Corona in Cow Land – India Critical

Pic: Indian Express

“India is gasping for oxygen. Thanks to GOI’s (Government of India) incompetency and complacency.” At any other time, Rahul Gandhi’s comment might have been construed as point scoring by a leader of an opposition party. Not now. 

In the latest report of April 27, there have been 323,144 fresh cases. In a span of 24 hours, 2,771 people have died. Many could have been saved. 

People are dying outside hospitals because there are no beds available. A big private hospital known for its celebrity patients has transformed its lobby into a Covid ward. In other hospitals patients are sharing beds; some are getting oxygen while lying down on the floor or even in an autorickshaw parked outside. These are the lucky few. Many are still begging for help. 

Hustlers see this as an opportunity. A sting operation in a city of Gujarat revealed a hospital bed racket. One desperate relative was told by a hospital worker, “I won’t take anything less than Rs 9,000. You will get the bed in 30 minutes.” $120 is a lot of money for the middle class. Imagine, then, the plight of the poor. 

In March last year, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a lockdown, giving Indians a mere four hours to stock up, the poor had no money to buy more than a meal. Overnight they were rendered jobless, and most of the migrants from other cities subsist on daily wages. 744 million earn Rs. 44 (58 pennies) a day. They live in sub-human conditions where a quarantine would be impossible. 

There are an estimated 1.8 million homeless people in India. Vaccination programmes do not include them. They need to produce proof of citizenship and residence; they have none. This is the reality that policy papers and party manifestoes do not address adequately.

If last year in March, Modi was flaunting Donald Trump at public gatherings, this year he and other ministers held massive election rallies. 

Last year the home minister denied that the virus was a threat; this year he denied that there was a shortage of vaccine. The PM announced a ‘tika utsav’, a vaccination festival, in an irony that escaped him because India has had to grant emergency import to the Sputnik vaccine.

Last year the PM asked us to clap and bang thalis – steel plates – to honour the medical staff. People came out in large numbers to dance and celebrate what they assumed to be the end of Covid when the truth was a shortage of N95 masks and PPE kits for the doctors and nurses they were applauding.

In the pandemic scenario, the government’s failure is not merely short-sightedness, but pig-headedness. 

Politicking in India includes pandering to religious sentiments. If these sentiments are about the majority, then leaders just look the other way. 

Even as India was struck by a surge in cases with a new virus strain, 3.1 million devotees bathed in the holy river Ganga on April 12 during the ongoing Kumbh Mela. The fair takes place once every twelve years. This time it was brought forward by a year because the stars in the galaxy apparently deemed it appropriate. The official website claims that “in such a cosmic occurrence, bathing in the Ganga sets human beings free from the cycle of birth and death”.

Sanjay Gunjyal, inspector general of police in the state of Uttarakhand, sounded helpless: “We are continuously appealing to people to follow Covid-appropriate behaviour. But due to the huge crowd, it is practically not possible to issue challans (fines).” Even more frightening is his understanding that were the cops to enforce such norms there might be a “stampede-like situation”.

For such whimsies, the state has had to deploy 20,000 police and paramilitary personnel to keep an eye on the 600 acres across which the festival is held. Some of the sadhus (many walking naked) have tested positive. The chief minister of the state showered flowers on them and sought their blessings. Before the start, he had assured devotees that “unnecessary” restrictions would be removed and “faith of devotees will overcome the fear of Covid-19”.  

Most Indians are poor, illiterate and fatalistic. Last year it was cow urine drinking parties where the virus was given a karmic twist. “Coronavirus has come because of the people who kill and eat animals. When you kill an animal, it creates a sort of energy that causes destruction in that place.” Now the chief minister of Gujarat, when asked about the logic behind night curfew, replied, “Corona has originated from bats who can see only in night. Therefore the virus comes out only in night (sic).”

Godmen and political charlatans take full advantage of this. Baba Ramdev, a yoga guru who has built an Ayurveda empire due to his proximity with senior leaders, launched Coronil as a cure for Corona. Ministers were present to stand by him, including the health minister. He claimed he had research papers on it but showed none. Later he was forced to market it as an immunity booster and not a cure. But the damage had been done. There was a daily demand for a million packages. It wasn’t as much trust in the efficacy of the product as it was blind faith in a ‘holy’ man. 

