Since March 24, the population of India has been undergoing a three-week quarantine decreed by the government of right-wing Narendra Modi. The immediate consequences of an impromptu declaration of mandatory confinement in this country of 1,370 million inhabitants led to a mass flight of hundreds of thousands of migrants to their towns, without transportation in most cases. While in the last week the amount of people infected tripled, more than 300 million are expected to be infected when the epidemic spreads in the population, causing with a huge number of fatalities.
By Gustavo Giménez
Reflecting the great contrasts that are manifested in this enormous Asian country, Trump´s requests (pressure) to the Hindu president have been known in recent hours to release exports of the drug that is being used against the virus, hydroxychloroquine, which had been frozen to meet domestic demand. Meanwhile, the media reflects the fears of over a million inhabitants that live in the Hindu neighborhood of Dharavi in Bombai, famous for the movie “Slumdog Millionaire.” There is a concentration of 270,000 inhabitants per km2, piled up in small precarious houses, where 80 people share a bathroom and cases of coronavirus have already been detected. (1)
A 1.37 Billion People “Quarantine”
By declaring a mandatory quarantine with just a few hours notice and without any health care, food, housing, etc., for millions of migrant workers in the informal economy, who come from their towns to work in big cities and lose their day jobs at night, there was a stampede of millions who, due to the lack of transportation, took to the roads to walk enormous distances, up to 400 to 700 km.
“Escaping poverty in their villages, most of these nearly 100 million workers reside in squalid housing, in congested urban ghettos.”
“They walk in the sun and under the stars. Many – the vast majority – say they ran out of money and fear starvation.” (2)
It was all improvisation and when the authorities of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the country’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, announced that they were organizing thousands of buses to transport migrants, “the government’s ‘social distance’ policy collapsed as more than 100,000 migrant workers were hid in the multitude while seeking to secure a space on the bus.”(3)
Modi’s arbitrary measure thus achieved the opposite of the expected prevention and isolation. Hundreds of thousands crowded on the roads, or in search of scarce authorized or clandestine transport, which probably took them to inland towns that do not have health services, in a country where investment in public health care is minimal, the virus is feared.
To make matters worse, to the extent that agricultural production is paralyzing (4), the illusion of safe food for those who return will be transformed into the opposite, as the resulting food crisis will worsen.
Repeating the authoritarian measures that most capitalist governments have taken with the excuse of controlling the pandemic, Indian police also unloaded their repressive actions on the migrant caravans. One of the most aberrant measures that can be seen in the images that arrive from India, is of public agents showering hundreds of migrants with water and chlorine, disinfecting them as if they were animals.
As a result of the police blockade against this huge internal migration, historic in size, 7.5 million detained migrants who were unable to get through the checkpoints, were trapped in tens of thousands of makeshift camps and food centers.
The massive departure made it clear that the priority of migrants, like that of much of the Indian population, is not to starve. That is sadly their most important fear.
The Government´s Disasters Turn Poverty-Ridden India into a “Time Bomb”
As we write these lines, the official figures for India indicate that there are 4838 infected people and 137 have died. However, these figures are surely far from real “since few tests are being done and many infected people may not notice the symptoms until a few days later, infecting other people during that time.” (5)
Two thirds of this immense country lives in poverty and almost a third suffers maltitution. The vast majority of its workers are precarious: “More than 90% of India’s 500 million non-farm workers are employed in the informal economy, for example, as construction workers, food vendors, rickshaw drivers or retail.”(6)
To this panorama, we must add the overcrowded housing conditions of a large part of the population. The average of each family has 4 to 5 per housing unit, versus 2 to 3 in North America. Also, “around 75% of Indian households with an average size of five members (about 900 million people in total) live in spaces of two rooms or less,”(7) and most include someone over 60 years old.
Thus, to the deficient Hindu health system in which there is an intensive care bed for every 55,000 inhabitants, we must add the total lack of personnel and supplies to face Covid-19. Reuters quotes a report by Invest India in which it is noted that 38 million masks and 6.2 personal protective equipment are needed but… “the number of masks available for the companies’ supply was 9.1 million (masks), adding that the available supplies of personal protective equipment, such as body coats, totaled almost 800,000.” The Invest report further notes that these needs correspond to only 7 of India´s 36 states and federal territories “which means that the total demand for these requirements could be much higher.” (8)
Another problem that aggravates this dire scenario is the government’s persecution of minorities, which has already led to major mobilizations against the so-called “citizenship law” according to which the Muslim population is segregated. There are 200 million Indian Muslims, not to mention minorities from neighboring countries.
