{"id":100842,"date":"2020-04-06T16:49:31","date_gmt":"2020-04-06T23:49:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=100842"},"modified":"2020-04-06T16:49:55","modified_gmt":"2020-04-06T23:49:55","slug":"the-pandemic-is-a-portal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/04\/06\/the-pandemic-is-a-portal\/","title":{"rendered":"The pandemic is a portal\u2019 –"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arundhati Roy: Courtesy Financial Times Life & Arts\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

The\nnovelist on how coronavirus threatens India \u2014 and what the country, and the\nworld, should do next   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who can use the term gone viral\u201d now without shuddering a little? Who can look at anything any more \u2014 a door handle, a cardboard carton, a bag of vegetables \u2014 without imagining it swarming with those unseeable, undead, unliving blobs dotted with suction pads waiting to fasten themselves on to our lungs?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Who can think of\nkissing a stranger, jumping on to a bus or sending their child to school\nwithout feeling real fear? Who can think of ordinary pleasure and not assess\nits risk? Who among us is not a quack epidemiologist, virologist, statistician\nand prophet? Which scientist or doctor is not secretly praying for a miracle?\nWhich priest is not \u2014 secretly, at least \u2014 submitting to science?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 And even while\nthe virus proliferates, who could not be thrilled by the swell of birdsong in\ncities, peacocks dancing at traffic crossings and the silence in the\nskies? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 The number of\ncases worldwide this week crept over a million. More than 50,000 people have\ndied already. Projections suggest that number will swell to hundreds of\nthousands, perhaps more. The virus has moved freely along the pathways of trade\nand international capital, and the terrible illness it has brought in its wake\nhas locked humans down in their countries, their cities and their homes. But\nunlike the flow of capital, this virus seeks proliferation, not profit, and\nhas, therefore, inadvertently, to some extent, reversed the direction of the\nflow. It has mocked immigration controls, biometrics, digital surveillance and\nevery other kind of data analytics, and struck hardest \u2014 thus far \u2014 in the\nrichest, most powerful nations of the world, bringing the engine of capitalism\nto a juddering halt. Temporarily perhaps, but at least long enough for us to\nexamine its parts, make an assessment and decide whether we want to help fix\nit, or look for a better engine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 The mandarins\nwho are managing this pandemic are fond of speaking of war. They don\u2019t even use\nwar as a metaphor, they use it literally. But if it really were a war, then who\nwould be better prepared than the US? If it were not masks and gloves that its\nfrontline soldiers needed, but guns, smart bombs, bunker busters, submarines,\nfighter jets and nuclear bombs, would there be a shortage? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Night after night,\nfrom halfway across the world, some of us watch the New York governor\u2019s press\nbriefings with a fascination that is hard to explain. We follow the statistics,\nand hear the stories of overwhelmed hospitals in the US, of underpaid,\noverworked nurses having to make masks out of garbage bin liners and old\nraincoats, risking everything to bring succour to the sick. About states being\nforced to bid against each other for ventilators, about doctors\u2019 dilemmas over\nwhich patient should get one and which left to die. And we think to ourselves,\nMy God! This is America!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 The tragedy is\nimmediate, real, epic and unfolding before our eyes. But it isn\u2019t new. It is\nthe wreckage of a train that has been careening down the track for years. Who\ndoesn\u2019t remember the videos of patient dumping\u201d \u2014 sick people, still in their\nhospital gowns, butt naked, being surreptitiously dumped on street corners?\nHospital doors have too often been closed to the less fortunate citizens of the\nUS. It hasn\u2019t mattered how sick they\u2019ve been, or how much they\u2019ve suffered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 At least not\nuntil now \u2014 because now, in the era of the virus, a poor person\u2019s sickness can\naffect a wealthy society\u2019s health. And yet, even now, Bernie Sanders, the\nsenator who has relentlessly campaigned for healthcare for all, is considered\nan outlier in his bid for the White House, even by his own party. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 The tragedy\nis the wreckage of a train that has been careening down the track for\nyears <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And what of my\ncountry, my poor-rich country, India, suspended somewhere between feudalism and\nreligious fundamentalism, caste and capitalism, ruled by far-right Hindu\nnationalists? