COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in India
On 24 March 2020, the Government of India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered a nationwide lockdown, limiting movement of the entire 1.3 billion population of India as a preventive measure against the COVID-19 pandemic in India.
QuotesEdit
- A pandemic thrives on human inequities and it is inextricable from the society, economy, knowledge, and politics of human existence. During any infection outbreak such as COVID–19, it is the poorer and weaker fractions of a society that remain disproportionately affected and ultimately bear an additional burden of early death. In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared a complete lockdown for 21 days on March 24th as an extraordinary measure to contain the spread of coronavirus. This measure suddenly brought our informal sector to a screeching halt, putting all our informal workers in the midst of a medical and economic crisis. The government was not able to handle the economic fallout for the poor.
- Surya Gupta and Armin Rosencranz, COVID-19, the Government’s Response, and India’s Sustainable Development Goals (May 22, 2020), edited by Tim Zubizarreta, JURIST
- Preferably, the government should have anticipated that after it unilaterally declared a complete lockdown (first phase), millions of informal workers would suddenly lose every way of earning their livelihoods and would be rendered penniless. This would inevitably trigger a mass exodus among the poor informal sector workers, forcing almost one-third of the 1.3 billion people who are living a hand-to-mouth existence, to gather on the streets and trek back home with their belongings. The state also took two days to announce a paltry sum of Rs. 1.7 lakh crores as economic relief to the informal workers who have been turned refugees overnight. This is only 0.5% of the national income if existing budgetary allocations are taken into account. This is an insidious form of assault on the well-being and physical and mental security of the poor population of India, especially so when they are already outside the social security net because they do not fall within the organized sector.
- Surya Gupta and Armin Rosencranz, COVID-19, the Government’s Response, and India’s Sustainable Development Goals (May 22, 2020), edited by Tim Zubizarreta, JURIST
- The COVID-19 outbreak is yet another demonstration of how the Indian poor are systematically excluded from the government’s policy-making. A case in point is the government’s failure to account for the 40 million poor and homeless children before declaring the lockdown.
- Surya Gupta and Armin Rosencranz, COVID-19, the Government’s Response, and India’s Sustainable Development Goals (May 22, 2020), edited by Tim Zubizarreta, JURIST
- No doubt, extending the lockdown was necessary, but so was making transportation and other arrangements for the poor. [...] The COVID–19 episode in India has proved that, to date, the voices of the poor are unheard in the decision-making and policies that affect them the most. Further, data and evidence regarding them are least likely to be considered by the government when framing policies.
- Surya Gupta and Armin Rosencranz, COVID-19, the Government’s Response, and India’s Sustainable Development Goals (May 22, 2020), edited by Tim Zubizarreta, JURIST
- Irrespective of whether you are a freelance humanitarian or a freelance patriot, a fact that is beyond dispute is that the country treats its poor very badly. Across India, in the name of fighting a pandemic, India has beaten up its poor, denied them their livelihood, made them run behind trucks for food, and forced thousands of families to walk hundreds of kilometres to their villages, letting some people die on the way. A few days ago, more than a dozen men travelled inside a cement mixer to escape detection.
- The threat from a rapid diffusion of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) initially threatened to become India’s most severe health crisis since the Spanish Flu, which killed almost 15 million people a century ago. Increasingly, however, it is spiraling into an economic crisis and could easily spin out of control into a humanitarian crisis. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech conveyed a clear sense of the gravity of the situation. Given the structural constraints — India’s population density, weak health and sanitation infrastructure, and limited resources more generally — the need to slow the spread of infection is paramount. Whether the decision to lockdown the country for 21 days should have come earlier, should have been made with more preparation, should have been longer or shorter in duration, will be intensely debated, but its need is unequivocal.
- At the same time, given India’s population density, the cramped and squalid conditions in which tens of millions people live, not only will social distancing have limited effectiveness (household members of every infected person will be at high risk), but the loss of livelihoods and access to basic necessities will impose significant human costs. The short-term tradeoff between lives and livelihoods is manifest and nobody really knows where the precise balance lies. Too limited a lockout period risks the lives of potentially hundreds of thousands of people; too restrictive a lockout could result in the eruption of serious social unrest.
