The term `guilty by association’ had been a part of discourse in criminal jurisprudence for years. It implies the categorization of any one as guilty who has been associated with the accused criminal , even though not directly participating in the crime. Today, in the paranoid environment of the coronavirus pandemic, the term has been extended to include common citizens who could have come in touch with relatives, friends, or even co-passengers in air flights, train journeys, buses and taxis – all of whom may be suspected of carrying the germs of the virus. The administrative net of surveillance has now been extended beyond these suspects – to the entire Indian citizenry.
The irresponsible behavior of Delhi’s Tablighi Jamaat in organizing a congregation of thousands at its Nizamuddin mosque has provided a further fodder to the BJP government and its acolytes to target the Muslim community. What is being hidden from public attention is that the Tablighi headquarters share a wall with the Nizamuddin police station, which had obviously watched the arrival of pilgrims over the weeks in early March, and yet did not prevent the gathering, although they were of aware of orders issued earlier to ban such a gathering. No official investigation has been undertaken till now to look into this dubious role of the police.
Instead, the government taking advantage of the Tablighi Jamaat misdemeanor , has created a nation-wide psychology of fear whereby people are forced to submit to arbitrary dictates by those in positions of authority – whether state ministers, petty bureaucrats, or street traffic constables. The public paranoia has reached such an extent that even medical practitioners and nurses looking after COVID-19 patients, are being treated as untouchables by their middle class neighbours in the housing estates that they may be living in, or by the landlords of the flats that they may have rented. They are being asked to vacate the premises. Similar is the plight of the crew of airlines, including Air India, who have been involved in transporting passengers from COVID-19 affected countries. While our prime minister Modi urges us to clap in appreciation of the brave efforts of these medical practitioners and health workers, it does not make any difference to their daily experiences. Video pictures have come viral about doctors and nurses protesting against the lack of safety gear that do not reach them because of the arbitrary restrictions on the movement of traffic by an insensitive bureaucracy.
It has now been exposed – thanks to an NDTV investigative report (April 1) – that the government sat on the demands of doctors and nurses for weeks, and finally only towards the end of March placed orders for safety gear, and that also to a few small manufacturing units which are not equipped to produce the required number of such gear. According to experts, it will take months to meet the target.
The Modi government’s anti- COVID-19 militarist measures
While surely asserting the need for vigorous steps to curb the spread of the pandemic, and cure its victims, we should also take a dispassionate look at the measures being taken by our government to tackle the menace. Prime Minister Modi’s call for a Janta Curfew’ on March 22 (the term curfew’ being associated with military measures during riots) left in its tracks a sense of panic among the public, which was reinforced by the sudden imposition of a 21-day lock-down by Modi from March 24. A few days later, Pronob Sen, former Chief Statistician, blamed Modi (in an interview with Karan Thapar for the Wire website at the end of March) for the incorrect use of the term curfew’ to describe a lockdown.’ He implied that this could have encouraged the police to resort to repressive measures against citizens who ventured out into the streets. He also referred to the migrant labourers who were leaving cities in droves to go back to their villages , explaining that they “have greater trust in their village social kinship networks than the government’s ability to look after them.” At the end of his interview, Sen warned: “Food riots are a very real possibility.”
Such a possibility has been created by Modi – not only by his incorrect’ terminology, as Sen suspects - but through his larger plan to utilize the fear over corona virus to reinforce an authoritarian regime. His abrupt decision to impose a 21-day lockdown, without giving the citizens at least a two day notice to buy essential goods, shows the dictatorial mindset of the present regime that he leads. Many state governments, adhering to his orders, are resorting to measures that restrict movements of pedestrians, ban street vendors, prevent inter-state vehicular transport. One chief minister - K. Chandrashekhar Rao of Telangana - has gone to the extent of warning the citizens that he will call out the army and issue shoot-at-sight orders against anyone violating these measures ! Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has banned the return of Bihari migrant labourers who want to come back from cities to their villages. The much touted lock down’ has led to the closure of factories and small business units, and lack of work in the informal sector in the urban centres, leaving thousands of migrants without any means of income .
They are fleeing Delhi and other metropolises to go back to their villages, walking miles and stranded at inter-state borders being refused entry. Till March 29, at least 22 migrants were reported to have died either from exhaustion or due to traffic accidents in the course of their tortuous journey.
Disempowerment of the common citizens and re-empowerment of the police force
While the common citizens have been disempowered by these coercive steps, the police force has been re- empowered by these same steps. Pictures are appearing on the social media of police beating up pedestrians and scooter-drivers, forcing labourers to hop across the roads as punishment for their only crime – carrying out their responsibilities to deliver goods to households. On March 25, a 32-year old man, Lal Swami died a few hours after being thrashed by the police in Howrah in West Bengal. His fault – he stepped out from his house to buy milk. There are also pictures of journalists being harassed by the police on charges of violating the newly imposed rules. The Bihar Truck Owners’ Association has complained that the police were stopping trucks carrying essential items and demanding bribes to release them. They shot at the driver of a pick-up van for refusing to pay them. (The Indian Express, March 27). In Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh, migrants returning to the state were sprayed with the disinfectant liquid sodium hypochlorite, which caused burning sensation in their eyes. (The Hindu, March 30).
India’s notoriously ill-trained and corrupt police force has thus gone berserk now, with the new powers given to them under lock down regime. We can expect the local policeman to hike rates of the hafta’s (the weekly bribes that they demand from shopkeepers), and the those manning the check posts to raise the amount of daily fines’ that they extort from the inter-state truck-drivers. Thus, it is the police which appears to make the most of prime minister Modi’s 21 day lock down.