But politicians who have tested positive aren’t using these indigenous palliatives. They are consulting qualified professionals, relying on real science. 

Religion forms the subcutaneous layer of all politics in India. When the PM addressed the nation recently, he said, “Tomorrow is Ram Navami. Maryada purushottam Ram's message is for us to be disciplined.  It is also the 7th day of Ramzan. The festival teaches us patience and discipline. Patience and discipline are both needed to fight Covid.”

His government has showed no such qualities. For a while it appeared that even the supporters of the ruling party desperate over the loss of loved ones had tired of the mishandling. That the virus would prove to be a great leveller. That they were waking up and could be the resistance. But the rightwing was back to its old ways. 

When Naveen Razak and Janaki Omkumar, two medical students, danced to Boney M’s Rasputin and the video went viral, the rightwing started the hashtag #DanceJihad. It was seen as a jihad because the girl was a Hindu, the boy a Muslim. A lawyer said, “I smell something wrong here. Janaki’s parents should be careful. And if they are careful, they won’t have to be sorry later.”

Social media rose to the occasion. It pronounced that the two young students were a shining example of communal harmony when all they had wanted to do was spread some cheer around. 

When Pyare Khan arranged for oxygen worth Rs 8.5 million, his past as a slumdweller was raked up and his faith was highlighted. In fact, his act was referred to as “oxygen zakat” – Muslims offer zakat, a portion of their profits, during the month of Ramadan. Some liberals on social media platforms pointed this out as a reason why Muslims should not be mistrusted. They do not realise how problematic it is to expect a community to be held up to a standard the majority never has to. 

Heart-warming stories may act as a necessary salve, but they sometimes deflect from the harsh reality. A hospital’s ICU unit caught fire. An eyewitness said there were two nurses, but no doctors around. All he could see was dead bodies. 14 patients died in the fire. 

Priests are refusing to perform the last rites. In a moving account, a journalist recounts how they had to bathe her dead grandmother before the cremation: “My father cranked up the AC of the car to keep her body protected from heat…My mother, two of her sisters and I tied a bedsheet from the car to a pillar in the basement to create a private space for that. We did all we could to give her as dignified a farewell as possible.”

In many places there is a shortage of burial space and wood for cremation. Death, as much as life, is defenceless. 

Published in CounterPunch

Prayers, Piffle and Privation in the Time of Pandemic

“Go corona! Corona go!” Ramdas Athawale, a minister in the state government of India, chanted this phrase again and again at a prayer meeting at the Gateway of India. Among those invited to participate were Buddhist monks and the Chinese Consul General in Mumbai. The rap-like cadence soon inspired memes and a pop version.

While places of worship have been shut down to facilitate social distancing, nobody had the courage to stop a ‘gaumutra’ (cow piss) party on March 14. Guests drank the urine from mud bowls. They recited prayers before a holy fire beseeching the virus to leave. Swami Chakrapani, the president of the Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha that organised the event, said, “Coronavirus has come because of the people who kill and eat animals. When you kill an animal, it creates a sort of energy that causes destruction in that place. They (global leaders) should get cow urine imported from India because the almighty resides only in the Indian cow and not in any foreign breed. I request all the presidents and prime ministers of the world to take cow urine on a daily basis. You have all these scientists who don’t know the cure, we have the cure given to us by the gods.” He also claimed that this was the “only cure” for COVID-19.

All this took place in the country’s capital even as government officials and ministers were issuing statements about scientific measures used to deal with the virus. This was a well-publicised event, yet there were no calls for a ban on it.

There is a call for a ban on the Tablighi Jamaat centre in New Delhi. The immediate reason is that between March 11-13 it hosted around 2000 people, some from overseas, before the lockdown. 24 of the participants have tested positive, and some are untraceable. This has come as an opportunity for the rightwing; the ruling party’s minority affairs minister called it a “Talibani crime”. However, some questions have been raised regarding the permission granted for the event as well as police laxity; the Jamaat premises share a wall with the police station. For a few days now some media channels are seeking a ban on the organisation under the garb of restraining ‘spreaders’.