- Last week, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi suddenly announced an unprecedented three-week lockdown for India’s 1.3 billion people, setting off a rash of panic buying and creating confusion about how the millions of poor Indians in the country’s informal sector are supposed to support themselves. The lockdown has left vast numbers of migrant workers stranded and hungry. Reports of police abuses quickly surfaced.
- Joshua Keating, Strongman Medicine: Suspicious Numbers and Brutal Quarantines (April 02, 2020), Slate
- The lockdown and its humanitarian consequences have begun to fundamentally challenge the mind-set and modalities of India’s welfare architecture. We can no longer afford to live with or simply look away from the exclusion ‘errors’ of the past. Many of the most painful and humiliating effects of the lockdown are likely to remain simply unacknowledged, let alone adequately accounted for or compensated. But, ensuring that people have enough food and cash to survive the crisis should remain non-negotiable. [...] The lesson we are learning now is that for India to actually release the grain to citizens, she requires the entire system to go against the grain of deeply entrenched state beliefs and practices. After decades of distrust, it’s time to cultivate some moral fibre.
- Mekhala Krishnamurthy, Flaws of India’s welfare system are visible in our fight against Covid-19 (8 May, 2020), co-written with Arkaja Singh, ThePrint
- The 40-day lockdown was further extended at a time of sporadic expressions of resistance and anger by migrant workers in a few cities. Extreme precarity doesn’t have a singular expression. While some are responding with anger, others are responding with resignation. The severe distress among migrant workers in India is not entirely by chance. It has been marinating for a while but the epic new scale has been manufactured due to the unplanned and unilateral decision of a lockdown taken by the prime minister. The arbitrariness and unpreparedness are evident from the confusing messages from the central government concerning transport for migrants. The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) issued an order on April 29 permitting inter-state travel for workers who want to return home and instructed the states to appoint nodal officers to develop Standard Operating Procedures (SOP). Thereafter the MHA issued another order on May 1 stating that “passenger movement by trains, except for security purposes or for purposes as permitted by MHA” was to be prohibited. This was followed by another order on May 3, which stated: “it is clarified that the MHA orders are meant to facilitate movement of stranded persons who had moved from their native places/ workplaces, just before the lockdown period…” Through these orders, the MHA has taken refuge in obfuscation. Notwithstanding the confusing orders, the constant shuffling of travel modes and costs further expose the central government’s lack of empathy, thought and planning. We present a highly generous estimate for the total travel cost by trains. If all of 6.5 crore inter-state migrants (Ravi Srivastava’s estimate of the number of migrants) were to return, and assuming an average ticket fare of Rs 650, the total travel cost comes to around Rs 4,200 crore. To put this number in perspective, the cost of the Statue of Unity in Gujarat is reportedly Rs 3,000 crore. The PM-Cares as per news reports from early April had Rs 6,500 crore.
- Rajendran Narayanan, Locked down in distress (May 9, 2020), co-written with Sakina Dhorajiwala, Indian Express Limited
- The migrant worker distress has also exposed the inherent fractures of the “one nation” narrative that is one of the unique selling propositions of the BJP government. While it goes against the grain of the idea of India that has a rich tradition of pluralism, it is also meaningless from a governance standpoint. Migrant workers don’t carry their ration cards and so haven’t been able to avail of government rations in the states where they are stranded. The employers, contractors mostly, have largely abandoned them without paying them wages. Consequently, they are left to scrounge for food and are left without money. In many cases, they are stranded without knowing the local language. In this situation, it is the poorer state governments of Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, etc. that have attempted to seek out “their people” stranded in richer states such as Maharashtra or Haryana and make cash transfers to their account. The economies of these richer states have benefited from the labour of migrants from the poorer states. However, the richer states have neither extended any financial support nor forced employers to pay wages to the workers. Worse still, on May 5, Chief Minister of Karnataka, B S Yediyurappa, cancelled trains for migrant workers from Bengaluru to their home states. The decision was taken after a meeting between the chief minister and the Confederation of Real Estate Developers Associations of India (CREDAI). Neither migrant workers nor trade unions representing them were consulted. This was not only insensitive but a violation of the right to live with dignity (Article 21), right to freedom of movement (Article 19) and prohibition of forced labour (Article 23). The government decided to restore the train services only after protests.
