, also said, ‘Garib da muh, Gur di golak’, which means loosen your purse strings to serve the needy.”

“We are not doing anyone a favour.
This is our duty as a Sikh”

-Kulwant Singh, Trustee of Guru Maneyo Granth Gurdwara, UK

The Slough Gurdwara was the first place of worship in the UK to set up a Covid-19 Combat team with a bank of 300 volunteers, of which 100 are active at any given time. These workers toil in the kitchen for preparation of food, manage logistics like packing and distribution of hot meals through vehicles and deliver dry ration across the town and beyond to the needy. They also have a helpline manged by 10 to 15 volunteers who take emergency calls for essential supplies and information.

Slough Gurdwara was the first place of worship in the UK to set up a Covid-19 helpline

“Many of these meals are provided to NHS (national health service) workers at their workplace. We are not doing anyone a favour. This is our duty as a Sikh,” says Kulwant Singh. The team has advertised its emergency numbers via posters and online forums, so anyone can ask for help. In the last week of April, the facility was serving 2,000 hot meals a day and supplying weekly dry rations to over 3,000 families. The expenses are entirely borne by the Gurdwara and the members of the congregation. For the appreciation showered at their work, they respond with a brief and humble expression: Guru Kirpa (Divine Grace).

Thousands of miles away in US, the police were so moved by the unflinching work by the Sikhs during lockdown that they decided to signal their gratitude in a novel way. On April 27, California Police cars came with full sirens blazing and entered the Riverside Gurdwara to the surprise of standers by. The posse circumambulated the place of worship in order to pay respect for the langar packets delivered by Sikhs to the needy and the frontline staff.

“When cops showed up at the (Riverside) Gurdwara, there were multiple emotions among us, but the overwhelming one was of gratitude”

Gurpreet Singh, Covid-19 Coordinator of Riverside Gurdwara, US
Videos of California Police circumambulating Riverside Gurdwara on April 27 went viral

“When cops showed up at the (Riverside) Gurdwara, there were multiple emotions among us, but the overwhelming one was one of gratitude,” said Gurpreet Singh, Covid-19 Coordinator of the Los Angeles-based Gurdwara.

“We had not expected any gesture from anyone; our efforts have been entirely voluntary and motivated by our faith and beliefs. Nor did we expect that news to go viral. However, this did give a sense to pride to our volunteers. They felt good,” Mr Singh added

Meanwhile in India in Delhi too, in recognition of the Sikhs rising to the challenge of Coronavirus lockdown, the city police performed a round of the Gurdwara Bangla Sahib with sirens blazing. Gurdwara Sri Bangla sahib, one of the historic Sikh holy places in India, has been providing some thousands of langar packets a day.

“We did feel proud when even the Prime Minister publicly recognised our efforts on social media with a video of Delhi Police team performing a siren salute to Gurdwara Bangla Sahib. It gave us satisfaction and boosted the morale of our volunteers”

Manjinder Singh Sirsa, President of Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee

The Gurdwaras under Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC) have collectively been providing daily meals to lakhs of people amid an unprecedented lockdown.

WATCH: Siren Salute For Gurdwara Bangla Sahib

Manjinder Singh Sirsa, DSGMCpresident, explains: “In Delhi, the Sikh community is working at two levels in these difficult times. One is at DSGMC level and the other is at various local Singh Sabhas or Gurdwara level. At DSGM, we feed nearly 2Lakh people daily, provide shelter and food to Doctors and other frontline health workers, and distribute dry rations to about 20,000 poor families on a weekly basis.”

While there is provision of state aid for such relief work, the Gurdwaras have managed it on our own. “This spirit of ‘sewa’ is being across the world. We did feel proud when even the Prime Minister publicly recognised our efforts on social media with a video of Delhi Police team performing a siren salute to Gurdwara Bangla Sahib. It gave us satisfaction and boosted the morale of our volunteers,” says Sirsa.

ALSO READ: Will Humans Turn Better Post-Pandemic?

Gurdwaras were also requested to continue with the langar services by the Jathedar of Sri Akal Takht Sahib. Sri Akal Takht Sahib is the ‘Vatican’ of the Sikhs, the institution that guides Sikhs and Gurdwaras around the world on matters of practice and interpretation. The custodian of the Akal Takht Sahib is called Jathedar.

At a langar, everything is prepared fresh. Anyone regardless of religion, caste, nationality, background or means can eat at the langar. Usually this involves sitting on the floor. The Sikh practice of people sitting together at langar is called pangat. The richest and the poorest sit together, no one feels a sense of receiving charity. No one is questioned and no one is then given a sermon on the virtues of becoming or turning into a Sikh.

That astonishes many people who always see an ulterior motive, like proselytising, behind anything free. But langar is unconditional. Sikhs call it ‘sewa’ (volunteering) instead of Aid or charity, as they consider it a blessing to donate towards, prepare and give away free the Guru’s langar.

Guru Nanak’s langar has now been recognised as one of the most selfless work around the world. Entirely supported by the community, Sikh Gurdwaras do not hoard money or gold but spend it on public services. Almost all the donations are spent on ongoing services such as Langar. Langar equalises everyone as the richest and the poorest sit on the same level.

The great thing about langar is that it takes away the unequal relationship between donor and the recipient. The Sikhs give to the Guru and the Guru gives to the people. By giving it a sacred context, everyone feels privileged to partake in langar. Hence it is not aid or charity but sewa or selfless service.

The philosophy behind langar is that no one should sleep hungry. In India people know where to get a meal without question. All they have to do is find a Gurdwara. The country is blessed with so many Gurdwaras.

In Amritsar, Sri Harmandir Sahib (Golden Temple) around a 100,000 people eat langar every day. About 80% are non-Sikhs. It needs considerable organisation to prepare so many meals on a daily basis. In most large Gurdwaras they have mechanised the process with roti (chapati) making machines. Similar numbers are fed at Gurdwaras in many other large Indian cities. There is hardly a town in India that does not benefit from langar.

Occasionally, there have been criticism within the community of wasting so much money without return. Some Sikhs feel that there is no appreciation of this service and Gurdwaras should consider giving leaflets to encourage conversions or restrict numbers. But unconditional service is precisely what Guru Nanak had started. The vast majority of Sikhs continues to dismiss these pressures and proudly provide langar without making the recipient feel humiliated or under pressure. All that is asked is to consider the rest of humanity as one.

It is truly a remarkable and service on a global scale. The Corona Virus has killed many people. But it has neither dented the spirit of the Sikhs to continue with langar nor has Corona lockdown forced hunger upon people as long as there is a Gurdwara around.

Chronicles Of An Arrest Foretold

By Amit Sengupta

I was 20, and I won’t let anyone say those are the best years of my life
– Paul Nizan, Aden Arabia

On social media platforms, there has been a new celebration of nostalgia in lockdown: #MeAt20, pictures when you were in the 20s.

While many discovered old forgotten memories and fresh, open-ended, non-dogmatic, young and idealistic faces from the past, mostly in black & white, the vicious signs of the contemporary times in India came back like a sudden jolt. Masrat Zahra, a Kashmiri photo-journalist in her 20s, was booked under a stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, for uploading “anti-national” posts on social media. The action is repetitive and inevitable, and it seems shocking, surprising, lacking both sanity and humanity, every time it arrives in its bitter ritualism. Why, you ask yet again, knowing so fully well the depressing answer. For God’s sake, why, and that too during a global ‘Mahamari’, amidst death and dying?

