In a blind alley - Frontline

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DRUG TRIAL U.K.Dexamethasone breakthrough 8

CONTROVERSY INDIA & CHINALine of confrontation 67

ENVIRONMENT LOCUSTSSwarm before the storm 89

FRONTLINE

The COVID-19 curve keeps rising sharply despite a seriesof lockdowns and the government, refusing to learn frominternational experience, keeps the scientific community

out of decision-making and dishes out false data

In a blind alley

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COVER STORY

Drug trial brings hope 8Vaccine scenarios 11COVID strategy: The numbers game 14Little headway inunderstanding the virus 18ILO report on COVID’s impact on the young 21A neoliberal blow 24

Exploitation of children aserious concern 27

STATESDelhi: In a mess 30Maharashtra: Figures in dispute 32Uttar Pradesh: High on hype 34Punjab: Migrants return 36

Tamil Nadu: Dying young 38Bihar & Jharkhand:Contrasting tales 40Gujarat: Unable to cope 42Madhya Pradesh: Rural spread 44West Bengal: Politics amid pandemic 46Haryana: Dangerous drop 48Karnataka: Rising trend 50Andhra Pradesh: Testing regime 52Telangana: Peaking chaos 54Kerala: Reworking strategy 56Rajasthan: Stable for now 58

COVER STORY

COVID cover-upThe Union government presents data that seek more to hide the

reality about the pandemic than to reveal it and keeps the scientific

community out of the decision-making process. 4

Odisha: A new approach 60

Global scene: Soaring numbers 62Nightmare in Brazil 65

INDIA & CHINA

Line of conflict 67

POLITICS

Crisis of leadership 72

INDIA & NEPAL

Relationship on test 7

JAMMU & KASHMIR

Diaspora takes up fight 79

ENVIRONMENT

Locust menace: Swarmbefore the storm 89The locust that became extinct 92

BOOKS 82

On the Cover

Inside a newly built isolation centre for COVID-19 patients in Mumbai.

COVER DESIGN: U. UDAYA SHANKAR. PHOTOGRAPH: FRANCIS MASCARENHAS/REUTERS

COVER STORY

OFFICIALS OF THE UNION MINISTRY OFHealth and Family Welfare (MoHFW) suffer from foot-in-mouth disease every time they brief the media onCOVID-19. If they do not wish to be transparent aboutthe entire data and prefer to make facts public onlyselectively, that becomes clear more often than not. Thistime it showed in the June 11 briefing by the DirectorGeneral of the Indian Council of Medical Research(ICMR), Balram Bhargava, on the nationwide sero-surveillance survey the ICMR conducted in associationwith the Chennai-based National Institute ofEpidemiology (NIE) and National Institute for Researchin Tuberculosis (NIRT) and in coordination with the

State health departments and other stakeholders. As reported earlier by Frontline (“Denial and

Deception’’, June 19), the ICMR announced on May 12that in order to get an estimate of the prevalence ofinfection in the general population it would conductcommunity-level IgG antibody-based serological testingin 69 districts randomly selected from 21 States (Fig. 1).This was supposed to cover 24,000 adults distributedacross four strata of the districts categorised on the basisof reported cases of COVID-19. The survey involvedcollection of 3-5 ml of venous blood samples from 400randomly selected individuals (one per household) from10 clusters in each district.

DURING A MASS SCREENING in the Govandi area ofMumbai on June 14. V

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COVID cover-upThe Union government presents data that seek more to hide the reality

about the pandemic than to reveal it and keeps the scientific

community out of the decision-making process. BY R . R A M A C H A N D R A N

IgG tests give you data about the prevalence ofinfection up to about a fortnight earlier since IgGantibodies begin to appear in the infected host only after10-14 days and are detectable for even up to a few monthsafter the infection has passed in the host. Assuming thatthe survey would have begun around mid May, the sero-surveillance data would tell you the state of prevalence ofinfections around April 30 and a few days after. If theblood sample collected is positive for IgG antibodies, theperson had SARS-CoV-2 infection in the past. Thebriefing was supposed to share the findings of the survey.

The briefing may not even have happened if abreaking news story in The Telegraph (India) had notappeared on June 9. On the basis of informationanonymously shared by public health experts, includingsome ICMR officials, the story said that the survey hadfound that in big cities the true level of infection may be100-200 times the confirmed cases reported and up to 30per cent of the population in these cities may have beeninfected up to early May. Through a tweet the same day,the ICMR denied this, saying that the report wasspeculative as the full analysis of surveillance data was yetto be completed, and called a press briefing two dayslater.

Interestingly, Bhargava began his briefing by statingthat the numbers of confirmed cases and deaths per lakhpopulation in India were among the lowest in the world.This was obfuscation at its best. Having conducted asero-survey which, as he stated in the briefing, gave youinformation about the actual percentage of the generalpopulation that had been infected, to say that the numberof confirmed cases (and not the level of true infection)

was among the lowest in the world does not wash.According to him, the sero-survey had two parts. The

first was to estimate the fraction that had been infected inthe general population and it had been completed. Thesecond part was to estimate the fraction of the populationthat had been infected in the containment zones ofhotspot cities, and that was yet to be completed. Thesurvey also provided information on who were at a higherrisk of infection and which containment areas needed tobe strengthened, he said.

The districts selected for the sero-survey had been putinto four categories based on the COVID cases reportedon April 25—zero cases, low incidence, mediumincidence and high incidence—and a minimum of 15districts were selected in each category. In the tableshown in the briefing (Fig. 2), even basic arithmetic iswrong: the total number of districts chosen is stated as83, whereas it is only 71 (even this is two more than the 69selected districts announced on May 12); the clustersselected add up to 710, whereas the table shows thenumber as 770; and the number of urban clusters shownas a percentage of the total number of clusters in eachcategory seems to have been calculated wrongly. The dataof 65 of these 71 districts had apparently been completed.

In the entire presentation neither the categories oflow, medium and high incidence were defined nor thenames of the 65 districts and the districts in eachcategory were shared. This is the level of attention andcare that the apex medical research body of the countrygives to sharing information with the public on apandemic, which reflects its attitude towards publicinformation.

The following results of the survey were given in thepresentation:

BALRAM BHARGAVA, Health Secretary and DirectorGeneral, Indian Council of Medical Research.

