The Corona pandemic has been killing far fewer people compared to road accidents and other causes. It has indeed brought out the best and the worst in humanity
Watching the public’s and the Union and State Governments’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the devastating progress of the cyclone Amphan, I was reminded of Charles Dickens’ famous sentence in A Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”
There are parts of the sentence that are generally relevant to the times we live in India but not to the specific context we are talking about. Some parts do apply. For example, it is “the best of times” in terms of the courage, compassion and generosity shown by a number of people to help migrant workers, rendered unemployed by the lockdown. One of them is Pappan Singh Gehlot, a mushroom farmer in Delhi’s Tigipur village, who has bought air tickets worth Rs 68,000 to enable his migrant workers to return to their village in Bihar. He has also given each of them a cash advance of Rs 3,000 so that they do not face any hardship on return, besides getting them medical certificates needed to fly. According to reports, Gehlot, who has been taking care of their food and accommodation since the lockdown began on March 25, did not want them to walk home given the risks, including those of accidents, involved. Interestingly, one of the reports has quoted him as saying that he had made several attempts to send them back to their home States by a Shramik Special train but could not manage to do so.
Another shining example is that of Akshay Kothawale, a 30-year-old auto driver in Pune, who is spending the Rs 200,000 he had saved for his wedding to feed migrant workers and those in distress in the streets. With the help of his friends who have chipped in, he is feeding 400 people every day besides ferrying senior citizens and pregnant women to clinics.
Another example is that of the alumni association of the Bengaluru-based National Law School raising funds to charter an Air Asia Boeing A-320 aircraft to send 169 migrant workers and five children home from Mumbai to Ranchi in Jharkhand. According to Sheyl Trehan, one of those involved in the venture, it was carried out in cooperation with Priya Sharma of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences of IIT, Mumbai.
There are many other examples of individuals and NGOs going out of their ways to help migrant labourers and urban poor. They, however, constitute a small slice of the population. The overwhelming majority could not care less or are hostile. The indifference is manifest even in the case of the havoc wrought by the super-cyclone Amphan, which has devastated huge tracts in West Bengal and parts of Odisha. West Bengal bore the brunt of it. There were not more than 86 deaths thanks to the State Government’s excellent work in evacuating people. The physical damage has been crippling. The Sunderbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest and a wildlife sanctuary, has virtually been destroyed. Hundreds and thousands of people have been rendered homeless. Crops over thousands of square kilometres have been lost. According to the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, over 5,000 trees have been uprooted in the city — the figure may have been as high as 10,000 if the adjacent areas are included. Hundreds of lamp posts have been destroyed. Yet, having satisfied their voyeuristic instincts in front of television sets, the overwhelming majority outside West Bengal and Odisha is now obsessed with COVID-19 and the threat the pandemic poses to them.
And this despite the fact that COVID-19, the first case of which was reported in India on January 30, 2020, has been killing far fewer people compared to road accidents and other causes. Thus, according to the latest figures, there have been over 166,000 cases, 71,196 cures and 4,706 deaths. This means, on a rough average, over 36 deaths per day since January 30. In sharp contrast, there are on an average 1,214 traffic accidents and 377 deaths from such mishaps, every day. There were 5.45 crore cases of, and 28 lakh cases of deaths from cardiovascular diseases in India in 2016.
It is this hysteria worked up over the COVID-19 pandemic which is one of the main reasons making this “the worst of times” in terms of the cruelty arising therefrom, and also the hypocrisy laid bare by the mismatch between official expressions of concern for migrant workers and their inhuman treatment on the ground. It is not just the fiasco of the efforts to take them home by special trains earmarked exclusively for them. It is also the widely manifested attitude of not being sympathetic to the terrible suffering of migrant workers on highways, roads, airports, railway stations and inter-State borders — and regarding them as untouchables to be consigned to the peripheries of their villages or neighbourhood by locals fearing them spreading infection. And this despite wide dissemination through media of the fact that COVID-19 infects one only through close personal contact and home quarantine is good enough. Even single women and children are not spared!
The basic reason is fear and, in its fundamental sub-stratum, that of death. This is understandable. There is neither cure nor as yet a vaccine for COVID-19. Exaggerated fear, in the teeth of the availability of information, which shows its lack of basis, is, however, irrational and unwarranted. Like all fears, it should have been countered by an application of will. This has not happened. Instead, the majority of people in this country has been enveloped by a wild terror that has had the better of their humane instincts and rationality.
This leads to two other segments of Dickens’ observation, “It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,” and “it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” It is the age of wisdom in the sense that the people are beginning to realise that what many had taken for granted — that humans are the masters of the universe — is not true and that rationality is a fragile attribute. It is the age of foolishness in that the majority cannot still apply reason in a time of crisis. The hope lies in the shining conduct of a minority and the compassion and courage shown by even people from the most disprivileged sections, the despair from the selfishness and worse of the majority and the attitude of the Union and most of the State Governments to the plight of migrant workers.
It is a remarkable commentary on the state of affairs that the Supreme Court, on Thursday, had to forbid the railways and the State Governments from extracting train or bus fares from stranded migrant waiting to return home. The railways had to provide them with food and water during train journeys, while the States from which they were boarding would have to take care of their meals and water during bus journeys. One only wishes the order came earlier.
(The writer is Consultant Editor, The Pioneer, and an author)