However, what do you do with those who love the sinister and the diabolical like in a compulsive, obsessive, B-Grade horror movie, constantly looking for ‘potential victims’, using their constitutional powers like feudal, unaccountable, revengeful monarchies and dictatorships? And what do you do when the old and the ageing, in the last phases of their life’s illustrious graph, choose to become so vindictive and hateful against the young, especially the educated and the professional young, that they want to hurt them so badly, demonise and dehumanize them, clamp draconian laws against them, brand them ‘anti-nationals and jehadis’, among other clichéd ‘badges of honour’, and, finally, lock them up in prisons, even while the justice system seems so tragically distant and indifferent?

ALSO READ: Hanging (On Wall) Without Trial

Can parents hate their children? Can teachers hate their students? Can gurus hate their shishyas? Can a good coach hate the sportspersons he is teaching the difficult craft of the game? Can the ageing and the powerful so hate the young, instead of celebrating their brilliance? Are they not the future of hope, and the hope of the future, the nation’s scaffoldings?

Yes, it seems, if we look at contemporary times in India, which is gloomy and foreboding, not because of the young, but because of the old: the bitter, Hobbesian old.

There are many pictures which Masrat Zahra has taken in her young career as a photo journalist, including on women, in places not many journalists would dare to go in a ‘conflict zone’. Her pictures have been authentic and non-partisan. Homai Vyarawalla was an ace woman photojournalist during the colonial period, and there have been rare and few instances of women taking up the camera. Young Masrat’s pictures in Kashmir’s sublime and difficult terrain are loaded with subliminal depth, sensitivity and angst; they capture news as much as transcend ‘news as instant history’.

ALSO READ: Has The Nation Forgotten Kashmir?

This is no mechanical reproduction of art or current affairs. This is the craft of story-telling and visual history, this is time unfolding and recorded with a spontaneous click of the camera. There is nothing spontaneous in her camera, or her art of photography. It is built through years of observation, silence and absorption of the unhappy and uncanny reality in Kashmir, now under a military lockdown since August 5.

As a photo journalist, surely, she has the right to photograph all she sees: the falling of the leaves in sad autumn, like Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’, the leaves becoming kaleidoscopic; or, the stillness of the Dal Lake during an entire day’s life, as if life’s infinite sadness has stopped the ripples of the waters; or, the barbed wires and the barricades. So, why is she being hounded, a young and brilliant person with great promise? Instead, India, and its government, should be proud of her.

And why hound Peerzada Ashiq as well, the credible correspondent of The Hindu in Srinagar? If this is not a direct attack on the freedom of press, as it was when they tried to hound Siddharth Varadarajan, Editor, The Wire, then what is it? Siddharth only did his duty as a professional journalist, he only reported what many others were doing. So why pick and choose, while all those who run the flourishing hate factories can get away with fake news, planted stories, character assassinations, doctored videos, communal and social hatred in full public glare, and again and again, like a chronicle of a tale foretold?

ALSO READ: Muzzling Dissent Is New Normal

They have booked some of the brightest young people in our intellectual horizons without any iota of evidence. Safoora Zargar, a MPhil scholar in Jamia, significantly also from Kashmir, Meeran Haider, from Jamia, both doing relief work in difficult circumstances, Gowher Geelani, a journalist, and, once again, Umar Khalid, who has done his PhD from JNU, and against whom not one charge has been proved despite their best efforts to demonise him, including with doctored videos. Besides, Khalid Saifi of United Against Hate and Ishrat Jahan, both working in relief operations after the riots in Northeast Delhi, were arrested. Khalid was allegedly tortured too, with his legs in plaster.

Is it, because, they are all Muslims?

Fortunately, barring the compulsive sell-outs, the entire journalist fraternity has stood up in protest and in solidarity. Said the Editors Guild of India: “The Editors Guild of India has noted with shock and concern the high-handed manner in which the law enforcement agencies in Jammu & Kashmir have used the prevailing laws to deal with two Srinagar-based journalists, Masrat Zahra, a young freelance photographer, and Peerzada Ashiq, a reporter working for The Hindu.

“Any recourse to such laws for merely publishing something in the mainstream or social media is a gross misuse of power. Its only purpose can be to strike terror into journalists. The Guild also believes that this is an indirect way of intimidating journalists in the rest of the country as well. The journalists should be put to no harm or further harassment. If the government has any grievance against their reporting, there are other ways of dealing with such issues in the normal course. Mere social media posts of factual pictures can’t attract the toughest anti-terror laws passed for hardened terrorists. And in the case of The Hindu reporter, the correct course was to escalate the complaint to the newspaper’s editor. The Guild demands that the Union Territory administration of Jammu & Kashmir withdraw the charges forthwith.”

Meanwhile, the Indian Women’s Press Corps (IWPC) said that it is shocked at the manner in which the law enforcement authorities in Jammu & Kashmir, over the last few days, have invoked laws to clamp down on freedom of speech and expression that violate fundamental rights laid down in the Constitution. The IWPC notes that the intentions of the authorities in J&K is to strike fear in the hearts of journalists who are simply doing their job. This is a clear message that the Union Territory will not tolerate dissent.”

Several civil society organisations and collective bodies of journalists, including the Committee for the Protection of Journalists and the Network of Women in Media, India, have protested against the intimidation of journalists. The international media is also reporting on the gasping breath of the largest democracy.

Indeed, if this government wants only a puppet media, a loyalist intellectual community, and a youth which should only toe its line, then Indian democracy is in serious danger. Perhaps, we have already crossed the line of control. And that is bad news.

How Coronavirus Will Change Our Lives

By Sanjoy Narayan

The biggest challenges that the world continues to face from the Coronavirus pandemic are: how to stop its spread; find a cure or preventive; and protect the health and well-being of the entire population of the world.

While governments, healthcare authorities, and others wrestle with these confounding tasks, let us take a moment to try and look into a post-Corona world and what that will mean for all of us. At the moment, when everything about the pandemic continues to be unpredictable and uncertain, such a proposition could seem akin to crystal-ball gazing but yet, given the various trends that have surfaced in today’s beleaguered world, it may be time to try and conceive a new order that may emerge.

According to an estimate by the Imperial College, London, unless there is a sure-shot vaccine that is developed or an accelerated pace of herd immunity (which is a form of indirect protection from infectious disease that takes place when large proportions of the population becomes immune to the infection and, thus, provides a degree of protection from the virus for people who are not immune), the current crisis that the world faces could continue for 18 months or more. Perhaps even two years. That is long enough for individuals, communities, businesses, and governments to change the way we all live and work.

ALSO READ: ‘Stay Home, Work From Home, Cook At Home’

For businesses, depending on the products and services they purvey, this could call for scenario analyses—whether to ride out the slowdown; or restructure and pare their activities and markets; or simply close down and abandon their enterprises. Such scenarios, as always, range from the mildly disruptive to ones that are radically destructive and catastrophic. But even as businesses try to contend with such challenges, what may have emerged are distinct changes in the way individuals have begun to behave. Restrictions on normal life, ranging from complete lockdowns to self-isolation to quarantine will likely change the way people live, work, think and value their lives as well as material items such as what they buy, eat, or do for leisure.

Many of the new limitations that people have been grown used to in the past several months such as travel restrictions; restrictions on gathering and socialising; and protection for high-risk groups will likely be adopted as the new order in the months to come and may even become the new norm for living. Some of this has already led to new habits: remote working; an unprecedented shift to e-commerce; online schooling and education; and a blurring of the lines between work and leisure. It has, of course, also led to large-scale lay-offs, factory and business closures, and, consequently, a rise in social tension and stress.