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0.73 per cent of the population in these districts hadevidence of past exposure to SARS-CoV-2;

Infection fatality rate (IFR) is low at 0.08 per cent; The risk of infection in urban areas and urban slums

was 1.09 and 1.89 times respectively that in rural areas;and,

Infection in containment zones (which containmentzones?) was found to be high with significant variations,and this survey was still ongoing.

The conclusions that the ICMR drew from the surveywere apparently the following:

The lockdown and containment had been successfulin keeping the infection rate low and in preventing arapid spread of the pandemic;

However, a large population still remainedsusceptible.

The first is clearly meant to show the policies beingfollowed by the government to contain COVID-19 in agood light when it is as clear as daylight that, as astatement issued by the Progressive Medicos andScientists Forum (PMSF) about the briefing and datasays, “the presented data seek more to hide the reality

than reveal it”. If you extrapolate the above data to theentire population of the country of about 1.4 billion, thenumber of infections (in early May) would be about 10.2million, or more than one crore, whereas the actualnumber of confirmed cases in early May was 25,000-40,000, a factor of over 30 down. In fact, in an earlierarticle (“Data Discrepancy”, May 8) Frontline hadpointed out that the infection detection rate was about afactor 35 down. This would seem to roughly match withthis.

As regards mortality, even if one assumes that theIFR of 0.08 per cent, found as a result of the sero-survey,is correct for the total number of infections of 10.2million, it works out to over 8,000 deaths, whereas dataof early May showed 1,200-1,500 deaths. Does it meanthat even deaths were being missed in data collection?Or, conversely, assuming that the number of COVID-19deaths recorded was closer to the true figure as it wouldbe difficult to hide deaths, if you use the IFR value of 0.08per cent on the number of deaths on any given date, itshould give the total number of infections. If you use it onthe early May figure of about 1,500 deaths, nearly 1.9million people had been infected in early May.Whichever way you look at the sero-survey data, they donot gel with the official data being released day after day.

That is why, very carefully, Bhargava chose the phrase“in these districts” (italicised above) while presenting theresults of the survey. A sero-survey is supposed to give aprojection of prevalence in the general populationoutside the districts/population sampled for the survey.Now, to give the benefit of the doubt to the ICMR, even ifone restricted the projection to the 60 plus districtssurveyed (about a tenth of the total number of districts), arough calculation (by keeping out the urban districtsfrom the original list of 69 and using the population dataof 2011), the total number of infections worked out to

FIGURE 1: Districts selected for the sero-surveillancecarried out in mid May by ICMR.

over 0.35 million or 3.5 lakhs, an order of magnitudehigher than the actual number of confirmed cases acrossall the 649 districts of the country. Even thisgeographically restricted projection reflects very poorlyon the testing or infection detection rate.

A news story in the June 10 issue of The EconomicTimes, a day before the briefing, quoted D.C.S. Reddy,head of the ICMR’s 12-member panel of epidemiologists,as saying that the findings of the data had not beenshared with the ICMR’s epidemiology and surveillanceworking group. However, The Economic Times hadearlier reported that the ICMR chief had shared thesurvey data with the Cabinet Secretary on June 4 andwith Health Ministry officials in a presentation via avideoconference on June 6. This would seem to be in linewith the government’s present practice of keeping thescientific community out of policy decision-making orpriority actions that need to be taken during a pandemic.

The PMSF statement further said: “The above claimsare even more risible since it was admitted by thespokespersons themselves that the data from the COVIDhot spots were still being compiled. The data presentedrepresents the COVID situation existing in the country asof 30 April. In a rapidly evolving pandemic situationwhere the slope of the epidemic curve has steepened evenfurther after the lockdown was lifted considerably, thisdata has already become dated in the 6 weeks gone bysince then. It is noteworthy that in the countries, withwhich comparison has been done, the epidemic curvehad flattened or was even falling after the lockdown….These fallacious arguments seemed to have beenforwarded to ultimately claim that there is no communitytransmission as of date in the country, hence, the need isto persist with containment strategy.”

A May 14 editorial in the journal Nature Cancer,titled “The tightrope of science, media and politics”, said,“The urgent need to address COVID-19 has highlightedthe delicate relationships among science, politics and the

media. To achieve a successful long-term response to thepandemic, stakeholders need to be guided by data,integrity and a sense of responsibility toward the public.”

It went on to say: “Some of these conflicts havebecome apparent during the response of differentcountries to the pandemic. Several European and Asia-Pacific countries made science-driven decisions to stemthe spread of infection, established preventativemeasures, such as social distancing and use of face masksby the general public, and implemented widespreadtesting and contact tracing. Some of these countries arenow reporting results that point to success in containingthe virus…. It is the responsibility of scientists to helpshape public opinion on the basis of reliable knowledge.Scientists today are called to tread the delicate line ofbuilding public trust while providing sober assessmentsof data and managing expectations… maintaining anhonest working balance with politics and media is alsocrucial, given that science does not operate in avacuum…. Now more than ever we need to remember that,similar to pandemic cures, change in public opinion doesnot come about with miracles, but through dialogue,respect and incremental but decisive steps.” (Emphasisadded.)

It is the italicised part above that seems to be totallyabsent in the way the government and senior healthofficials have been taking policy decisions andimplementing actions to contain the COVID-19 spreadin the country. As of June 20, the number of confirmedcases and deaths increased by about 14,500 and 400respectively a day. This, both from the above discussionand a very low rate of testing which even today is at justabout 4,000 per million population, is far smaller thanthe actual figures. With the pandemic still very much atplay and with no clear-headed strategy to handle thecrisis evident from the policymakers who have decidedlymarginalised the scientific community, it is far from clearwhere the country is headed. m

PRABHDEEP KAUR of the National Institute ofEpidemiology addressing the media in Chennai on May 29.

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FIGURE 2: Table showing district numbers according tothe classification shown at the June 11 briefing at the

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AN ICMR TEAM collecting blood samples in Coimbatore district in Tamil Nadu.

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COVER STORY

AT A TIME WHEN COVID-19 HAS CLAIMEDover 4,40,000 lives worldwide (as of June 18) and avaccine or cure is still a long way off, a breakthroughfinding in the United Kingdom randomised trialpresents a slender ray of hope. Named RECOVERY(Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy), thetrial, which began in March, seeks to test a range ofpotential treatments for the disease.