The pathetic state of India’s public health care system
While insensitive and cruel behavior by local officials and police disrupts the daily lives of common citizens, lack of an efficient medical infrastructure fails to protect them from the deadly virus. We do not have to go to WHO statistics to know about the deplorable state of our health care system. The daily experiences of our citizens in the government-run hospitals, as well as private –run expensive nursing homes, speak volumes about the inefficiency and inadequacy of these medical institutions to cope with even common ailments – leave aside a global pandemic like Coronavirus.
Reports are pouring in from these hospitals and nursing homes about their inadequate facilities – lack of beds for patients, absence of proper testing technology and safety gear. The latter especially is posing a threat to the medical team (consisting of doctors and nurses), who are looking after the CONVID-19 affected patients. Worse still are the conditions in the quarantine centres (some make-shift, some relocated in state and Centrally-owned hostels ) where people suspected of contracting the infection are being herded into and quarantined in cramped spaces. The inmates of these shelters complain about overcrowded rooms (which mock at the Prime Minister’s order to maintain `social distance’), unclean and choked toilets, lack of running and drinking water, dirty beds, bed bugs, cockroaches and mosquitoes plaguing the rooms. (Re: Deccan Chronicle. 20 March, 2020). If they do not die from coronavarius – from which they are being supposedly protected by the administration – they can surely catch other infections like influenza, diarrhoea and malaria. Cases have been reported of quarantined inmates of these shelters escaping, unable to bear the unlivable conditions.
Modi’s demand on citizens – and his failure to meet their demands
Meanwhile, in his regular Maan-ke-baat’ speeches, the prime minister keeps on urging citizens to carry out their responsibilities. In his address dated March 19, in the wake of the Cornavirus pandemic, he advised citizens: “…it is essential that each and every Indian remains alert and cautious.” A few days later, on March 21, he came up with the message of “resolve and restraint.” Still later, he urged citizens to resort to a nine-minute black out and carry candles and light diva’s on April 5.
Listening to Modi, one is reminded of Kennedy’s famous message, which our prime minster has apparently paraphrased as `Ask not what your government can do for you , ask what you can do for your government.’ So, the ball is passed on to the court of Indian citizens. They had subserviently followed this command of Modi’s for the last several years – from submitting to demonetization and GST measures, that were to eventually spell ruin for them – to electing him back to power in 2019 with an overwhelming majority of seats in Parliament.
How has Narendra Modi rewarded the people for their subservience ? Soon after the 2019 elections, they faced a new hurdle – the trio of CAA-NPR-NCR that threatened them with deprivation of citizenship. Now, they are required to submit to another new set of stringent measures , imposed by a blundering prime minister who does not know how to stem the onrush of the coronavirus.
Manifestations of popular discontent harking back to the colonial past
How long can these people suffer the indignities which are being heaped on them ? Professor Jayati Ghosh of Jawaharlal Nehru University, in an interview with Karan Thapar for the WIRE on March 24 warned of “social unrest and violence, if the government did not immediately act to help” the distressed. Ominous signs of such unrest are already evident.
The thousands of migrants who are left stranded at the border outposts have few options. Either they remain there starving, or they break open the police barriers to enter their home states. Such violent manifestations of popular discontent against bureaucratic ham handedness are already being reported from different parts of the country. In Manesar for instance, where the Indian Army runs a quarantine facility, the inmates broke out in protest demanding better facilities and the police had to be called in to quell the demonstration. In Kota in Rajasthan on March 29, people looted flour packets from a moving mini-truck. Incidentally, while the truck driver said that they had done no wrong, because there was widespread hunger, the police did not show any sympathy for the people and rounded up ten under charges of loot and robbery.
The present developments bear shades of happenings that followed the outbreak of another endemic – the bubonic plague – in India in 1897 which killed one crore people. Pune in Maharashtra was the worst affected. In just a month – January that year – a large number of the residents succumbed to the epidemic and half of the population ran away from the city. In order to contain the epidemic, in February the British colonial administration appointed Walter Charles Rand as the plague commissioner of the city. In the name of suppressing the plague, Rand resorted to militarist measures. He deployed forces to barge into any house and upset its belongings. His troops stripped men, women and children naked for `check ups’, sometimes in public, and then evacuated them to hospitals where they were quarantined. Defending his measures, Rand proudly claimed that they were “the most drastic that had ever been taken to stamp out an epidemic.” (re: Draft Report to Government of Bombay by W.C. Rand).
The present Modi government and its bureaucrats and police appear to have taken a leaf out of Rand’s book – judging by the measures that they are implementing which are increasingly assuming the form of oppressive militarist actions against citizens . But they should remember the fate of Rand.
Rand’s measures were considered tyrannical and brutal by Indians. Bal Gangadhar Tilak gave voice to their feelings, when in his newspaper `Mahratta,’ he wrote: “Plague is more merciful to us than its human prototypes now reigning the city (Puna). The tyranny of Plague Committee and its chosen instruments is yet too brutal to allow respectable people to breathe at ease.” Empathizing with the popular sentiments that were articulated by Tilak , three brothers from a Maharashtrian family (Damodar, Balkrishna and Basudeo Chapekar) planned to take revenge for the humiliation suffered by their people at the hands of Rand and his lackeys. On June 22, 1987, they shot Rand and his military escort Lt. Ayerst. While Ayerst died on the spot, Rand died of his injuries on July 3. The Chapekar brothers were hanged, and earned the status of martyrs in the history of the Indian freedom movement.
Sumanta Banerjee is a political and civil rights activist and social scientist. Email: [email protected]
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