I have been dithering for two weeks, dithering in the face of the epidemic and what I in my humble blog want to say about it. We now have an information overload about a virus and a pandemic about which nothing is known for certain; all we know is what is. I was dithering because of fear, not only because the Corona virus outbreak is a matter of life and death, but also because mounting a concerted effort against such an epidemic empowers the state and those in authority and disempowers the citizen with quite different and often terrible consequences for ordinary people in different places. Uppermost in my mind were the thousands of women in the large cities of India sitting on the streets/avenue in their localities for over three months now as a protest against a new citizenship amendment law; a law both undemocratic and unconstitutional guaranteed to bring endless suffering to millions of vulnerable working people all across this land. It’s the largest civil disobedience movement (known in India as satyagraha meaning holding firmly to the truth) since Gandhi’s satyagraha against the colonial powers. Epidemic control necessitates extreme measures that curb freedom of movement among other freedoms granted to us in democracies by our constitutions – the only way to control infection is to break the chain of transmission by limiting contact between humans, if need be forcibly.
So I decided that since you are reading about what is happening and where on the Internet, I want to use this space to talk about what scares me most: the political and social consequences of epidemic control and the future of our collective democratic futures.
European heads of states have in their speeches leading up to more and more stringent measures needed to control the epidemic, talked about it as the gravest crisis that their country is facing since the Second World War. In such circumstances citizens expect that those in authority will use their ‘authority’ to limit the spread of the virus. There is an implicit consensus that in times of emergency such as this we should give up our freedoms in order that others may live. The most oft repeated word in Germany today, where I am at present, is ‘solidarity’: its on everybody’s lips whether they be politicians, citizens, television presenters, journalists and unsurprisingly also among my friends. For those of us on the slightly left or more than slightly left of centre persuasions and feminists, solidarity was always our motto because we were up against those much, much more powerful. The word ‘solidarity’ in these days and these circumstances means thinking about others by limiting your own freedom of movement or doing anything that endangers one’s self and others. We are all after all up against a much more powerful enemy, the uncontrollable virus.
As scenes from a growing pandemic flashed like sci-fi films (this time for real) across our television screens, fear spread across Europe shattering the complacence that it cannot happen here. Terrible scenes especially from Italy where the death rate is out of control have shaken us to the core. When one sees military vehicles there carrying away the dead it feels as if the apocalypse is not just nigh but here now. And yet the European Union dithered to act to lift the constraints on loosening the stability and growth pact, a system of financial rules designed to prevent member countries from accruing budget deficits and increasing public debt burdens. In plain speak it means that even in this situation of extreme emergency members may not for example borrow money to spend on their public health system. This pact binds the countries to a common neoliberal capitalist cause. The cause ruptured from within as countries in the Schengen area closed their borders and the richer ones announced emergency spending on relief and measures to shore up the economy. And leaders were praised for being ‘muscular’ in their response to the crisis: the chief minister of the state of Bavaria (the most affected) in Germany appearing everyday on television bringing in more and more stringent measures was one of them. The strong man (less often a woman) determined to act in the face of adversity is a figure being rejuvenated although it had not entirely disappeared from our political discourse.
But no power in Europe has bothered to do anything for the refugees driven out of Turkey and stranded in the no man’s land between Turkey and Greece. They were driven out (or rather provided an incentive to leave) by a Turkish government that used them as bait to corner more funds from Europe. Thousands of hapless refuges are now stranded braving the elements, without food and shelter. There was more talk about the Turkish president’s perfidy than about the plight of the living human beings trapped in no man’s land. The European governments now had more important things to do which was to curb the epidemic. And the ‘voices’ that may have on other occasions been raised in protest and in support of their plight have fallen silent or are now background noise while more ‘pressing concerns’ take centre stage.
Although Europe and now America hold centre stage (as always but for different reasons this time), there is growing concern for what is happening in Africa, the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. Reporting of infections has been very low which might reflect the situation but also definitely reflects the low capacity for testing. But by now as I publish this blog, most countries across most regions are under some sort of lock down. Friends have been writing in about the context specific problems in mounting an adequate response to the epidemic: poor heath infrastructure; the impossibility of social distancing in overcrowded spaces where poor people live; washing hands when most people have no running water; and the loss of a daily wage. And of course there is the fear that people have of being tested knowing that they will face all sorts of stigma as also the heavy-handed treatment by state authorities instead of the care that they need. In Africa the situation has been compared to what happened during the Ebola crisis bringing back memories of unspeakable suffering and death.
It is this fear that will drive the epidemic in these spaces and will further divide those who have and those who have not. It’s not that the virus has a mind of its own and preys on the vulnerable; it is we human beings who have created these inequalities and made our societies vulnerable to the onslaught of an unknown epidemic. In the last two and a half decades the greater and greater push towards neoliberal globalisation has meant less and less investment in public services, least of all in the publicly funded health sector. In most countries outside of Europe public health was no longer a right; it became a commodity to be bought and sold in the marketplace. Now more than ever we are facing the consequences of this lack of investment even in the richest parts of the world leave alone in Africa, South America and Caribbean and of course South Asia.