From among the trials of six drugs for treatingCOVID-19, one trial that used low-dose dexamethasone,a commonly available steroid used to reduce inflamma-tion in other ailments, has found that it reduces by 35 percent the mortality of COVID-19 patients with severerespiratory complications who require ventilator sup-port, and by 20 per cent the mortality of those requiringonly oxygen support, as compared to the correspondingcohort groups who were not administered dexa-methasone. The trial also showed that the drug had nosignificant effect on the mortality rate of COVID-19 pos-itive cases who were not under any severe respiratorystress.

For the entire trial of all the six repurposed drugs,RECOVERY had enrolled over 11,500 patients from over175 National Health Service (NHS) hospitals in theUnited Kingdom. Of these, a total of 2,104 patients hadenrolled for the dexamethasone trial; the last enrolmentfor this was on June 8. The dosage for the dexamethasonetrial was 6 mg once a day, either orally or intravenously,for 10 days. This effect on this group was compared with4,321 randomised COVID-19 patients under normalcare. According to the June 16 press release from RE-COVERY on the results of the trial, among the patientswho received usual care, the 28-day mortality rate washighest in those requiring ventilation (41 per cent), inter-mediate in those on oxygen support only (25 per cent)and lowest in those who did not require any respiratoryintervention (13 per cent).

Dexamethasone brought down the mortality in vent-

ilated patients by nearly one-third (rate ratio betweenthose being given the steroid and those who did notreceive was 0.65) and one-fifth in those receiving oxygenonly (rate ratio 0.80). There was “no benefit” to those whodid not need any respiratory support (rate ratio 1.22). Inother words, these results mean that dexamethasoneprevents about 1 death in 8 ventilated patients and 25patients receiving oxygen alone. “Overall,” the releasesaid, “dexamethasone reduced the 28-day mortality rateby 17 per cent with a highly significant trend showinggreatest benefit among those patients requiring ventila-tion.”

A news report in Nature, soon after the announce-

A step towards recoveryIn a significant breakthrough, the steroid dexamethasone has been found

to reduce mortality in severe COVID-19 cases during a drug trial in the

United Kingdom. BY R. RAMACHANDRAN

ment of RECOVERY results, quoted Anthony Fauci, Dir-ector of the United States’ National Institute for Allergyand Infectious Diseases (NIAID), as saying: “The patternof response matches the notion that a hyperactive im-mune response is more likely to be harmful in long-term,serious infections. When you’re so far advanced thatyou’re on a ventilator, it’s usually that you have an aber-rant or hyperactive inflammatory response that contrib-utes as much to the morbidity and mortality as any directviral effect.”

N O T E O F C A U T I O N

(Correspondent’s note: A note of caution is necessary ininterpreting the results for those not receiving any oxy-gen support, both in the control group and in the groupreceiving the drug. In the former, the 13 per cent mortal-ity rate appears to be high. It is presumed that this setmay have included patients who were very elderly or withsevere co-morbidities. In the group that received thedrug, the phrase “no benefit” appears to be slightly mis-placed when the mortality rate has in fact gone up by asmuch as 22 per cent on administration of the drug, whichis by no means small. Unfortunately, the release does notgive any information about the age distribution of thesampled patients or reason for rate ratio being signific-antly greater than 1. The mortality rate can go up if therewere many patients from a younger age group in that set,because the immunosuppressant action of the drug had adominating effect.)

The results of the dexamethasone trial are yet to bepublished in any peer-reviewed journal, although therelease said, “Given the public health importance of theseresults, we are now working to publish the full details assoon as possible.” The writer and well-known medicalspecialist from Harvard, Atul Gawande, tweeted: “Afterall the retractions [referring to retractions of studies onhydroxychloroquine (HCQ) by Lancet] and walk backs, itis unacceptable to tout study results by press releasewithout releasing the paper.”

One of the greatest puzzles that remains unsolved isthe cause of death in COVID-19—whether it is the virusitself or the host’s immune response that goes into anoverdrive and overwhelms the patient. According toclinicians, the immune system does seem to play a role;this has led doctors to turn to anti-inflammatory drugs,which are usually given for other conditions, includingauto-immune disorders, when the immune system be-gins to act against the host itself, resulting in chronicinflammation.

Early on in the pandemic, doctors in China had ob-served in cases of death that the immune system hadoverreacted to the external pathogen, the SARS-CoV-2.It was found that some critically ill COVID-19 patientshad high levels of proteins called cytokines in their blood.Cytokines include proteins called interleukins and inter-leukin-6 (IL-6), which are signals for ramping up some

DEXAMETHASONE , a commonly available steroid usedto reduce inflammation in other ailments, which has been found to improve survival of COVID-19 patientswith severe respiratory complications who requireventilator support.

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A SCIENTIST at work as part of the TACTIC-R trial at theCambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology andInfectious Disease in Cambridge, U.K., on May 21. K

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COVER STORY

IN AN EARLIER ISSUE OF FRONTLINE (MAY22), we had discussed, based on the work of NidhanBiswas and Partha P. Majumder of the National Instituteof Biomedical Genomics (NIBG), Kalyani, West Bengal,how mutations accumulating in the original strain sincethe COVID-19 outbreak started in Wuhan, China, inDecember 2019, have resulted in 11 (phylogenetically)distinct types or clades circulating in different parts ofthe world. We also saw how, from among these, Type A2ahad emerged as the dominant strain in virtually all geo-graphic regions of the world, including India, replacing

the ancestral Wuhan strain. The advance e-print of thispeer-reviewed work, which is due to be published inIndian Journal of Medical Research (IJMR), appearedon April 28.

A few days after the Biswas-Majumder work, whichwas an analysis of annotated database of 3.636 genomespublicly available up to April 6, appeared, a similar ana-lysis was carried out by B. Korber and associates—anAmerican-British research group from the Los AlamosNational Laboratory (LANL) and the Duke Human Vac-cine Institute, United States, and the SheffieldCOVID-19 Genomics Group, United Kingdom—with asomewhat larger database of 4,535 genomes (publiclyavailable until April 13). This LANL-Duke-Sheffieldwork came to the same broad conclusion as Biswas-Majumder, that the type defined by the mutation D614G(which substitutes amino acid aspartic acid (D) to glycine(G) at the site 614 in the Spike protein of the virus),namely A2a, had emerged as the dominant type in nearlyall parts of the world. This work was posted on thee-preprint repository bioRxiv on April 30.