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In December,\nwhile China was fighting the outbreak of the virus in Wuhan, the government of\nIndia was dealing with a mass uprising by hundreds of thousands of its citizens\nprotesting against the brazenly discriminatory anti-Muslim citizenship law it\nhad just passed in parliament. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 The first case\nof Covid-19 was reported in India on January 30, only days after the honourable\nchief guest of our Republic Day Parade, Amazon forest-eater and Covid-denier\nJair Bolsonaro, had left Delhi. But there was too much to do in February for\nthe virus to be accommodated in the ruling party\u2019s timetable. There was the\nofficial visit of President Donald Trump scheduled for the last week of the\nmonth. He had been lured by the promise of an audience of 1m people in a sports\nstadium in the state of Gujarat. All that took money, and a great deal of\ntime. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Then there were\nthe Delhi Assembly elections that the Bharatiya Janata Party was slated to lose\nunless it upped its game, which it did, unleashing a vicious, no-holds-barred\nHindu nationalist campaign, replete with threats of physical violence and the\nshooting of traitors\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 It lost anyway.\nSo then there was punishment to be meted out to Delhi\u2019s Muslims, who were\nblamed for the humiliation. Armed mobs of Hindu vigilantes, backed by the\npolice, attacked Muslims in the working-class neighbourhoods of north-east\nDelhi. Houses, shops, mosques and schools were burnt. Muslims who had been\nexpecting the attack fought back. More than 50 people, Muslims and some Hindus,\nwere killed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Thousands moved\ninto refugee camps in local graveyards. Mutilated bodies were still being\npulled out of the network of filthy, stinking drains when government officials\nhad their first meeting about Covid-19 and most Indians first began to hear\nabout the existence of something called hand sanitiser.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

March was busy too.\nThe first two weeks were devoted to toppling the Congress government in the\ncentral Indian state of Madhya Pradesh and installing a BJP government in its\nplace. On March 11 the World Health Organization declared that Covid-19 was a\npandemic. Two days later, on March 13, the health ministry said that corona is\nnot a health emergency\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Finally, on\nMarch 19, the Indian prime minister addressed the nation. He hadn\u2019t done much\nhomework. He borrowed the playbook from France and Italy. He told us of the\nneed for social distancing\u201d (easy to understand for a society so steeped in\nthe practice of caste) and called for a day of people\u2019s curfew\u201d on March 22.\nHe said nothing about what his government was going to do in the crisis, but he\nasked people to come out on their balconies, and ring bells and bang their pots\nand pans to salute health workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 He didn\u2019t\nmention that, until that very moment, India had been exporting protective gear\nand respiratory equipment, instead of keeping it for Indian health workers and\nhospitals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Not\nsurprisingly, Narendra Modi\u2019s request was met with great enthusiasm. There were\npot-banging marches, community dances and processions. Not much social\ndistancing. In the days that followed, men jumped into barrels of sacred cow\ndung, and BJP supporters threw cow-urine drinking parties. Not to be outdone,\nmany Muslim organisations declared that the Almighty was the answer to the\nvirus and called for the faithful to gather in mosques in numbers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 On March 24, at\n8pm, Modi appeared on TV again to announce that, from midnight onwards, all of\nIndia would be under lockdown. Markets would be closed. All transport, public\nas well as private, would be disallowed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 He said he was\ntaking this decision not just as a prime minister, but as our family elder. Who\nelse can decide, without consulting the state governments that would have to\ndeal with the fallout of this decision, that a nation of 1.38bn people should\nbe locked down with zero preparation and with four hours\u2019 notice? His methods definitely\ngive the impression that India\u2019s prime minister thinks of citizens as a hostile\nforce that needs to be ambushed, taken by surprise, but never trusted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Locked down we\nwere. Many health professionals and epidemiologists have applauded this move. Perhaps\nthey are right in theory. But surely none of them can support the calamitous\nlack of planning or preparedness that turned the world\u2019s biggest, most punitive\nlockdown into the exact opposite of what it was meant to achieve. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 The man who\nloves spectacles created the mother of all spectacles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 As an appalled\nworld watched, India revealed herself in all her shame \u2014 her brutal,\nstructural, social and economic inequality, her callous indifference to\nsuffering. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 The lockdown\nworked like a chemical experiment that suddenly illuminated hidden things. As\nshops, restaurants, factories and the construction industry shut down, as the\nwealthy and the middle classes enclosed themselves in gated colonies, our towns\nand megacities began to extrude their working-class citizens \u2014 their migrant\nworkers \u2014 like so much unwanted accrual. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Many driven out\nby their employers and landlords, millions of impoverished, hungry, thirsty\npeople, young and old, men, women, children, sick people, blind people,\ndisabled people, with nowhere else to go, with no public transport in sight,\nbegan a long march home to their villages. They walked for days, towards\nBadaun, Agra, Azamgarh, Aligarh, Lucknow, Gorakhpur \u2014 hundreds of kilometres\naway. Some died on the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Our towns and\nmegacities began to extrude their working-class citizens like so much unwanted\naccrual <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 They kn<\/strong>ew they were going home potentially to slow\nstarvation. Perhaps they even knew they could be carrying the virus with them,\nand would infect their families, their parents and grandparents back home, but\nthey desperately needed a shred of familiarity, shelter and dignity, as well as\nfood, if not love. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 As they walked,\nsome were beaten brutally and humiliated by the police, who were charged with\nstrictly enforcing the curfew. Young men were made to crouch and frog jump down\nthe highway. Outside the town of Bareilly, one group was herded together and\nhosed down with chemical spray. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 A few days\nlater, worried that the fleeing population would spread the virus to villages,\nthe government sealed state borders even for walkers. People who had been\nwalking for days were stopped and forced to return to camps in the cities they\nhad just been forced to leave. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Among older\npeople it evoked memories of the population transfer of 1947, when India was\ndivided and Pakistan was born. Except that this current exodus was driven by\nclass divisions, not religion. Even still, these were not India\u2019s poorest\npeople. These were people who had (at least until now) work in the city and\nhomes to return to. The jobless, the homeless and the despairing remained where\nthey were, in the cities as well as the countryside, where deep distress was\ngrowing long before this tragedy occurred. All through these horrible days, the\nhome affairs minister Amit Shah remained absent from public view. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 When the walking\nbegan in Delhi, I used a press pass from a magazine I frequently write for to\ndrive to Ghazipur, on the border between Delhi and Uttar Pradesh. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 The scene was\nbiblical. Or perhaps not. The Bible could not have known numbers such as these.\nThe lockdown to enforce physical distancing had resulted in the opposite \u2014\nphysical compression on an unthinkable scale. This is true even within India\u2019s\ntowns and cities. The main roads might be empty, but the poor are sealed into\ncramped quarters in slums and shanties. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Every one of the\nwalking people I spoke to was worried about the virus. But it was less real,\nless present in their lives than looming unemployment, starvation and the\nviolence of the police. Of all the people I spoke to that day, including a\ngroup of Muslim tailors who had only weeks ago survived the anti-Muslim\nattacks, one man\u2019s words especially troubled me. He was a carpenter called\nRamjeet, who planned to walk all the way to Gorakhpur near the Nepal border.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Maybe when\nModiji decided to do this, nobody told him about us. Maybe he doesn\u2019t know\nabout us\u201d, he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Us\u201d means\napproximately 460m people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 State\ngovernments in India (as in the US) have showed more heart and understanding in\nthe crisis. Trade unions, private citizens and other collectives are\ndistributing food and emergency rations. The central government has been slow\nto respond to their desperate appeals for funds. It turns out that the prime\nminister\u2019s National Relief Fund has no ready cash available. Instead, money\nfrom well-wishers is pouring into the somewhat mysterious new PM-CARES fund.\nPre-packaged meals with Modi\u2019s face on them have begun to appear. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In addition to\nthis, the prime minister has shared his yoga nidra videos, in which a morphed,\nanimated Modi with a dream body demonstrates yoga asanas to help people deal\nwith the stress of self-isolation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