And this is what is scary that because of this emergency several countries which although on the face of it are democratic (in that they had parliaments and elections) but are run by populist autocratic right wing parties and the strong man as leader, are using and will continue to use this epidemic to consolidate their power. A member of the European Union, Hungary (read Orbán the Führer), has already announced that extraordinary circumstances like these call for bold steps[i]. Since Parliament cannot meet, the government will decide by decree (as opposed to deliberation in Parliament); not that Orbán allowed any laws to be passed by Parliament that he did not like or approve.
In Lebanon, Lina Abu Habib writes[ii], the ruling regime has used the panic and confusion resulting from the outbreak of the Corona virus there to sign eight presidential decrees reinstating Lebanese nationality to descendants of Lebanese “fathers” and “grandfathers” (and non-Lebanese mothers/grandmothers) while refusing earlier to sign into law a parliament approved draft law granting Lebanese women married to foreign nationals the right to pass on their nationality to their children. Needless to say these decrees were signed in to benefit the elite men in the ruling cabinet which, given the situation of an epidemic, was not urgent whereas the urgent matter of dealing with the onslaught of the life- threatening epidemic was more or less set aside. The significance of not being a Lebanese national (because your father was e.g. from Syria) would not be lost on the women of Shaheen Bagh (the collective that is occupying the roads for the last three months in an area known as Shaheeen Bagh in Delhi demanding the repeal of the recently passed citizenship amendment law). Like them the concern for thousands of Lebanese women is that their children born and brought up in Lebanon are not citizens and therefore cannot avail of the same facilities that others have. The poorer you are the worse it is not having citizenship – you cant get a job, earn an income or use government facilities. In an epidemic like this you are a nobody.
And finally we come to the world’s most populous democracy, India, a country that is standing on the brink of what could be a disaster. The Corona epidemic has come as a gift to the government. In one fell swoop it has swept away the problems that the government was facing: civil unrest because of the citizenship amendment law; galloping unemployment and a failing economy. On 19th March the ‘great leader’, the Prime Minister, came on television to address the nation. He talked about the impending lockdown for a couple of weeks till the end of the month and in his usual style called on people to end the first day of curfew by a ringing of bells, clashing of cymbals and blowing of conch shells. Readers not from India will probably not recognize that this symbolism invoked by the PM is clearly Hindu and by calling on the people to collectively do this for the ‘nation’ he was reifying isolation as not only an act of patriotism but religious responsibility of the ‘Hindu nation’ and thereby excluding the millions who are not Hindu. Always short on details as to how the government would help 1.3 billion people survive the crisis, his speech nevertheless reconfirmed for many his charismatic leadership. My friends report that the end of the first day of curfew they looked on in horror while people actually did what the Prime Minister had requested.
Within five days of the first address the PM addressed the nation again on 24th March and this time to announce a 21-day lock down without giving any details of help or support. As he thundered on about ‘our national duty’ he forgot to mention that help was underway or to assuage the panic that had spread across the country. The last week of closure has brought what was already an economy in recession to a grinding halt. Road and rail traffic has been stopped cutting poor people migrating to cities to work off from their families in the rural hinterlands; disrupting economic supply chains and throwing workers out of factories; closing markets for agriculture produce and ruining farmers; and causing no end of misery for urban consumers. All the people working in the informal sector, mainly poor and mainly daily wage earners have lost their livelihood. The state apparatus, the police in this case, has responded to the lock down call in the only way they know how which is in an authoritarian fashion beating up poor people looking for food and provisions if they happened to be outdoors outside of curfew hours. In the meantime the public health system is woefully inadequate; there are not enough testing facilities, intensive care beds and respirators.
Finally yesterday the Finance Minister announced a financial package, inadequate but at least its something. As a leading Indian economist[iii] has remarked the ruling party thinks that they can wing it; they think they can get through this crisis and come out at the other end slightly bruised but not entirely tarnished as they have so often done in the past five years. And they hope to do so by invoking their very own divisive brand of political ideology. If so the great leader’s charismatic leadership will have won locking India’s future for many years to come to a right wing, violent, Hindu majoritarian and anti poor destiny.
But it is India’s citizens, especially the poor who are the majority, who have always shown the most resilience and in ending this blog I want to invoke them. On the first day of the shut down the women of Shaheen Bagh decided that they should cooperate with the government in this grave situation. So they suspended their sit-in and left their slippers in neat rows on the road signifying they would be back. So India has to recover because all of us freedom-loving people are waiting for the women of Shaheen Bagh to return and reclaim their country.
[ii] Lina Abu Habib ‘Even in Corona times… Women Cannot Pass on their Nationalities. DARAJ March 18, 2020.
accessed 26.3.20
[iii] Prof. Jayati Ghosh in an interview/discussion entitled “Corona virus Lockdown has Already Done More Damage to the Economy than Demonetisation” hosted by Karan Thapar, 23 March 2020, The Wire, New Delhi.
very glad you wrote this, it's such a real possibility in these times for the would-be authoritarian regimes to seize the chance and establish moral power! Well done!
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