Now, the Spike protein (S) is what enables the virus togain entry into the human cells by binding with receptorACE2 on the surface of human cells, fuse with the cellsand use the cell machinery to replicate itself into multiplecopies which go on to infect other cells. The S protein hastwo components S1 and S2. While the receptor bindingdomain (RBD) of the virus is part of S1, which is respons-ible for binding with the human ACE2 receptor, S2 per-forms the function of fusion of the virus membrane withthe human cell. The crucial difference between SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 is the presence of a cleavage siteat the S1/S2 boundary and the virus makes use of hostenzymes like furin to do the job of splitting the S proteinat the boundary. This makes its entry into, and fusionwith, the cell far more efficient than in the case ofSARS-CoV-1.

So, naturally, the strategy of targeting the S protein,so as to prevent its binding and fusion with human cells,is the cornerstone of almost all the 100-odd vaccinedevelopment proposals across the world that are in vari-ous stages of development. In fact, the LANL-Duke-

Vaccine scenariosThe strategy of targeting the Spike protein so as to prevent its binding and

fusion with human cells is the cornerstone of almost all the 100-odd

vaccine development proposals across the world that are in various stages

of development. BY R. RAMACHANDRAN

parts of the immune system, particularly cells calledmacrophages. Macrophages cause a heightened inflam-matory response, which can sometimes damage normallung cells as well. The release of such cytokines, oftenreferred to as a “cytokine storm”, are known to occur inother viral infections such as HIV-AIDS.

Anti-inflammatory drugs called IL-6 inhibitors areused for the treatment of chronic inflammatory condi-tions or auto-immune disorders such as rheumatoidarthritis. One such drug, a non-steroidal injectable calledtocilizumab, has been approved in China for treatingCOVID-19 patients as well. In fact, tocilizumab is one ofthe other five drugs under the RECOVERY trial in theU.K. It would, therefore, be interesting to see the resultsof this trial when they come out.

Steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as dexa-methasone also suppress the immune system unlike IL-6inhibitors, which suppress those immune responses gov-erned by IL-6, but allow other immune responses thatcan help fight the virus function as usual. But steroids,which tend to dampen the immune system, can hamperthe host’s ability to fight the virus by affecting otherimmune responses. In an early report in Nature, DanielChen, an immunologist at the IGM Biosciences in Cali-fornia, has been quoted as saying, “You have to assumethat there’s an ongoing antiviral immune response [aswell] that is important to these patients.” According tohim, although IL-6 levels are high in some critically illCOVID-19 patients, viral loads are high as well, which isindicative of an active immune response to fight theinfection. In that case, he added, reducing immune re-sponse in the form of (CD4 and CD8) T-cells couldundermine that response.

Responding to apprehensions expressed by someclinicians against trials using steroidal anti-inflammat-ory drugs such as dexamethasone, Peter Horby of OxfordUniversity, who heads the RECOVERY trial, had said inApril that the trial would use relatively low doses of thesteroid. “Higher doses are not routinely recommendedbut the jury is out on lower doses. And many authorities,including the WHO, recommend a trial,” he said.

According to Horby, data from steroid trials duringSARS and MERS outbreaks, also caused by coronavir-uses, were inconclusive. Given some promising resultsfrom steroid studies in previous outbreaks and dexa-methasone’s widespread availability, Horby had said thatRECOVERY investigators felt it prudent to include itamong the drugs on trial. Now, following the RECOV-ERY results, Horby has called it a major breakthrough.

Interestingly, the document “Clinical Manage-ment Protocol: COVID-19”, published by the UnionMinistry of Health and Family Welfare, includes ster-oidal anti-inflammatory drugs in its guidelines forclinical management. It has not recommended the useof dexamethasone, but advises the use of methylpred-nisolone. For moderate cases requiring oxygen sup-port, the document says: “Consider intravenousmethylprednisolone 0.5 to 1 mg/kg for 3 days (prefer-ably within 48 hours of admission or if oxygen re-

quirement is increasing and if inflammatory markersare increased).”

For severe cases, among the many recommendedtherapeutic interventions, it has included: “For patientswith progressive deterioration of oxygenation indicators,rapid worsening on imaging and excessive activation ofthe body’s inflammatory response, glucocorticoids can beused for a short period of time (3 to 5 days). It is recom-mended that dose should not exceed the equivalent ofmethylprednisolone 1–2mg/kg/day. Note that a largerdose of glucocorticoid will delay the removal ofcoronavirus due to immunosuppressive effects.” In thelight of the latest results from RECOVERY, it is not yetclear if the guidelines will include dexamethasone aswell.

Till date, the antiviral drug remdesivir, which inter-feres with the virus’s replication, is the only drug that hasshown to work on COVID-19 patients, following a largerandomised controlled clinical trial involving over 1,000patients in the U.S. On April 29, Fauci announced thatthe trial had found that those who took remdesivir re-covered in 11 days whereas those on a placebo took 15days. However, he added that while remdesivirshortened the hospitalisation time for a patient, it did nothave any statistically significant effect on deaths. Butremdesivir is apparently in short supply worldwide; also,the drug has to administered through injection overseveral days. From the RECOVERY results, it wouldseem that dexamethasone will become the drug of choicefor those on ventilator support.

U . K . G O V E R N M E N T ’ S D E C I S I O N

The release quoted Horby as saying: “Dexamethasone isthe first drug to be shown to improve survival inCOVID-19…The survival benefit is clear and large inthose patients who are sick enough to require oxygentreatment, so dexamethasone should now become stand-ard of care in these patients. Dexamethasone is inexpens-ive, on the shelf, and can be used immediately to save livesworldwide.” Indeed, shortly after the results were an-nounced, the U.K. government immediately authorisedthe use of dexamethasone for patients hospitalised withCOVID-19 and requiring oxygen support, includingventilators.

“Had we been able to use dexamethasone from thestart of the epidemic in the U.K., scientists estimate up to5,000 lives could have been saved,” wrote Devi Sridhar,Chair of Global Public Health at the University of Edin-burgh, in The Guardian. But she also added the caveat,“But we also should not think of dexamethasone as amagic bullet….The real game-changer will be a drug thatprevents people transitioning from mild symptoms to asevere state. With such a drug, alongside widespreadtesting and early detection, patients could be treated incommunity and outpatient clinics. It also does not ad-dress the long-term health issues associated with thevirus for those with mild and severe symptoms, given thatit affects so many parts of the body including the brain,heart, kidney and blood vessels.” m

The Spike protein (S) is

what enables the virus to

gain entry into the human

cells by binding with the

receptor ACE2...