Such communalisation apart, this event was unnecessary and could be one of the major instances of community spread. Gatherings, be it sects, churches or such jamaats, where devotees have ignored reason to be one with god in the company of others, have resulted in several such spreads.

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Since temples, mosques and churches are shut, devotees look for other outlets, other gods. In the South Indian state of Kerala, the prayer being shared on social media is, “Saint Corona, protect us from coronavirus.” St. Corona has never been popular in the state nor was she the patron saint of epidemics. Her name has promoted her as the annihilator of the virus.

Applauding medical workers too has been imbued with a fantastical explanation: That March 22, the day Indians rang bells and clapped, was Amavasya, the darkest day of the month when evil forces like viruses have maximum power. Clapping and clanging vibrations reduce virus potency, it was said, and the increased blood circulation boosts immunity.

What is it about superstition that holds people in thrall, sometimes even more than religion does? Unlike belief systems, they do not have a halo. Superstitions give people the power to deal with an immediate threat to themselves. Some may even perceive their belief as a rational exercise that they are ‘scientifically’ experimenting upon.

Mass superstitions such as the cow urine drinking one are dangerous simply because, like placebos, they cannot be proven wrong. There have been instances of people refusing medical intervention based on the belief that faith, or faith-approved palliatives, alone can cure.

Adding to the mythology of magic cures, the government announced that the serials Ramayana and Mahabharata, based on the revered Hindu epics, would be telecast again on the national channel after over three decades. It is assumed that this will help people forced by the lockdown to retain their moral fibre through its kitschy portrayal.

India is, quite literally, in ‘Ram bharose’ mode, where riding on faith is considered as a confirmation of its efficacy. That the virus hasn’t yet affected the country as much as it has the rest of the world – 1932 confirmed cases, 55 deaths – is seen as some sort of karmic victory.

The facts are quite different, though. According to the director of the US Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics, and Policy, Ramanan Laxminarayan, by July end 300 to 500 million Indians would be infected of which a tenth would be severe cases. “Our model predicted that at the outbreak’s peak, even with conservative assumptions, there would be 10 million patients with severe Covid-19 disease in India, many of whom would need to be hospitalized. India has fewer than 100,000 intensive-care unit beds and 20,000 ventilators, most of which are only in the large cities.”

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Large cities depend on migrant labour. Most are daily wagers, of which about 744 million earn Rs. 44 (58 pennies) a day. They have little or no money left. Some are walking several miles to reach their villages. They believe hunger will kill them before the virus even gets to them. As one of them said, “I know everything about coronavirus. It's very dangerous, the whole world is struggling. Most people who can afford and have a place to stay are indoors. But for people like us, the choice is between safety and hunger. What should we pick?”

There have been instances of people dying on the way.  The finance minister announced a package worth $22.5 billion as well as rations for three months to reach the poor. Many have not heard about these schemes nor received anything. Returning to their villages isn’t a panacea. As a man on his long trek of 542 kms to home said, “We came to Delhi in the first place because our farms were destroyed due to stray cattle who use to eat our crops. So, if we go back to our village, there also we have to work as labourers, but there is no work anywhere.”

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged people to applaud the doctors, nurses, paramedics who served selflessly despite risk to themselves, those from the informal sector that constitutes 90 percent of the labour force in India were not on anybody’s mind.  There is nothing grand about sweeping floors, dusting furniture, doing the dishes, or hawking and collecting garbage; they do not save lives, or minister to the ill.

However, the elite shared their ‘awws’ over a picture of a rag-picker noiselessly clapping, his expression confused. For them, it was evidence that the PM’s message had reached this poor man who cared for the carers. Ironically, social distancing that is embedded in the Indian casteist culture considers people like him to be a virus. Nobody cares that he belongs to the amorphous population of 1.8 million homeless people who do not even figure in the poverty or infected statistics because they do not even exist on any document.

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Published in CounterPunch