But here’s the thing. Could this also result in people and organisations discovering the benefits of a new way of living and working that challenge traditional business and lifestyle norms? According to the Board of Innovation (BoI), a business design and innovation strategy firm, these are changes that will very likely happen in the not-so-distant future. In a recent report, Shifts in the Low Touch Economy, BoI analyses the emerging trends—mainly from the point of view of businesses but also in terms of changing behaviour of individuals and consumers.

ALSO READ: Invisible Indians In Pandemics

But first, the status of the world. More than 1/3rd of the world’s population is under some form of lockdown and in the parts where there is no official lockdown yet, there is some form of self-isolation and restriction on gathering of people. Borders between most countries have been shut down. Unemployment owing to waves of lay-offs are at very high levels.

Bankruptcies and business closures are already spreading in waves across the world. In poor countries such as India where hundreds of millions live on daily wages, the distress levels could lead to serious strains in the social fabric. In other countries, including those in the developed world, the closing of borders and domestic economic strain could fuel already existing xenophobia and demands for protectionism. In the US, for instance, issues such as immigration, work permits for foreigners, and racial discrimination could become hotspot topics as the economy tries to rehabilitate.

Those are real problems and much would depend on how long the pandemic and its effects last. But there could be other changes too, as the BoI report suggests. Consumer behaviour could change more permanently than we had thought. Changes that had begun before could get accelerated. For instance, remote working could be a habit that both employees and employers adopt as a norm. Home deliveries of essentials such as groceries could become a cost-effective way for both consumers and merchants. People could travel less than they did before and movement restrictions between countries could last longer than we think. Isolation and loneliness could have psychological impacts on people and conflicts and tension could rise at all levels. Mistrust of people and products could also rise.

ALSO READ: Who Is Afraid Of Lifting The Lockdown?

All of these would naturally result in new opportunities not only for businesses that are quick to adapt to the new behaviourial norms of their customers but also for those skilled in specialised fields. For example, psychiatric therapy online; or new forms of no-contact social gatherings. But there could be more fundamental changes. As people become more conscious of hygiene and risks of contagious diseases, companies may have to rethink packaging of their products and merchants of efficient ways of contact-less drop-offs. Travel and tourism could change: overseas travel could decline and local or domestic tourism could flourish. Companies could slash their office space requirements as they find it cost-efficient to have employees work from home. But with conflicts and tensions rising, legal activity could rise too—already lawyers and the justice systems across the world are turning to digital ways of functioning.

The BoI report outlines several fundamental shifts that could change the world we live in. While these have huge implications for businesses, they would, in varying degrees, affect individuals across the world as well. Chief among these shifts are: Geopolitics (where we could see the rise protectionism and xenophobia); Technology (where everything becomes more and more digital and contactless); Macroeconomics (the access to capital becomes scarcer); and Human behaviour (where isolation and social distancing becomes self-imposed).

While rich countries as well as the poor ones grapple with fighting the pandemic and protecting their citizens, these trends that could continue long after the pandemic has subsided and affect our lives over the forthcoming years are also probably worth thinking about.

Devdas, The Show Isn’t Over Yet

By Mahendra Ved

As Hindu epics-based television serials Ramayan and Mahabharat gather encore from Indian audiences locked-in by Caronavirus, I wondered what could come next in reach, frequency and impact. My search ended with films based on the Bengali novel, Devdas, by Sharat Chandra Chatterjee. However, they are distant second by millions of miles, understandably, because Devdas is not an epic, nor does it preach any faith, ideology or philosophy.

Of the 20 odd films, one or two can arguably be called classics. Again, together they are no match to cinema, theatre, art and literature springing from the epics and other scriptures. Cinema and Devdas are but a century-old. None compares to, say, Hollywood’s Ten Commandments. But that would be digressing.

The novel or the films have not attained mass popularity because they end tragically. Readers/viewers find that depressing. Chatterjee who wrote this semi-autobiography in 1900 did not publish till 1917. He was embarrassed, as per his son, having written under alcohol’s influence. He thought it lacked maturity, although it remains his most famous work.

Devdas is a tragic triangle. Temperamental and timid by turns, the protagonist baulks when childhood love Parvati (Paro), entering his bedroom at night, proposes marriage. Blaming himself, but also her, for the ‘mistake,’ he takes to booze and to Chandramukhi, a courtesan. She loves him hopelessly but he, unable to forget an unattainable Paro, dislikes her, even as he depends upon her.

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Devdas dominates child-Paro, even strikes her on the eve of her marriage. Class and caste divides of the 19th century Bengal determine his parents’ rejection of the alliance and hers retaliate by finding someone higher and richer, even if old.

This story of viraha (separation) and self-destruction ends with a nomadic and sick Devdas, keeping the promise made to Parvati of “one last meeting”, dies at her doorsteps. There is no reunion.

Devdas’ 20 odd film versions cover the Indian Cinema’s evolution. The first by Naresh Mitra, released in 1927, was ‘silent’.  In 1935, four years after Indian cinema went ‘talkie’, its director P C Barua also enacted the lead. The very next year, he directed K L Saigal and Jamuna, captivating imagination of the pre-Partition India’s cine-goers with their acting and haunting songs. Barua was not done: the Assamese version came in 1937.

In 1953, Vedantam Raghaviah made Tamil and Telugu versions. Both had Akkineni Nageswara Rao and Savithri playhing Devdas and Parvati.  Two decades later, Vijaya Nirmala directed and played Parvati in another Tamil version (1974).   

In southern India, Akkineni’s depiction of Devdasu is considered the ultimate. Stories have it that for Bimal Roy’s Hindi version (1955), Dilip Kumar repeatedly watched the Telugu film.  Purists think no actor can surpass their performances.  

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Devdas inspired passion and continuity. Roy was Barua’s cinematographer. That it triggered several re-makes over a long period is remarkable. It laid the most significant milestones in careers of all concerned. 

It’s difficult, also unfair perhaps, to compare different versions made in different times with varying literary, technological, artistic, even financial inputs. I venture to say – and I am not alone – that Roy, by now working in what became Bollywood, getting Dilip Kumar – reportedly for Rs one lakh, a ‘princely’ sum in those times — to pair with Bengal’s Suchitra Sen, and with Vyjayantimala playing Chandramukhi, Kamal Bose’ photography and S D Burman’s music, is the most significant version.   

Devdas, following Jogan (1950), Deedar (1951) and others where Dilip Kumar played melancholic characters, sealed his reputation as the “tragedy king”. It caused him psychological imbalance. But it also inspired many a young aspirant to flock to Mumbai to act in films.

Translating a literary work on celluloid is never easy. Capturing Bengal’s countryside, providing the right musical notes from Baul to Mujhra, and of course, writing, played their respective roles. Roy, it would seem, got the combination right.  

In one of this film’s iconic scenes, Chandramukhi pleads with Devdas that he has drunk excessively and more would harm him. Surrounded by bottles, he retorts in utter despair: “Kaun kambakht hai jo bardasht karne ke liye peeta hai… main to peeta hun ke bas saans le sakun.”

I am unable to translate these lines by Rajinder Singh Bedi. But they were more or less repeated 47 years later in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s 2002 version.

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Unintended perhaps, there is continuity in the way Shahrukh Khan interpreted Devdas for Bhansali. Whether or not Kumar ‘learnt’ from Akkineni, Khan certainly emulated Kumar with whom he shares not only looks, but also ethnic/cultural roots. Think of the two Pathans hailing from Peshawar, interpreting a Bengali ‘bhadralok’!   