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Sheffield approach in studying the various mutations ofthe virus was from the perspective of knowing if therewere any mutations that were gaining ground in thedisease spread that could affect the strategies currentlybeing pursued for vaccine development. As the group’spaper said, “We have developed an analysis pipeline tofacilitate real-time mutation tracking in SARS-CoV-2,focussing initially on the Spike protein because it medi-ates infection of human cells and is the target of mostvaccine strategies and antibody-based therapeutics.”

The authors further observed: “Although the ob-served diversity among pandemic SARS-CoV-2 se-quences is low, its rapid global spread provides the viruswith ample opportunity for natural selection to act uponrare but favorable mutations…. Antigenic drift in influ-enza, the accumulation of mutations [in the haemagglu-tinin protein] by the virus during an influenza season… isthe primary reason we need to develop new influenzavaccines every few seasons…. SARS-CoV-2 is new to us;we do not yet know if it will wane seasonally…but our lackof pre-existing immunity and its high transmissibilityrelative to influenza are among the reasons it may not. Ifthe pandemic fails to wane, this could exacerbate thepotential for antigenic drift and the accumulation ofimmunologically relevant mutations in the populationduring the year or more it will take to deliver the firstvaccine. Such a scenario is plausible, and by attending tothis risk now, we may be able to avert missing importantevolutionary transitions in the virus that if ignored couldultimately limit the effectiveness of the first vaccines toclinical use.”

Having noted that the mutation D614G, which char-acterises globally dominant Type A2a of the virus, waslocated in the S1/S2 junction near the furin recognitionsite for the cleavage of S protein, Biswas and Majumderobserved: “It is unclear whether the derived allele produ-cing glycine directly provides a selective/transmissionadvantage for the entry of the virion”.

Recently, two e-preprints have appeared on thebioRxiv repository, both of which have followed verysimilar experimental procedure of using pseudotypedviruses (with the envelope and S protein of SARS-CoV-2,mutated and unmutated) and have showed that themutation D614G resulted in increased infectivity of themutated virus as against the ancestral Wuhan strain.(Pseudotyped viruses or viral vectors are produced bycombining a given virus with foreign envelope (E) pro-teins. In this case, other known viruses were combinedwith SARS-CoV-2’s E and (mutated and unmutated) Sproteins).

On June 12, Lizhou Zhang and others from theScripps Research Institute, U.S., posted their work inwhich they created retroviruses pseudotyped with themutated and unmutated S protein of SARS-CoV-2 andfound that mutated S protein infected ACE2-expressingcells markedly more efficiently than the unmutated ver-sion. This greater infectivity was correlated with less S1shedding, which implied that the mutated S protein wasmore stable. This observation was consistent with epi-demiological data suggesting that Type A2a virusestransmitted more efficiently, the paper said.

On June 15, Zharko Daniloski and associates fromthe New York Genome Centre and New York Universityposted a similar work, but they had used lentivirus forpseudotyping as against retroviruses by the Scrippsgroup. They observed that in multiple cell lines, includ-

FRENCH President Emmanuel Macron visits an industrialdevelopment laboratory at the vaccine unit of the Sanofi

Pasteur plant near Lyon on June 16.

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ing human lung epithelial cells, lentivirus carrying theD614G mutation was up to eightfold more effective attransferring foreign genetic material into human cellsthan the wild-type lentivirus. “This,” the authors said,“provides functional evidence that the D614G mutationin the Spike protein increases transduction of humancells…. Given that several vaccines in development and inclinical trials are based on the initial [unmutated] Spikesequence, this result has important implications for theefficacy of these vaccines in protecting against this recentand highly-prevalent SARS-CoV-2 isolate.” They did,however, note as a caveat that the pseudotyped lentivirusmodel had a different pathway for assembling the entirevirus [as it multiplies in the host] and it was unclearwhether the number of Spike molecules on the pseudo-typed lentivirus is comparable to that of the full SARS-CoV-2 virus.

So, is the D614G mutation likely to have seriousimplications for worldwide vaccine development?

Before we address that question, as an aside, we notehere that, on May 31, scientists from the Council ofScientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) laboratories ofthe Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB),Hyderabad, and the Institute for Genomics and Integrat-ive Biology (IGIB), New Delhi, posted on the e-preprintserver bioRxiv an analysis of publicly available genomicdata of 361 Indian isolates, an order of magnitude morethan what Biswas-Majumder had access to. They foundthat, while Type A2a continues to be dominant in India, anew type, which they had christened A3i, characterisedby four other mutations, had begun to appear with signi-ficant frequency in India.

However, as the authors of this work themselves notein the paper, the mutations that define this particularType A3i all pertain to structural proteins, the Nucleo-capsid (N) protein and the Envelope (E) while A2a had todo with amino acid substitution in the S protein andMembrane (M) protein, the critical infective compon-ents of the coronavirus SARS-COV-2. So mutations inType A3i have no particular significance vis-a-vis vac-cine development efforts.

Responding to a basic query, whether mutationD614G had any implication for vaccine development thatis based on the original unmutated strain, ShahidJameel, former virologist from the International Centrefor Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB),New Delhi, and currently the chief of the WellcomeTrust-DBT India Alliance, said: “From a vaccine point ofview… the most important region is the receptor bindingdomain (RBD) in the Spike protein that attaches to theACE2 receptor on the surface of target cells. However,the RBD in the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein is locatedbetween amino acids 319 to 529. This is away from theregion of this mutation (amino acid 614). Therefore, thisis unlikely to have any effect on the vaccines that arebeing developed using either the complete Spike proteinor its RBD.”

This is certainly reassuring that the strategies andefforts currently under way are not going to be impactedby this mutation that seems to have given the virus aselective advantage over the other types. Its apparentincreased infectivity and stability notwithstanding, anyefficacious and viable vaccine targeting the S protein thatis ready should, according to Jameel, be effective as apublic health measure, which needs to be made availableglobally, sans politics and diplomacy, as an affordableprophylactic against COVID-19. m

THIS photo provided by Imperial College London shows a

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ON JUNE 18, 10 DAYS AFTER THE CENTRALgovernment’s decision to “Unlock” India in phases, aUnion Health Ministry release stated that there were1,60,384 active COVID-19 cases under medical supervi-sion across the country from 62,49,668 samples collecteduntil then. Giving bare details, it further stated that therecovery rate was 52.96 per cent and that there were 953laboratories (699 in the government sector and 254 inthe private sector) in the country. Significantly, there wasno mention of the fact that each day anywhere between10,000 and 11,000 cases were being added to the overalltally.