  The narcissism\nis deeply troubling. Perhaps one of the asanas could be a request-asana in\nwhich Modi requests the French prime minister to allow us to renege on the very\ntroublesome Rafale fighter jet deal and use that \u20ac7.8bn for desperately needed\nemergency measures to support a few million hungry people. Surely the French\nwill understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 As the lockdown\nenters its second week, supply chains have broken, medicines and essential\nsupplies are running low. Thousands of truck drivers are still marooned on the\nhighways, with little food and water. Standing crops, ready to be harvested,\nare slowly rotting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 The economic\ncrisis is here. The political crisis is ongoing. The mainstream media has\nincorporated the Covid story into its 24\/7 toxic anti-Muslim campaign. An\norganisation called the Tablighi Jamaat, which held a meeting in Delhi before\nthe lockdown was announced, has turned out to be a super spreader\u201d. That is\nbeing used to stigmatise and demonise Muslims. The overall tone suggests that\nMuslims invented the virus and have deliberately spread it as a form of\njihad. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 The Covid crisis\nis still to come. Or not. We don\u2019t know. If and when it does, we can be sure it\nwill be dealt with, with all the prevailing prejudices of religion, caste and\nclass completely in place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Today (April 2)\nin India, there are almost 2,000 confirmed cases and 58 deaths. These are\nsurely unreliable numbers, based on woefully few tests. Expert opinion varies\nwildly. Some predict millions of cases. Others think the toll will be far less.\nWe may never know the real contours of the crisis, even when it hits us. All we\nknow is that the run on hospitals has not yet begun. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 India\u2019s public\nhospitals and clinics \u2014 which are unable to cope with the almost 1m children\nwho die of diarrhoea, malnutrition and other health issues every year, with the\nhundreds of thousands of tuberculosis patients (a quarter of the world\u2019s\ncases), with a vast anaemic and malnourished population vulnerable to any\nnumber of minor illnesses that prove fatal for them \u2014 will not be able to cope\nwith a crisis that is like what Europe and the US are dealing with now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 All healthcare\nis more or less on hold as hospitals have been turned over to the service of\nthe virus. The trauma centre of the legendary All India Institute of Medical\nSciences in Delhi is closed, the hundreds of cancer patients known as cancer\nrefugees who live on the roads outside that huge hospital driven away like\ncattle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 People will fall\nsick and die at home. We may never know their stories. They may not even become\nstatistics. We can only hope that the studies that say the virus likes cold\nweather are correct (though other researchers have cast doubt on this). Never\nhave a people longed so irrationally and so much for a burning, punishing\nIndian summer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 What is this\nthing that has happened to us? It\u2019s a virus, yes. In and of itself it holds no\nmoral brief. But it is definitely more than a virus. Some believe it\u2019s God\u2019s\nway of bringing us to our senses. Others that it\u2019s a Chinese conspiracy to take\nover the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Whatever it is,\ncoronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like\nnothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a\nreturn to normality\u201d, trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to\nacknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this\nterrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have\nbuilt for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Historically,\npandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world\nanew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and\nthe next. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 We can choose to\nwalk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our\navarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind\nus. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine\nanother world. And ready to fight for it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Arundhati Roy\u2019s\nlatest novel is \u2018The Ministry of Utmost Happiness\u2019 Copyright \u00a9 Arundhati Roy\n2020    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Arundhati Roy: Courtesy Financial Times Life & Arts\u00a0 The novelist on how coronavirus threatens India \u2014 and what the country, and the world, should do next    Who can use the term gone viral\u201d now without shuddering a little? Who can look at anything any more \u2014 a door handle, a cardboard carton, a bag […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100842\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}