This ‘flexibility’ explains Devdas’ larger South Asian literary/cinematic reach, unaffected by India’s Partition. It has been filmed twice each in Pakistan (in Urdu 1965 and 2010) and Bangladesh (in Bengali in 1982 and 2013).  But it remains essentially Indian, with versions in Bengali, Hindi, Malayalam, Telugu and Assamese.  Most “non-Bengali” versions have been made post-Partition.

Generations have embraced Devdas. My father loved Saigal’s portrayal. Post-independence generations go gaga over Dilip’s. But my son prefers SRK’s colourful bonanza. One of the most lavishly mounted Bollywood venture, it was the first Indian film to be premiered at Cannes Film Festival.    

Sadly, I have seen only a few clips of Saigal. A Dilip admirer, I must confess to SRK’s interpretation growing on me as it were, on more viewings.

Film-makers by and large stuck faithfully to Chatterjee’s Devdas. But with the turn of the century, the current lot is taking artistic liberties. ‘Original’ Devdas went to Kolkata (then Calcutta) for studies. But Bhansali sent him to England, returning as a smoker, donning Western coat and hat. He lapses into dhoti-Panjabi ensemble when life gets tough and tragic. Incensed West Bengal lawmakers had demanded the film’s ban for its many ‘distortions’.

Among major actors of their times, besides Barua, Saigal and Akkineni, Kamal Haasan and SoumitraChaterjee played Devdas.    Parvati and Chandramukhi have been interpreted by Pakistan’s Shamim Ara and Banglaesh’s Kabori Chowdhur/Sarwar, Vijaya Nirmala (also its producer), Vyjayantimala, Supriya Chowdhury, Sridvi, Aishwarya Rai and Madhuri Dikshit.

Vyjayantimala was known to have rejected the Best Supporting Actor nomination, insisting that her Chandramukhi, and not Paro, is the real heroine. Her view can be compared to Ramayan being viewed from Ravan’s standpoint, not always Ram’s.

On Suchitra Sen’s passing away in 2014, however, she admitted to being acknowledged at the national level and by critics after she played alongside Suchitra.

Ironically, save a brief frame, the two did not share a single sequence. While Vyjayantimala shot in Bombay, Sen’s part was filmed in Bengal.

For Madhuri who played Bhansali’s Chandramukhi with great aplomb, it was vindication. Clutching her Filmfare Award, she chided her critics who had written her off as a fading star after her marriage and migration to the United States.

Of Devdas’ five modern-day takes, in Anurag Kashyap’s “Dev D” all three protagonists are into booze and sex. The setting is Punjabi. His Chandramukhi is a hippy-like call-girl painting Delhi red. 

In “Daas Dev” (2018) Sudhir Mishra borrows not just from Chatterjee’s novel but also from Shakespeare’s Hamlet to capture the dynamics of India’s dynastic politics.

In a sense, Devdas is India’s answer to Hamlet. Both have survived generations. Life does oscillate between hope and despair.  Many would question their relevance today, though, especially their failure to rebel against prevailing norms.

The only known survivor of the 1955 saga besides Vyjayantimala, Dilip once stated that his aim was “to convey the sense of hopelessness that pervades the relationship between Devdas and the two women and others who are a part of his doomed life without leading ardent viewers to cynicism and despondence.”

The mystique continues. Gulzar’s 1980s attempt, with Dharmendra (who had reportedly financed the venture), Sharmila Tagore as Parvati and Hema Malini as Chandramukhi was aborted, nobody knows why. The National Film Archives of India (NFAI) is searching the two reels Gulzar completed, but are missing.

In early 1960s, India lost its treasure of old films, including Devdas, in a fire in a Mumbai godown. The NFAI engaged in protracted talks with its Bangladeshi counterpart to retrieve the only surviving copy of the 1936 version found with a Chittagong film distributor. It was exchanged for Satyajit Ray’s Apu Triology.

The recovery of Devdas, film analyst Gautam Kaul recalls, was aptly celebrated with a ‘premier’ held at Nandan theatre in Kolkata.   

Great story-telling on cinema may elude in this era when a film-maker must stay commercially viable. Yet, last word may not have been said on Devdas.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

The Invisible Indians In Pandemics

By Amit Sengupta

Classical literature and cinema are full of stories about stoic and steadfast human struggles against poverty, homelessness, displacement and hunger; as much as the ritualistic tragedy, and the inevitable defeat of humanity and humanism. So how does the life unfold as cinema and literature, tragic as it is, in the time of lockdown and pandemic?

You may read Munshi Premchand’s Sadgati, among others. You may read Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Poor People. Or else, you can simply watch three classics in black & white of our turbulent times: Do Bigha Zameen by Bimal Roy, about a landless farmer’s ordeal in Calcutta; Bicycle Thieves by Vittorio de Sica in war-torn Rome; and, of course, Pather Panchali by Satyajit Ray and written by Bibhutibhushan Bondopadhyay. In the last shot of Ray’s first film, abject poverty forces a poor Brahmin family into exile; their migration begins on a bullock cart, even as a snake slithers into their abandoned ‘home’.

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For those who might find ‘this kind of cinema’ unpalatable and unnerving,  there is Modern Times by Charlie Chaplin, set up in the backdrop of the Great Depression in Europe, where hunger, homelessness and poverty stalked the continent, even as the seeds were being sown for the rise of fascism in Germany and Italy. And, while, you might laugh, and roll down with amusement, you might actually observe that the underlying theme is really not so comic! Not only does this film anticipate the ‘big brother is watching’ and Doublespeak syndrome, the Surveillance State and the ruthless capitalist machine in another epical classic penned by George Orwell – ‘1984’, it actually graphically depicts the mass unemployment stalking thousands of workers and the sheer brutality of the mechanical machine.

In one interesting scene, a bumbling Chaplin, as usual enjoying himself thoroughly, is being chased by a bunch of utterly bumbling cops. So he falls into a gutter. As he emerges from the gutter he finds himself at the vanguard of a worker’s march on the streets. He quickly picks up a red flag and starts marching right in front – as if he is the leader. In fact, he too is a jobless worker, a citizen in exile, a condemned nobody, in a general realm of utter despair.

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Cut to the present scenario in urban India.

In a dark irony, the real life parallel cinema has gone ‘viral’ at several crossroads in present times, even during the emptiness and helplessness of the lockdown. It’s mostly about poverty, hunger, homelessness and migration. And it stalks about 40 crore unorganized workers in the vast, sprawling and unaccountable informal sector of India, employing as many as 93 per cent of the workforce, who are virtually invisible and ghettoized, practically without any fundamental or trade union rights, no health insurance, no maternity leave, no provident fund, just about nothing. Half of them are women, and a majority of them are Dalits and most backward classes/castes. They are basically outside the market, except as ‘free labour’, and Indian citizens outside the directive principles of the Indian Constitution.

Tens of thousands of them started marching soon after the Prime Minister’s second 8 pm monologue, with just about three hours given as time in the thick of night to restore normalcy in life and to organize and plan ahead. Most of them had no option since they were thrown out of their homes and jobs, and their day-to-day life of basic, minimum subsistence outside all social security schemes or a future.

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So, while swanky cars zipped past them, and people watched this Reality TV from high-rise balconies on expressways, the poor started walking to unknown destinations from where had migrated to look for work, many of them barefoot, children in tow, often sharing the burden. It was the long march, from here to eternity, under a scorching sun; hungry and thirsty women, mothers, children, walking along.