The same day, Union Health Minister Harsh Vard-han launched India’s first mobile Infectious Disease Dia-gnostic Lab to promote last-mile testing in remote andinaccessible areas. According to a government release,the mobile laboratory could conduct 25 RT-PCR (Re-verse transcription-polymerase chain reaction) tests aday, 300 ELISA tests, and additional tests for tubercu-losis and HIV at Central Government Health Scheme(CGHS) rates. The laboratory’s launch was in some sensean admission of the fact that the infection had spread torural pockets too. Not a surprise, considering the large-scale migration of workers from cities to their villages inMarch through May. The exodus was spurred by thegovernment’s abrupt decision to impose a lockdownwithout a contingency plan for the migrant worker popu-lation engaged mainly in the informal sectors of theeconomy.

S E R O S U R V E Y

Despite the wide geographical spread of the infection, thegovernment has consistently maintained silence on pos-sible community transmission. On June 11, the govern-ment released the results of the first serological surveyconducted in the country that gave an indication of thespread of the infection in the general population. Thebriefing began with a statistical presentation that showedIndia in a favourable position vis-a-vis the worst faringcountries. The number of cases and deaths per lakhpopulation in India was lower than that in Mexico, Tur-

key, Iran, Germany, France, Brazil, Russia, Italy, theUnited Kingdom, Spain, the United States, Peru andChile. It glossed over the fact that India had the highestnumber of cases and deaths among East and South Asiancountries.

Next in the press briefing were the results of the firstpart of the serological survey conducted in the third weekof May in 83 districts to monitor the transmission trendof SARS-CoV-2 infection. Blood samples were collectedfrom 26,400 individuals to test for antibodies. Thesecond part of the survey was being done in containmentzones of hotspot cities to ascertain what section of thepopulation had been infected with SARS-CoV-2, theresults of which are awaited.

The survey results presented by a panel comprisingDr Balram Bhargava, Director General, Indian Councilof Medical Research (ICMR), and Dr Vinod Paul, Mem-ber, NITI Aayog and chairperson of the National Task

Maze of numbers In terms of COVID statistics, governments, both at the Centre and in the

States, seem keen to hide more than what the numbers could otherwise

reveal. BY T.K. RAJALAKSHMI

A QUEUE for COVID-19 screening at a coronavirusdesignated hospital in New Delhi on June 10. M

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Force (NTF) on COVID-19 stated that only 0.73 per centof the general population had been infected. The infec-tion fatality rate (IFR) was also low, at 0.08 per cent. Thesummary of the results were full of contradictions. While0.73 per cent of the population surveyed had shown pastevidence of being infected, the lockdown and contain-ment had been successful in preventing the rapid spread,the presentation said. A large proportion of the popula-tion was still susceptible, the survey said, and the risk was1.09 and 1.89 times higher in urban and urban slumsrespectively compared with rural areas.

If the 0.73 per cent infection rate is extrapolated tothe 1.37 billion population of the country, it would bearound 99 lakh, which is by no means a small figure. Thedistricts for the sero survey were selected on the basis ofthe incidence of reported COVID cases as on April 25.The survey was done in the third week of May to ascertainthe prevalence of antibodies in the population as a resultof contracting the infection in April end.

The conclusions of the survey were as follows: One, a“large proportion of the population is still susceptible andinfection can spread”; two, “non-pharmacological inter-ventions like physical distancing, face mask, hand hy-giene, cough etiquette must be followed strictly”; three,“urban slums were highly vulnerable for the spread ofinfection”; four, “local lockdown measures need to con-tinue as advised by the Government of India”; five, high-risk groups like the elderly, those with co-morbidities,pregnant women and children under 10 need to be pro-tected; six, “States cannot lower their guard and [should]keep on implementing effective surveillance and con-tainment strategies”; and seven, “efforts to limit the scaleand spread of the disease will have to be continued by

strong implementation of containment strategies by theStates”.

The assertion in the press conference that the “lock-down was successful” had little basis according to theconclusions arrived at by the sero survey that large sec-tions of the population were still susceptible and thatcontainment strategies would continue.

D A T A D E F I C I T

Apart from the basic details given in the government’spress releases, there was no break-up of the asympto-matic and symptomatic cases. If the number of activecases under medical supervision were symptomatic,could it be assumed that all the remaining infectionswere asymptomatic and not likely to develop complica-tions but still had the potential of infecting others? OnJune 17, when the number of confirmed cases and deathswere added retrospectively, as part of a “data reconcili-ation exercise”, it stirred up questions on whether Stateswere reporting correctly.

On June 15, the Press Information Bureau (PIB)declared as fake a news agency report that claimed tohave sourced its information from an ICMR study. Theagency report was published in a few newspapers. Citingan ICMR study, the report said that the peak ofCOVID-19 had shifted to November and that therewould be a paucity of ICU beds and ventilators. The PIBFact Check on Twitter, however, stated that the reportwas misleading and that the ICMR had not carried outthe study.

Frontline accessed a copy of the multi-author studyunder dispute titled “A Model based analysis forCOVID-19 pandemic in India: Implications for Health

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Systems and Policy for Low and Middle Income coun-tries”. The academic paper did not appear to have beenpeer reviewed but was funded by the ICMR. An ICMRresearcher and the chair of the Operations ResearchGroup of the NTF were two of its seven authors. Thestudy “gratefully acknowledged” the inputs on researchmethods by the members of the Operations ResearchGroup of the NTF and of a member of ICMR’s GlobalHealth Policy Research Cell.

The study aimed at comparing and predicting healthoutcomes under (i) an unmitigated scenario with only airtravel restrictions, and (ii) the current scenario with airtravel restrictions and an eight-week lockdown. It was amodel-based study among several others that were beingdone nationally and globally. There could be disagree-ment with the findings of the study, but to declare it as“fake” was an extreme reaction on the part of the govern-ment, more so when the ICMR had funded it.

The model also explored the effectiveness of theeight-week lockdown along with the intensified publichealth measures at varying levels of effectiveness. It as-certained the need for augmenting infrastructure andcosts of COVID-19 management. The authors reiteratedwhat many others had already said: that lockdown meas-ures tended to delay the onset of the peak and giveenough time for health systems to prepare; that strength-ening the public health system response in terms oftesting, isolation, treatment of cases and contact tracingwould lead to significant gains in meeting caseload andhealth system needs. This had to be the mainstay ofreducing the impact of the pandemic until a vaccine wasavailable.

