Who are the Victims?

Arup Kumar Sen

About a week back, Jean Dreze reminded us: “As the novel coronavirus spreads, a double crisis looms over India: a health crisis and an economic crisis. In terms of casualties, the health crisis is still very confined…but the numbers are growing fast. Meanwhile, the economic crisis is hitting with full force, throwing millions out of work by the day. Unlike the health crisis, it is not class-neutral, but hurts poor people the most”. (The Hindu, March 23, 2020)

A few days after Dreze’s warning, Pranab Sen, the present chairman of the Standing Committee on Economic Statistics, in his interview with Karan Thapar, observed that daily-wage workers are walking back to their villages in thousands though the temperature is rising  and there is no food or shelter available during the journey, which will take days. Sen observed that the floating people “have lost trust in the system” and have greater trust in their village social kinship networks than the government’s ability to look after them. (See The Wire, March 27, 2020)

Pranab Sen predicted that in these circumstances, with tens of millions of people living in cities without jobs, food and very little or no savings, and with despair and despondency setting in, “food riots are a very real possibility”. He also observed that panic had been created among the people by the Prime Minister’s use of the term ‘curfew’ to describe a lockdown. (The Wire, ibid.)

With their livelihoods coming to a halt after imposition of the countrywide lockdown, thousands of daily wage workers and labourers thronged the Delhi-UP border on March 28 in the hope of reaching their homes in far-flung areas, notwithstanding the threat of spread of the coronavirus. (livemint.com)

If the government does not address the survival needs of the people immediately, no coercive mechanism of the State will be able to fruitfully address the coronavirus-induced health crisis.

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Mar 30, 2020