The Prime Minister’s unplanned and rather insensitive lockdown anouncement had failed for the whole world to see. The virus was all over the place, in human exodus and exile, in mass migration, in the sheer mass tragedy unfolding on the streets and highways.

A girl posted on social media that she stopped her car and asked a family moving on foot if they needed anything: biscuits, water? A young couple with two little ones. The woman is holding a sack on her head with her belongings – the sack has a name – ‘Santushti’. The man is holding a larger sack on his head – it too has a name, ‘Good Times’ or acche din. The woman smiled with gratitude, and said, “Nahi didi, hamare paas abhi toh hain. Aap kisi aur ko de dena…” (No sister, we have food as of now. You give it to someone else.)

Hundreds of workers who were not allowed to march, found shelter on the banks of a dirty Yamuna in the capital of India in recent times, not far from the citadels of power, under a concrete flyover.  Most of them have not got even one meal a day; and they have no work, no money, nowhere to go. They are trapped, even as NGOs, students, good citizens try to reach out. There are innumerable and scattered stories about the fate of these invisible men and women across the cities in India, especially around industrial zones and townships.

In Surat, there have been repeated and angry pitched battles of the workers with the cops. This is the textile hub of India, apart from its famous diamond industry. Surat is in crisis anyway since demonitisation and GST, with its small scale industry in a black hole. And they were/are all die-hard Modi supporters.

In Bombay, hundreds of workers came out, without any bag or luggage, at Bandra railway station, saying that they just want to go home, that life here is just not livable, that there is no hope left now. Thankfully, the cops did not beat them up, though FIRs have been lodged against scores, including a ‘trade union’ leader who gave a call to the workers to hit the streets near the Bandra railway station. Indeed, not to miss another diabolical and sinister chance, the usual ‘Hindutva’ TV channels quickly found a reason to give it a communal dimension, just because there was a masjid close by. They did not even bother to check if the masjid was actually providing food to the workers.

A reporter with a TV channel too has been arrested for giving the fake news that special trains will take the jobless workers to their native places. Indeed, with the kind of fake news circulating all over, like an epidemic of sorts, especially by the same TV channels compulsively, obsessively and without an iota or concern for media ethics, it is anybody’s guess why they are not being hauled up.

Surely, there are stories within stories. It’s a Do Bigha Zameen for the unwashed masses, yet again. Surely, in this Pather Panchali, the Song of the Road, there is neither melody, nor joy.

Test Swab For Covid-19

Coronavirus, Nemesis Of Age Of Reason

By Jasdev Singh Rai

It’s only a Virus. But it’s the Pandemic Virus! Who was responsible? Superstition, blind faith, witches brew and conspiracies are back in the ‘Age of Reason’ and science. Anthropocentric (human centric) confidence is meeting its nemesis. People forget, nature can’t be ruled.

Nature is full of viruses. There are some millions of strains and scientists cannot quite agree on a classification. What’s more, viruses are constantly mutating without the help of scientists in white coats. Nature is their driver, scientist and spy in chief.

A virus is essentially a RNA or a DNA with a bit of coating in many. It has confounded the scientific world for classification as it is neither a non-living entity nor quite a living entity. It does not replicate by finding a partner and produce baby viruses to be nurtured by mummy virus.

RNA and DNA are templates from a sort of Unicode. They are gene codes of all of life, be it microbes (bacteria etc), insects, mammals human beings, plants, fungus etc. Each species has its own code and within species there are small variations, such as hair colour, height, facial features, gender, functional ability (some become Ussain Bolts, others are best suited to watch TV) and so on. Of course environment also plays a part but the framework is all due to these guys, called RNA and DNA. And they make adjustments over years, thus giving rise to evolutionary changes.

A virus is essentially a RNA or a DNA with a bit of coating

RNA and DNA are made of small molecules called nucleotides. For those with a bit of chemistry background, both have guanine, adenine and cytosine. But DNA also has thymine while just to be different, RNA has uracil instead. They occur in different combinations thus giving each RNA and DNA a different character for the species. They have one further difference. RNA is usually a single string and DNA is two strings, the famous double helix structure. It gets more complex after that and we are not giving away free PhD courses here.

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One other character difference between the two for interest is that DNA is more stable while RNA is quite unstable. RNA tends to change more frequently, hence some viruses like coronaviruses mutate constantly.

RNA and DNA are the reason life continues to replicate. These guys don’t want nirvana. Over millions of years they have formed complex ways for perpetuity. Some formed bacteria and continue like that, Others have become elephants etc. Many have become plants and others have formed the human race for survival. When we say life goes on, in fact it is the gene, the RNA and DNA that goes on. While we make elaborate theories about soul and afterlife, these guys, RNA, DNA just want to jump into the next generation and survive. They are not interested in God.

Some of these guys didn’t bother to become exotic. They have remained in their most basic form as RNA or DNA and found convenient way to near eternity. They survive with a little protective protein coat and become parasites to replicate. We call them viruses!

Viruses are very, very, very small. They are about 10000 times smaller than a grain of salt.  They are also nimble. The coronavirus has some 29,903 nucleotides. The smallest human chromosome is 50 million nucleotides with a total of 3,200,000,000 nucleotides in a human DNA. With 3.2 billion relatives in tow, no wonder the human DNA has to make us go through those complex rituals of finding a partner, marriage ceremony and home making to get itself to the next generation. Believe it, it is not your parents who push you into a marriage, it is the human gene trying to remain on this earth through another generation.

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The nimble virus on the other hand doesn’t have to go through these rituals. But it has no life until it joins a living thing. It just hangs around or degenerates. It survives by finding something living, sneaks into its cells by crafty methods and then replicates! It is the ultimate real life zombie film.

There are viruses everywhere. Millions and trillions of them. Only around 5000 have been studied. They are in every organism.

So what about coronavirus. This virus has another capsule, as do many virus strains. There is a halo appearance to this capsule with small mushroom type bits on it. Hence it is called corona. Corona is a gaseous halo around a planet. There are quite a few types of coronavirus strains. SARS-CoV-2 is a new mutation causing the disease Covid-19.

This nasty virus usually attacks lower parts of the lungs rather than throat that other influenza viruses do. It attaches to the membrane of host cells. Poor suckers (host cells) get romantic with it and open up. In goes the Viral RNA. It twinkles its eyes (metaphorically) at everyone and finds its way into the host nucleus and DNA. There it becomes deceitful, raids the DNA, uses it and replicates like no tomorrow. Many more Coronavirus formations take form. They push out of the host cell membrane onto others. Some get sneezed out. If the host cells had a vocabulary, deceitful is the mildest word they would use as they are ripped apart.

An effigy of Covid19 at Moghalpura X road in Hyderbad

Then the collateral damage starts. The cells that die form mucous. When cells die, it leads to temperature as the body deals with toxins. The mucous accumulates. The cells that are meant to push the mucous upwards into the mouth for us to spit (bad habit) or swallow, are dying and unable to do so. When there is quite a bit of mucous, the Oxygen from the air cannot get in properly while Carbon-di-Oxide from blood cannot get out. No amount of ginger or haldi can help at this stage. The whole body starts becoming toxic. Ventilators are used to try and push in high concentration Oxygen in the hope that it will give time to the body to build antibodies to destroy the virus.

The human immune system is a remarkable defence army. There is no dithering politician to control its timing. Normally the human body has had numerous mild infections since birth. The immune system immediately does what scientists are trying to do except it works faster. It looks at hostile cells, studies it (yes believe it or not) and then builds counter cells, enzymes etc to destroy the hostile invader. This has nothing to do with witches brew.