The study also said that an eight-week lockdownwould shift the peak by 34-76 days and an effectivelockdown would reduce the caseload by 69-97 per cent atthe end of eight weeks. If public health surveillancemeasures were intensified by 60 per cent, they wouldresult in a reduction of cases at the peak by 70 per centand cumulative number of infections by 26.6 per cent, itsaid. Intensified public health measures could reduce by83 per cent the requirement of ICU beds and ventilators,it said. However, intensified public health measureswould raise the cost of management of COVID-19 to 6.2per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP). At themoment, India was spending far less on overall healthand on COVID-19 management in particular.

The model-based study also projected that the cur-rent dedicated resources such as ICU beds, isolation bedsand ventilators would last until September 3, beyondwhich there would be an unmet need for about 3.3months for isolation beds and 2.9 months for ventilators.The authors were candid enough to admit that the studyhad data limitations as it was based on epidemiologicalevidence drawn from countries that had already experi-enced the epidemic. Future research should focus ongenerating more epidemiological evidences and carryingout model-based analysis at the State level to inform localpolicies, it said.

In all fairness, the authors had merely underscored

the need for preparedness. The reasons for the govern-ment’s discomfort regarding the findings were unclear. Itdid not seem to want to associate the ICMR with thestudy, but in the PIB Fact Checker it suppressed the factthat the ICMR had funded the study. A complete dissoci-ation was therefore not possible.

L A C K O F T R A N S P A R E N C Y

Lack of transparency has been an issue for some time.According to Venkatesh Nayak, head of the Access toInformation Programme at the Commonwealth HumanRights Initiative, to date there has been no centralisedform of information in the public domain on COVIDhospitals and treatment centres in the country. He filed aformal request on April 17 under the Right To Informa-tion Act seeking information on district-wise details ofCOVID hospitals, their postal addresses and telephonenumbers but received no response. He then filed a com-plaint with the Central Information Commission (CIC).On June 5, the CIC issued an advisory to the UnionHealth Ministry to fill the information gap. The CIC alsoobserved that it was “appalled to learn that this basicinformation pertaining to district-wise designatedCOVID treatment centres could not be provided to theinformation seeker by any of the respondents”.

A random survey of COVID-related websites and web

pages of 21 State governments and two Union TerritoriesNayak did concluded that there was an urgent need todevelop templates for information disclosure across thecountry. There was no uniformity in terms of detailsgiven in State government bulletins across India asFrontline had pointed out earlier. Some State bulletinslike that of Uttar Pradesh needed a login id to access basicinformation on the daily count of infections and deaths aswell as COVID hospital details. Likewise, there wasscarce information regarding the implementation of reg-ulations in the private health care sector where reports ofovercharging and denial of treatments were being repor-ted consistently by the media.

In a recent article titled “Pandemic and Beyond:Regulating private healthcare” in policycorps.org, an on-line portal, Shweta Marathe, a Pune-based health re-searcher, says that private hospitals that accounted fortwo-thirds of hospital beds in the country, 80 per cent ofventilators and employed 90 per cent of doctors werehandling less than 10 per cent of the critical load. Therewas no monitoring mechanism to ensure that hospitalswere not overcharging and denying health care, the art-icle says.

I N W A R D S P R E A D

On June 18, Union Minister for Information and Broad-casting Prakash Javadekar lauded the efforts of the Bhar-atiya Janata Party-led government in Madhya Pradesh ineffectively controlling the spread of COVID. But, accord-

ing to Amulya Nidhi, a public health activist based inBhopal and associated with the People’s Health Move-ment, this claim was contrary to the situation on theground. By the second week of June, COVID-19 cases hadspread in all the 52 districts of Madhya Pradesh, he said.The number of positive cases had crossed 11,000 and thedeath toll was 476. The number of testing laboratorieshad gone up to 59, but as of June 15 as many as 4,180 testresults were still pending.

“In the last two months there have been issues relatedto pending samples, missing samples and missing testreports, and civil society and the media have raised alleg-ations of misreporting of the number of COVID cases inthe State,” he said. “According to Indore’s health bulletinof June 14, of 1,058 test reports that day, 1,006 reportswere negative and only six were found to be positive.When the media raised the issue of the missing 46 testreports, the authorities clarified that out of the 46 re-ports, two were repeated positive and 44 were [classifiedas] Sample Insufficient for the Process [SIP]. This was anew classification introduced in the bulletin, unheard ofearlier,” Amulya Nidhi told Frontline.

The Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (JSA), he said, had beenraising since early May the issue of inappropriate hand-ling of samples and had taken up the matter with theICMR. On investigation, the ICMR also found that therewere multiple gaps in the managing of test samples. Ithad written to the State government way back in Aprilhighlighting multiple violations such as leaked and miss-ing samples and incomplete documentation. As many as5,059 samples were “rejected”, with Indore alone ac-counting for 529 samples.

Said Amulya Nidhi: “The State government hadstopped providing the status of testing kits and othersupply-related information to citizens since early May2020. Similarly, there is no information on how manyvarious categories of hospitals and health centres exist inthe State and the infrastructure development that wascarried out in the last two months in the State. Thelockdown was intended to slow down the infection curveand buy time to strengthen the public health system. Asper the State government’s COVID management plan ofMay 28, even though the fatality rate has gone down from4.7 to 4.3 per cent over 10 days from May end, the rate ofdeaths [seven-day Compound Annual Growth Rate]during the same period had increased from 2 to 2.4 percent. This report also confirmed that the peak was expec-ted in July, but the administration has been sending ageneral message that things are in control. A large seg-ment of the political leadership is now busy with cam-paigns for the upcoming byelections for 24 seats whichdetermined the change of government in March, justwhen the pandemic was making headway in the State.”

He also expressed concern that instead of drawingout plans to ensure regular treatment of people withnon-COVID conditions through the public health-caresystem, the government had issued an order for short-term empanelment of private hospitals under AyushmanBharat. m

A HEALTH WORKER conducts a survey in a red zone inOngole, Andhra Pradesh, on April 30.

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Still a mystery With herd immunity an open question, vaccine trials still ongoing and

repeat outbreaks in countries that opened up, continuing to wear masks,

practising physical distancing and minimising crowd situations

may be the only way to keep the virus at bay.

