Shobhit Mahajan & Aseem Shrivastava - Covid-19: The Wolf May Never Come // ALOK RAI: How India is outsourcing the COVID-19 pandemic to its poor
For over two months,
the World Health Organization (WHO) has been rehearsing the mantra of ‘test,
test, test.’ Despite occasional unreliability, in the initial phase of the
advancing disease, testing is essential to detect the presence of the
coronavirus in suspected segments of the population. India has been a serious
laggard in this regard, its testing consistently behind not only the global
curve, but more importantly, well behind the trajectory required to keep in
tandem with the spread of the virus in the country itself. Recently, a
Government official declared that India is ramping up testing capacities to
half-a-million a day. Might this be a case of ‘too much, too late’?
Testing is
crucial to contain the virus in the initial stages when overseas travellers
(who are the ‘prime suspects’) arrive. Once travel restrictions are in place for
a long time, testing becomes increasingly less important as community
transmission has in all likelihood already happened and exhausted itself. The timing of the
Government’s decision to ramp up testing may be quite off, and may arguably be
yet another waste of resources. Could it be that the ball is already, so to
speak, safely in the gloves of the wicketkeeper when the stylish batsman essays
a drive through the covers?
The accompanying table
shows a comparison of Covid-19-related data across three groups of countries,
belonging to the Western world, to South Asia, and to the Far East....
https://openthemagazine.com/columns/column/covid-19-wolf-may-never-come/How India is outsourcing the COVID-19 pandemic to its poor
As someone who has
faithfully been locked down for several weeks, albeit more comfortably than the
millions who have been ambushed into homelessness and hunger, I seek to know
what is the policy that underlies this infliction. It is not good enough to say
that we have not one but several policies, that we have policies from one week
to the next: breaking the chain, flattening the curve, whatever. Multiple
policies, or policies that change from one day to the next, are not policies.
These are reactions, incoherent responses papered over with rhetoric. Given
this incoherence, my intention is rather to consider the practice of the state,
and seek to infer the policy from that practice.
Of course, one effect
of this incoherence is that it vastly empowers the minions of the state. In the
absence of clear rules, the cop with a stick is the law. Indeed, he is
everything—he is the rules, he is the policy, he is the law. We recognise this
as the everyday reality of our pre-COVID lives. But is this good enough to deal
with the pandemic? Banging pots and pans, lighting candles, bursting
firecrackers—these gestures and gimmicks cannot be a substitute for a policy.
So, I insist, what is the policy?...
https://caravanmagazine.in/health/india-outsourcing-covid-pandemic-to-poor