Once the immune system has dealt with an invasion, it memorises it. Next time it is even quicker off the mark. But sometimes the invasion is overwhelming, especially in older people where the immune system is also in retirement mode, or in people with illnesses such as diabetes where it has other distractions and is also slightly compromised. In these cases the virus gets an advantage and may decapacitate the body’s response. The person dies from lack of Oxygen reaching vital organs.

The Covid-19 virus is called a novel virus, meaning a new mutation. That’s why people do not have pre-existing immunity. The body is building immunity on the go.

Viruses change some of their RNA nucleotide sequences in a number of clever ways when they realise hosts have effective defences. The host has to start building immunity all over again.

They can get together with another virus of near similar strain within a host and create a different RNA nucleotide structure without affecting core one. This is called ‘recombination’. For instance there may be a strain from animal A, i.e. a bat, that gets into animal B, i.e. a pig. The pig may have some similar strains to human viruses.  A new recombinant virus strain appears called novel virus. This newly mutated virus jumps into the human and we get a pandemic if the virus is dangerous.

Though widely believed, there is no evidence that the virus came from bat soup

Bats and viruses like each other and have the ultimate deal. A lot of their viruses spread to humans. ‘Kill all the bats, build a beautiful bat wall! Detain them and deport them to Mars,’ you may be tempted to say if you think like an American president. Its not that simple. Without bats, we may be short of food as they eat insects, pollinate plants and disperse seeds. The ecosystem is very complicated.

There are a few other ways viruses change, one is called antigenic drift when the protein cover of virus changes by mutational ability of virus code over time. There is another called Antigenic shift when two or more viral strains work together to change their protein cover thus fooling the host immune system. Very clever these viruses. Cleverer than most politicians. Virology is complicated.

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One does not need a Chinese scientist stealing information from USA laboratories and accidentally spilling it in Wuhan wild animal market as some Americans want the world to think. Viruses have been doing this for millions of years and are quite deft at it. No wonder pandemics keep on recurring. Besides when laboratories fool around with viruses they also ensure there are antibody serums or vaccines. Nothing seems to have sprung up during the coronavirus pandemic.

It needs to be said that there are good viruses as well. Viruses favourite victims are bacteria. There are trillions of bacteria. There would be many more if viruses were not invading them and killing them. We have viruses in our guts, respiratory system (lungs) and reproductive tracts killing the bad bacteria. These are called bacteriophages. We will be suffering from toxic shocks if these viruses left in disgust.

In Russia and some Eastern European countries, viruses are used as phages to deal with antibiotic resistant bacteria. The science is too young and expensive in the rest of the west yet but not in Russia. Don’t ask me why. Big Pharma etc?

Phage science is now looking at using viruses to kill cancer cells in the body. This is an interesting and exciting development. Since viruses can be specific, they are being developed in laboratories to target cancer cells. The science is in its infancy and still looking at how the body immune system can permit this exception.

Phages clean our sewers of bacteria, sterilise a lot of our plant food supply and help some plants withstand hard weathers.

Sadly there is no cure for the bad viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) when they are on the prowl. We can’t wage a war on viruses or send them packing. There are nearly a billion viruses in a square meter of earth surface! And they also literally fall from the sky as they exist in the outer stratosphere of earth too. We have to hide from a pandemic virus or build immunity.

Basically run away from the virus and wash your hands. Soap destroys the outer membrane of coronavirus thus rendering it impotent immediately.

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The second is to find a vaccine that will help to build immunity against the next wave.  A naturally robust immune system can help many as it has during this crises.

Corona Virus has shown the world how weak the human race is. In the age of science and reason, human beings had started to believe that the human race is in control of everything. It is this false arrogance, a belief in infallibility of human reason, that has made people forget that human society only knows a miniscule amount about nature. That is why people want to believe that only a human conspiracy can create a virus this potent! Quite simply, it is nature working hand in glove with a tiny virus to outwit our immune systems, our vaccine programmes and most importantly our silly boisterous political leaders.

Best strategy now is, be a coward, be smart and hide from the virus until its numbers go down substantially. Don’t stare it in the eye. Wait for a scientist, not a holyman or a politician, find a vaccine. Even then, there is no guarantee as these guys mutate. Forget the conspiracy theories, these viruses have been at this game for millions of years even before the human race came on the scene. 300 millions years apparently.

Who’s Afraid Of Lifting The Lockdown?

By Amit Sengupta

Is India ready for a withdrawal of the 21-day lockdown, perhaps a partial and phased out lockdown? Will the experts tell the politicians to go ahead with a withdrawal, or, will they ask them to continue the status quo because it is the safest comfort zone? Or, will the politicians call the shots finally?

Low on confidence, will Prime Minister Narendra Modi, high on hyperbolic monologue and populist, unscientific declarations, move one step forward and two back? Universally decried after the catastrophic botch-up of the nation-wide lockdown without an iota of preparation and taking all and sundry by surprise, besides compelling tens of thousands of poor, hungry, thirsty workers, their mothers and wives, and little children on unending highways, pushing the pandemic into the twilight zones of the hitherto untouched rural areas of the Hindi heartland, the prime minister, certainly, just can’t make another gigantic mistake.

Will the partial withdrawal be determined by factors of health, and social and psychological well-being, in India’s vast landscape, with no uniform human development index indicator? Or, will it be compelled because of the doddering economy and a massive crisis staring at its face, as warned by top economists, world economic bodies and the international media, including Raghuram Rajan, Nobel Prize winner Abhijit Bannerjee, Jean Dreze among others?

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As of now, barring the role model state of Kerala at the far-end of the map, which has mapped out its withdrawal from the lockdown in four phases already, and where the pandemic is actually flattening out (apart from Maharashtra, because of efficient testing and health care, and, ironically and, reportedly, in Uttar Pradesh, due to abysmal and transparent lack of testing and health facilities), a large chunk of the so-called ‘Bimaru states’ want to stick to the ‘comfort zone’ of prolonged lockdown and enforced curfew, because they really have nothing to show.

With allegations of data being controlled and fudged, as in the past, the BJP governments at the Centre and in states, do not really have a great answer sheet to prove their credibility in terms of prevention, control, care and future projections. Even in Pakistan and Bangladesh, there is more testing happening compared to India.

Indeed, Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan, unlike the prime minister who has not done a single press conference till date, is frank and candid with his regular briefings with the media, giving meticulous details about the health conditions of patients, the numbers inside quarantine, the success rates, the condition of migrants, the problems to be tackled and how the collective civil society with the government is trying to overcome them in the state in a decentralized manner.

Sources on the ground in Kerala, as in Bengal and Maharashtra, are confident that the lockdown will be lifted partially in the days to come. Only those states like UP, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Telengana and Bihar, whose report cards are not really shining, are reportedly pushing the envelope for the lockdown to continue. It is like when democracy is dumped in the garbage can, there is no option but to ‘indulge’ in a military clampdown and communication lockdown, as in Kashmir after August 5, 2019.

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There are several reasons why the lockdown should be partially lifted, as argued by top, well-meaning economists, and as whispered softly in the corridors of power and big business.

The harvesting season begins during the ‘auspicious’ season of April and goes on till July. With agricultural grown in dire straits, and almost static at 1 per cent plus, there is no option but to ease the lockdown in rural India. Indeed, there are two immediate and long-term problems stalking the agriculture scenario: huge buffer stocks of foodgrain which are still to be distributed, and the reverse migration of agricultural/landless workers back to their economically stagnant village landscapes.

