Sanjay Srivastava - India’s anti-COVID strategy is premised on a mistaken idea and a pretence
NB: A valuable reminder of the plight of informal labour in the Indian economy; about which our ruling class appears to be oblivious. I will add a caveat. The author says: 'there is no “universal humanity”. While we share biology, we are fundamentally distanced by the histories that produce the social and economic conditions within which we live. This calls for specific strategies'. This is a problematic observation. The person who knows that "we are fundamentally distanced" has clearly overcome that distance in order to make such an observation. If his statement is intelligible to us, there is indeed a universal humanity.
If truth is a collection of subjective perceptions, each inaccessible to the other, then the very possibility of truthful communication is vitiated. If on the contrary, they are accessible and communicable, then the intelligibility of the ensuing conversation implies some common standard of judgement shared by all participants. So truths about global warming and pandemics are not mere perceptions, and our different locations do not render humans fundamentally distanced from one another. If there were nothing universal about human life, there would be no pandemic. 'Histories' and socio-economic conditions do not obliterate those qualities that we share with others, but modify them. We do not re-invent vaccines according to location - temporal or cultural.
This description of the problem takes account of universal problems as well as specific circumstances: 'Interpretation is the act of restating a commonly accessible truth which we have antecedently understood in a local representation of our own. The restatement of truth does not transform its universality but allows it to function within a modified context. Interpretation, or the transfer of universality from one local representation to another, is the process by which we arrive at an understanding of the universal significance of locality in human life. Without this understanding, the local is meaningless, and history is reduced to rubbish' Stanley Rosen, Metaphysics in Ordinary Language, 201 DS
If truth is a collection of subjective perceptions, each inaccessible to the other, then the very possibility of truthful communication is vitiated. If on the contrary, they are accessible and communicable, then the intelligibility of the ensuing conversation implies some common standard of judgement shared by all participants. So truths about global warming and pandemics are not mere perceptions, and our different locations do not render humans fundamentally distanced from one another. If there were nothing universal about human life, there would be no pandemic. 'Histories' and socio-economic conditions do not obliterate those qualities that we share with others, but modify them. We do not re-invent vaccines according to location - temporal or cultural.
This description of the problem takes account of universal problems as well as specific circumstances: 'Interpretation is the act of restating a commonly accessible truth which we have antecedently understood in a local representation of our own. The restatement of truth does not transform its universality but allows it to function within a modified context. Interpretation, or the transfer of universality from one local representation to another, is the process by which we arrive at an understanding of the universal significance of locality in human life. Without this understanding, the local is meaningless, and history is reduced to rubbish' Stanley Rosen, Metaphysics in Ordinary Language, 201 DS
The most significant aspect of life in countries such as India is informality - of jobs, living arrangements, healthcare, mobility and much else. We know, for
example, that around 90 per cent of the population works in the non-formal
sector, around 20 per cent of Indians are internal migrants (the vast majority
moving across district and state boundaries for informal employment) and that,
in many of our major cities, as much as 40 per cent of the population lives in
informal settlements.
Informality is the state of life beyond regulation. It is
also a condition of great helplessness, where the capacity to exercise choice
over one’s destiny is limited. For the majority of India’s (and the world’s)
population, informality is not a staging post on the way to formality. It is a
persistent condition of life with no indications of a dramatic change.
Yet, in India, we seem
to have decided to not address the context that is most relevant to the
conditions of life that have the greatest relevance to the majority of the
population. This is the population that has no choice but to stay outdoors,
live 10 to a room and be mobile as a livelihood strategy. There can be no
universal strategy or computer simulation that can provide solutions for
the present crisis. For, there is no “universal humanity”. While we share
biology, we are fundamentally distanced by the histories that produce the
social and economic conditions within which we live. This calls for specific
strategies ...
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/coronavirus-india-covid-19-migrants-walking-6341071/
see also