- Rajendran Narayanan, Locked down in distress (May 9, 2020), co-written with Sakina Dhorajiwala, Indian Express Limited
- Barring examples from Kerala and Telangana, most host states have demonstrated disregard for migrant workers. It behooves the host states to care about the migrant workers not only from a humanitarian standpoint but also from the perspective of the health of the economy. On its part, the central government has maintained a calibrated silence regarding this. Monopolising decisions and socialising losses are not what federalism is supposed to mean. Therefore, it is time that the poorer states realise that the unilateral lockdown is not just an assault on the dignity of the poor, but also an economic assault on the poorer state governments. Further, there has been a concerted effort by the central government and some host states to hold the labour captive in the richer states by making transportation procedures unreasonable.
- Rajendran Narayanan, Locked down in distress (May 9, 2020), co-written with Sakina Dhorajiwala, Indian Express Limited
- This is as much a socio-economic inequality issue as much as a public health dilemma. After the dust settles and restrictions are relaxed, the win-alls as well as others lying towards the more privileged end of the means spectrum should be able to hop straight back to their routines with their health, wealth and job security intact. The lose-alls and those proximate to that extreme will be more susceptible to illnesses, loss of income and job insecurity – and quite likely all three together. The latter group is trapped in an adverse equilibrium with the unjust choices of risking their health if they go to work, risking their income if they don’t go to work, and risking their employment if the COVID-19 lockdown continues.
- Neethi P., How the Coronavirus Outbreak Is Also a Socio-Economic Inequality Issue, 23 March 2020, co-written with Anant Kamath, The Wire
- Today, a pandemic. Tomorrow, a natural disaster, a chemical spill or some socio-political unrest. There’s always some disruption around the corner. So for as long as informal jobs are the norm in our economy and as long as we cannot practically lockdown the entire country, the way ahead is to install measures to improve social security. State and society cannot throw up their hands in helplessness or stay blind to variations in vulnerability among informal workers. It must facilitate structural changes through dialogues in policy, academia and other spheres. There is no single solution, especially not just direct monetary transfers. Solutions should include, as Kerala has demonstrated, delivering meals to homes with children and the aged and creating employment insurance options for informal workers. A drivers’ association in Bengaluru has requested Karnataka to waive some part of their taxi loans during the outbreak period as a form of assistance and to help mitigate their indebtedness. The government’s advisories about restricting social contact are indeed important but such measures are economically risky for so many who face a choice between the devil and the deep-sea. Social distancing is impractical for the tens of millions without social security.
- Neethi P. and Anant Kamath, How the Coronavirus Outbreak Is Also a Socio-Economic Inequality Issue, 23 March 2020, The Wire
- The vast majority of India’s poor rely on daily wage labour for sustenance. With the current lockdown and its likely extension, millions of daily labourers and their families can no longer earn the money they need to survive. In this unprecedented situation, the Indian state must respond swiftly to prevent widespread acute hunger. [...] The health and economic threats posed by the pandemic are unprecedented: India must capitalise upon its preparedness to address food insecurity and prioritise food distribution to protect the health and welfare of its most vulnerable citizens.
- Migrant workers, dismissed by employers, enjoying no protection from their governments, often thrown out of their accommodation by their landlords, in urgent need of food, transport and money, driven by desperation to walk home. It is a scene many have described as reminiscent of the migration at Partition. This is the outcome of the largest and one of the strictest lockdowns in the world enforced during the coronavirus disease crisis — a lockdown that has been widely applauded internationally. Why has the outcry against this suffering inflicted on men and women who are more than 90% of India’s workforce been so muted? It is, I believe, in part at least, because those in a position to raise their voices have not identified themselves with those who are suffering.
- Today, the poor are bearing most of the burden of India’s lockdown, one of the harshest in the world. The policies are made or influenced by a class of people who pay little attention to the consequences for the underprivileged. Just think, for instance, of how all sorts of basic services have been shut down without batting an eyelid: outpatient health services, child immunisation, school meals, MNREGA worksites, the lot. For good measure, the policies are often enforced in an authoritarian manner. Ideally, people should be empowered to face this crisis together, instead of being treated like sheep. Here in Jharkhand, I have been struck by so many people’s readiness to help in one way or another. But this good will is not being tapped. This mirrors India’s long-standing failure to foster and mobilise human resources for development. Kerala is one exception, and sure enough, it is handling this crisis in an inspiring manner.