For instance, where will states like Punjab and Haryana find the workers in the harvesting season with most of them having fled to the safety of their village homes in the face of the lockdown with stark economic and social insecurity stalking them in their destined places of migrations? Besides, according to Dreze, the foodgrain stocks might increase beyond a huge 80 million tonnes – with mass hunger and unemployment as a simultaneous and ironical factor among millions below the poverty line.

The urban economy has all but tanked. It’s a fact, and this was a process underway much before the pandemic. The construction and real estate industry is as starkly pessimistic as the empty high rise buildings on the Noida Expressway, and big industrial projects, still incomplete or languishing. This industry also employs the bulk of construction workers. The other big industries like Information Technology and manufacturing are not looking too good either. Unconfirmed statistics point out that the tragic scenario of joblessness, highest in the last 45 years, might have increased manifold post-lockdown, and this includes the urban educated youth.

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Demonetisation and GST has already broken the backbone of the small-scale industries, small business enterprises and trade. With civil aviation, railways and transport suspended indefinitely, India just does not have the mechanism to go for an extra push to its doddering economy, despite the optimism and vision displayed by the likes of Raghuram Rajan. Can the prime minister, his finance minister with no big feather in her cap, and his cabinet ministers push the card to its optimum best in the given circumstances?

This is a question that is stalking the central government currently. Several high powered cabinet meetings chaired by Defense Minister Rajnath Singh have reportedly been looking at possible and plausible options. For the first time, perhaps, state chief ministers have been consulted – who, truly, have been fighting it out on the ground with little or no help from the Centre.  Every day they are beseeching the Centre for more aid, PPEs, ventilators, insurance for health workers, basic health infrastructure and direct support. Surely, the central government is now reaching out to the states, with central funds, and pro-active measure. Another big financial package is reportedly on the cards.

The prime minister has cut a bad record and he has no option but to go for a national consensus with the chief ministers, and thereby try to learn a few lessons from Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Bengal and Kerala in terms of anticipation of a global crisis, the dynamic art of crisis management and practical and long-term solutions.

Clearly, there are suggestions to open certain sectors, with partial employment, keeping physical distancing and health precautions intact. This can very well happen in key public and private sectors like civil aviation, certain crucial industries like iron, steel, oil, IT, construction and coal, and find a balanced synthesis between work-from-home and actual professional activity at work stations. Also, there are suggestions to open the discourse to the professionals themselves – those who are willing to join the work stations should be allowed to do so with adequate precautions, health and life insurance, and safe mobility.

However, the harvesting season and the huge buffer stocks remain a cause of concern. Why the government should still continue to hesitate to push for free distribution of foodgrain among the vast masses remains a dark mystery. Indeed, if the farming community goes into a crises, this will be yet another epidemic of sorts, for an economy so dependent on agriculture.

In that sense, there seems logic in the rational argument that the lockdown should be lifted partially and in safe areas, away from the so-called ‘hotspots’, which are around 250 districts in the entire country, with high or low grades of the  disease spreading. Around 400 plus districts in India are still presumed to be safe.

With the pandemic flattening gradually, creative, brave and imaginative solutions are required. China has opened its transport and public spaces with caveats in Wuhan, the epicenter of the pandemic. So, will India move forward, or continue to stay in the comfort zone of an eternal lockdown?

Can DD Re-Run Sustain Its Epic Magic?

By Mahendra Ved

With Coronavirus-forced lockdown across India, a captive audience huddles in homes before the television sets, morning and evening, gorging on serials based on Hindu epics, Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan and B R Chopra’s Mahabharat telecast by public broadcaster Doordarshan.

Their revival after 33 years requires flash-back, but more of relating it to the present that is vastly different, not just in terms of availability of hundreds of other TV channels, but also in sociological and political terms.

Take TV-watching first, spread daily over 10 to 12 hours. Broadcast Audience Research Council data indicates that even before the government announced the serials, as on March 25, it was 72 billion TV-watching minutes, an eight percent jump since January, dictated perhaps by a prolonged, nasty winter. Sixty-five million had watched the serials when first released in 1987-89. Seventeen million watched them over the last weekend. With nearly a billion people estimated to watch, new records may be established.

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Following the Indian experience then, the two serials were individually telecast on 91 national TV channels worldwide with at least nine languages sound tracks. Children in Indian families knew more of the epics’ characters than their elders of that generation. Given the rising diaspora, the appeal is worldwide, though Indians abroad are unlikely to await Doordarshan’s telecasts.

Undoubtedly, these epics have influenced the Indian society down the ages, possibly without any break. That makes it unique compared to other epics and old civilizations. Their impact on religious, social and spiritual mores, if not always political, can hardly be minimized. Ram-Sita and Ravan visit not just during the Dusserah festival. Shenanigans depicted in Mahabharat have willy-nilly influenced the ways of the political class. The impact could transcend philosophy and sociology and go deeper now since religion and politics are getting increasingly mixed.

Roads went empty when they were first telecast — now it is Corona compulsions — not just across India, but also the rest of South Asia, despite different faiths and cultures. Their narratives share the region’s locales (from Gandhara (Kandahar) and Takshashila (Taxila) to Assam (Kamrup) and to Lanka. Although the entertainment world and its mores have changed radically, a repeat, partial at least, is likely.

Of the two, Ramayan that changed India’s TV scene forever was the more popular show when compared to the thematically more complex and technologically superior Mahabharat that followed. Without comparing or contrasting them or seeking to pre-judge their contents that are already well-known, it is possible to say that their respective popularity during repeat telecasts now may indicate which way the present-day India is thinking.  

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The government announced Ramayana’s telecast plans “on public demand” without elaborating and took a while to add Mahabharat along with some other serials. Given the present times, with path cleared for building a grand temple at Ayodhya where Ram was supposedly born, the speculation is that its emphasis is on Ram’s greatness rather than the battle of Kurukshetra.

The idea to capture the popular mood as people struggle to stay active in their home confines apparently came from one or more media advisors who understand both the collective public psyche and the likely political impact the two serials, especially Ramayan could have.

Such advice was not forthcoming in the 1980s. Till Ramayan came, Doordarshan had by and large been religion-neutral. A politically naïve Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was convinced that Ramayan serial would help his Congress Party to balance the tilt the government had caused enacting a law to undo the Supreme Court’s Shahbanu verdict that was meant to appease the Muslim orthodoxy. He was also persuaded to initiate Shilanyas at Ayodhya.

Rajiv and the Congress fell between the two stools. All these moves squarely favoured their Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rivals. Indeed, Ramayan helped build a popular mood, not in favour of the Congress, but for L K Advani’s Rathyatra. India was to pay a heavy price when Babri Masjid in Ayodhya was destroyed in 1992.

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Then, as now, the Congress never realized its follies. It wanted Ramayan’s prominent actors to join politics and contest election. Deepika Chikhalia who played Sita and Arvind Trivedi who played Ravan chose BJP, not the Congress.

Ramayan can be said to have been the BJP’s launching pad for its Hindutva agenda and complete change of political discourse. Fearing loss of Hindu votes in elections, the Congress has given a go-by to secularism, its biggest political asset. Conceding political ground all along the way, it has itself adopted Hindutva’s softer version in the recent years.  

Fast-forward to the present as millions watch Ramayan and Mahabharat. They were outstanding, absorbing products then. But time has taken its toll and technology and public taste have changed. They are slow-moving despite the colour and spectacles and in part, the action they offer. It’s comic book experience for the kids. To the adults, in the two hour-plus daily dosage, benign smiles and syrupy dialogues Ram, Krishna and other characters deliver, beyond a point, is irritating.