Finally, to this picture of poverty and discrimination we can add the situation of 104 million tribal inhabitants supposedly protected by a special status of the Constitution. In these towns, public services do not arrive, only 10% have a job, and subsidized government jobs do not arrive either, and the lands belong to the high castes that rent at high prices to the inhabitants of the place. In these places, “the most alarming thing is that, according to data from the Indian government, the gap between the tribal communities and the rest of the population is widening. For 15 years, the number of tribal children with malnutrition problems has remained at 54%, compared to 20% for the rest of the population…”(9)
Government Assistance is for Capitalists and Banks
The assistance package announced by the government seems voluminous. However, its figures are very few and tricky, if it intends to assist the population in this emergency.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a package of relief measures of Rp 1.7 trillion, which is (US $ 22.5 billion), equivalent “to just 0.8 percent of India’s GDP. In per capita terms, this is around $ 16 per person.”
In addition “the money from the central government is only providing around Rp 400-500 billion of new money (less than a third of the total package). The rest will come from state governments or through reprogramming of existing benefits.”
Bankers receive the most assistance: “The Reserve Bank of India has taken steps to inject 3.7 trillion rupees (US $ 49.4 billion) into the country’s financial markets to boost the fortune of Indian and foreign capital …” ( 10)
The minister also announced that “around 800 million people will obtain cereals and cooking gas for free in addition to cash through direct transfers for three months. According to the package, the government will provide 5 kg of wheat or rice and 1 kg of legumes for free each month for the next three months…”(11). However, the number of existing food card holders is 230 million and workers can only access these benefits when they are in their home villages.
For Many of India’s Poor, Time is Running Out
Since the detection of the first coronavirus patient to date, the number of infected people and deaths have multiplied. Its comparative figures are even lower when compared to China or other more punished countries. But all analysts warn that India is on the verge of a great humanitarian crisis that could reach around 300 million infected and 4 or 5 million deaths in the next few weeks.
Indian capitalism and the right-wing government of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that boasted of having one of the cheapest labor forces in the world, where large multinational companies invested while much of its population lives in poverty or extreme poverty. It is leading the country, and especially its working population, towards a severe catastrophe.
Only a socialist program that allocates the national effort to the budgets of public health, food, social subsidies for all its workers and poor population, attacking the benefits of the great Indian capitalists and the banks and multinationals that operate in their territory, placing control of the fight against the pandemic in the hands of health workers and not in the hands of the current BJP government can face the crisis and succeed. The fate of India´s working people is in their hands. The sooner they face the Modi government demanding the necessary responses, the sooner they will overcome this enormous health crisis that affects India and the whole world faster and with lower costs.
- Data extracted from the article “El miedo al coronavirus acecha a la barriada más grande de la India”, Infobae, 04/07/2020.
- Article “Coronavirus: how the confinement in India by covid-19 turned into a humanitarian tragedy”, BBS News, 03/31/2020.
- Article “The country reaches high levels of overcrowding, poverty and the worst sanitary conditions, with 500 million people without health insurance and a poor health system”, World Socialist Web Site, 03/30/2020.
- Data from the article “The blockade of India threatens millions with difficulties”, Asia Times, 04/02/2020.
- Article “India: más de mil millones de personas confinadas”, La Vanguardia de Barcelona, 04/01/2020
- Idem, Asia Times 04/02/2020.
- “Coronavirus: the titanic task of ´locking up´ a country as chaotic and overpopulated as India”, BBC News, 03/25/2020.
- Article “India needs at least 38 million masks to fight coronavirus: agency document”, Reuters, 03/28/2020.
- Article “La India tribal: migración y miseria”, Web Acción Contra el Hambre, 08/05/2019.
- Idem, World Socialist Web Site.
- Article “FM Nirmala Sitharaman announces a relief package of Rs 1.7 lakh crore for the poor,” The Economic Times, 03/27/2020.