Truth be told, the younger generation, though not uncaring, is less reverent of the elders. The latter are more insecure than their peers were. If amusing, it was fashionable to imitate the ‘correct’ behavior, addressing parents as ‘pitashree’ and matashree and brothers as ‘bhrartashree’. Not now, at least in urban India.

A lot has changed in the three decades-plus. India is more urbanized. Families are nuclear. TV has made them ‘Westernized”. They are used to faster, varied entertainment that is bolder, ‘open’, even explicit, dealing with bold subjects that were taboo earlier, going by censored mainstream cinema and the uncensored web-entertainment.

The telecasts are both media milestones and political events. How are they likely to work in these times laced with Corona-scare? For once, mythology can help forget history that is currently in the process of being re-written.

Would they help Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP, the initial beneficiaries consolidate the Hindutva agenda?

In theory, it’s a big yes. But who knows how a billion minds across a vast territory work? Rajasuya and Ashwamedha rituals conducted to establish military supremacy across a vast territory in northern India figure in the two epics. It is rather early in the day to speculate if the telecasts would deliver their modern-day political equivalents.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

From Brexit Britain To Bogroll Britain, Lessons For India

By Jasdev Singh Rai

India is lagging behind other countries in the spread of the corona pandemic. The virus first crawls in the population, then suddenly moves at supersonic speed. The delay gives India time to learn from other countries and prepare well when the tsunami hits. Perhaps it can learn most from the previous colonial master Britain, which has gone from one leap into the unknown, Brexit, to another, Coronaworld, with little foresight let alone planning.

Britain is nervous. The British are worried about the way the Government is managing this. The Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has contracted Coronavirus himself and at least five senior doctors at the front line have died from it. Deaths are mounting. Vital medical supplies, masks and ventilators have still to arrive.  Meanwhile the British public seemed obsessed with bogrolls (toilet paper) when asked to stay at home. India has the time now to avoid all this mayhem.

Britain had a two month start but did little. China kept the world informed of the progress, the dangers and the epidemic nature of this Covid-19. It locked down an entire region, tested people in hundreds of thousands and built emergency hospitals within a week. Although China had initially kept a lid on this viral disease in December, it realised early on that this was an epidemic. It raised the alarm, got international institutions involved, shared biological and other epidemiological information by mid-January. On 30th January WHO declared Public Health Emergency of International Concern.

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China declared quarantine on 23rd January. Britain and USA had the time since then to plan their response. The leaders dismissed it with a cavalier attitude. Whereas China had to start from scratch, the rest of the world had the opportunity to learn from China’s mistakes and experience to set up tests, hospitals ventilators, supply chains for food and lockdown or quarantine procedures.

But both Britain and USA have chosen ‘showmen’ for leaders. Neither Boris nor Trump are leaders who inspire confidence in normal times let alone in a crises. The majority of their populations do not trust a word they say yet voted them in. Populism and a Twitter-limit attitude to political leadership, has now landed the British and American people in a position closer to underdeveloped countries, despite the fact both countries had the money, the skills, the resources to plan for this inevitable calamitous disease.

In contrast, the ever serious Germans, started developing tests for coronavirus in early January and had 4m kits by end of February. Germany started manufacturing and buying new ventilators by late January. German doctors had decided as late as December that this epidemic was going to become a world pandemic, based on previous pandemics. Its administration got into gear even before the disease arrived in numbers in Europe.

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In Britain, the section of the population, the elderly, that most rooted for Brexit, are the ones who are likely to be sacrificed by the leaders they voted in as the country struggles to cope with the potential cases. There is a de facto policy that people over 70 and especially 80, are unlikely to be given the full treatment chance with ventilators. There simply aren’t enough to go around as the Government dithered with a boisterous faith in ‘cant touch us’ approach until the devil landed on the door step. Playing gung ho politics with an unseen virus that knows no immigration rules or State boundaries, or border walls is another first for the British and American leaders.

The population saw the leaders were not up to it. It sensed lockdowns. To cope with the fear it went panic buying or as psychologists will not doubt say ‘retail therapy in crises’, to cope with the uncertainty. If the Government could not plan, at least Joe/Jane Public could ‘plan’ his /her supply chain by buying tens of toilet rolls. Britain went from Brexit Britain to Bogroll Britain. What else could joe/jane public do?

Both Britain and America have fumbled. If Brexit had already changed the world’s opinions about bumbling Britain in the Brexit harikiri venture, Britain’s response to this pandemic has confirmed their perspectives about the British State as an incompetent modern phenomenon.

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India can learn a lot from China’s experience and most of western world’s shambolic response. Prime Minister Modi has quickly put the country into a lockdown mode when a few hundred cases surfaced in India. He now has three weeks to plan a strategy that can minimise the infection rate and death toll when the Corona wave rises in India.

The way the Modi lockdown was instituted does not inspire confidence. It is reminiscent of the note bandhi days when the poorest were thrown to the wolves without planning the consequences of a sudden withdrawal of some currency. The daily wage earner, the biggest sector of the employed, suffered the most as their meagre money was no longer able to buy the daily food. Queues and chaos ensued. It could have been foreseen.

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The lockdown was done in the same way. It should have been possible for any ‘responsible babu’ to have predicted that people will rush to their villages for shelter and food. After all, the Indian ‘babu’ should know the nature of Indian people. The close proximity in buses and other transport has surely not helped. The consequences will become obvious in about three weeks.

Nor did the Prime Minister assure people that a plan was in place to get food to people locked in their houses as shops were also closed. Distributing food seems to have been started as an afterthought in response to the growing unrest that was resulting from mothers of hungry babies and children.

Nevertheless, it was wise to lockdown early rather than late as has happened in Britain and UK. This gives time for the administration to increase production of masks, testing kits, ventilators, emergency facilities and financial support.

There are still two weeks to plan this. The Indian administration, often ridiculed even by Indians, in fact is a genius in planning when forced to. The managements at Khumb mela is a showpiece of Indian management. Two weeks are no challenge to the administration. In fact it is more than enough time for an administration that can outdo the best of world’s management skills. It can also rope in the Army.

The Indian Army with its massive manpower is always deployed in natural disasters. It is a workforce that has always been relied upon during times such as this. It has the ability to build field hospitals, set up testing stations and ensure law and order. Working closely with civil authorities, it can reduce the impact of coronavirus financially and in human toll.

Given the disorganised and often rebellious nature of Indians to administrative authority, and their laid back approach to reporting, the real figures of people infected and deaths due to coronavirus will never be known in India. But with draconian powers and surveillance facilities that the current Government has acquired, it should not be far off the mark, were it to be honest with the statistics.

The administration needs to be applauded for its quick action. It can show countries like America and Britain that democracies can also manage a viral pandemic as efficiently as an authoritarian State such as China. Germany has shown that too. Germans have a reputation for forward planning and taking government as a serious institution unlike much of the rest of west whose populations seem to be focused on celebrity politicians. However Germany is a small country. India has a 15 times larger population.

The coronavirus is India’s test. It is helped partly by the hot weather on the horizon. But a systematic exit from lockdown with test centres, selective isolations, adequate food and other supplies, masks, emergency hospitals and Personal Protection Kits for medical staff will see it triumph and keep the death toll to less than thousand rather than near million mark. For once we can applaud the administration and the Prime Minister to have acted early and decisively.