BY SHAHUL HAMEED EBRAHIM AND N.M. MUJEEB RAHMAN

BOTH COVID-19 AND LOCKDOWNS AREequally depressing. Hope is unique to humans and it isinfinite. Tired of lockdowns, hotspots of infection andreports of escalating cases worldwide, the world iseagerly awaiting either of the two magic bullets needed toget past the COVID-19 pandemic: herd immunity orvaccines. Are we there yet? The answer is a resounding“No”. Diseases such as measles and chickenpox, oncecommon among children, are now rare even in the leastdeveloped countries. Thanks to vaccines and childhoodinfections, there is enough herd immunity to containlarge outbreaks from these old challenges. So, we remainhopeful.

The concept of herd immunity is not new. It meansthe “majority” of the population has been exposed to avirus and survived. In such a scenario, when the virusenters the body, the antibodies (the fighter proteins in theblood, equipped with a detailed memory of the invadingvirus) make it difficult for the virus to invade the body.How do antibodies help? Like water on fire, they caneasily go to and neutralise the invaders. Early on in theoutbreak of COVID-19, we heard that its R0 value, or thebasic reproductive number, was between 2 and 5. Thismeans that in normal settings where everyone is suscept-ible, an infected family member can give the infection totwo to five family members. But if three out of four peoplehave had previous infections and thus have antibodieswith a good memory of SARS-CoV-2, the virus thatcauses COVID-19, then the newly infected family mem-ber cannot infect the three family members who had thedisease previously and can cause only one infection. Andthat makes it much less likely that large clusters ofCOVID-19 can flourish, and infection transmission diesout.

So, what does the “majority” of the population meanin real numbers in terms of exposure to COVID-19 toachieve herd immunity? The threshold for herd im-munity to SARS-CoV-2 is unknown. “Guesstimates”range between 60 and 80 per cent. For most known

diseases, the conventional number is 80 per cent, mean-ing 80 per cent of the population has been infected andsurvived because of immunity or resistance to the dis-ease. For other diseases, herd immunity is achieved withvaccines to a level of 95 per cent. In other words, if 5 percent of the population remains susceptible to the dis-eases, they are so few in number that they are unable tocause widespread disease. We still see outbreaks of dis-eases such as measles, but they are usually confined to asmall percentage of the unvaccinated population. Alower level of exposure to the disease, say 7 per cent forCOVID-19 in Sweden currently, in the population canstill slow the spread of a disease somewhat, meaning thatthis 7 per cent will not play role in transmission. But thatwill not be sufficient to reduce the R0 value. The herdimmunity number represents the point at which infec-tions are substantially less likely to turn into largeoutbreaks.

Five questions about herd immunity remain to beascertained. First, does the presence of antibodies really

NEAR Piccadilly Circus in London on June 15. Being cautious

with COVID-19 is the best strategy for survival.

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What we do not have are populations where no mitig-ation was implemented, like a lottery, knowingly lettingmany people die for the benefit of a few winners. This wasdone to 399 poor black men with syphilis in Tuskegee,Alabama, United States, starting in the 1930s. The menwere denied treatment so that the progression of thedisease could be observed. In 1994, U.S. President BillClinton apologised to the victims of this experiment, andthis led to significant oversight for all scientific studiesdone now. Today, we are unlikely to get such data any-where in the world.

The single-digit numbers of prevalence of COVID-19antibodies quoted here are a fraction of the ideal num-bers required to reach a level at which the virus can nolonger spread widely. It would be inhuman to let the virusrun rampant in a population to achieve this level ofimmunity in the natural state. Simply put, we do not havea good way to safely build up immunity.

S E R O L O G Y S U R V E Y S

The tests required to assess herd immunity are differentfrom those that help with the diagnosis of the disease. Toassess immunity, we need tests that look for antibodies inpeople’s blood, the proteins produced by the immunesystem that indicate a past infection. People who had nosymptoms would be recognised via these types of anti-body tests. However, these tests are far from perfect. And

lead to immunity (or are these antibodies really able toneutralise new invading viruses)? Second, how long willimmunity last in an individual? Third, can we get to therequired percentage at the population level? Fourth, areadequate types of tests available to realistically measurethe concept of herd immunity? Finally, will herd im-munity requirements vary in populations depending onsocio-economics, density, age and pre-existing diseases.

We do not know the answers to the first two ques-tions. On the third question, data from some of thehardest-hit cities in the world suggest that the vast ma-jority of people still remain vulnerable to the virus. Thepercentage of people with antibodies remains very low.This is true for communities that underwent lockdownssuch as New York City (20 per cent) and Wuhan (10 percent), for those that did not implement drastic measuressuch as Sweden (7 per cent) and for those that considereddelaying lockdowns hoping to achieve natural immunitysuch as London (18 per cent).

All the other hotspots have a lower prevalence ofantibodies (Madrid, 11 per cent; Boston, 10 per cent; andBarcelona, 7 per cent). On the basis of these numbers, itcan be easily said that 7-10 times as many people need toget infected to reach the desirable 60 per cent-80 per centrange of illness in the population so that there is suffi-cient immunity in populations and outbreaks will notoccur.

AT A MALL in Jakarta on June 17 during a partial easing of the lockdown after more than two months.

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ONE OF THE BIGGEST BLOWS DEALT BY THECOVID-19 pandemic, and the consequent lockdown, hasbeen to the livelihoods of the young working popula-tion, especially those in the lower income groups. Evenas countries and international agencies struggle to getan estimate of the extent of working hours reduced, thequantum of salaries trimmed and the number of jobslost, early reports by the International Labour Organ-isation (ILO) suggest that globally, the young popula-tion (representing the “lockdown generation”) hasbeen hit the hardest. The ILO, which has been monit-oring the labour market situation since the onset of theCOVID-19 pandemic, has called for large-scale andurgent policy responses, including macroeconomic in-

terventions, to mitigate long-term damage to youngpeople.

The recession precipitated by COVID-19 has beenmuch worse than the previous recessions, says the report,predicting long-term wage losses especially for those whowill be graduating from school or university this year.According to the fourth edition of the ILO Monitor“COVID-19 and the World of Work,” this section is likelyto face intense competition for fewer jobs.

Nearly 94 per cent of the world’s workers live incountries that have a record of workplace closures. Therehas been a 10.7 per cent decline in the hours of work,equivalent to 305 million full-time jobs. However, thereport states that intensive testing of people for

Saving the ‘lockdown generation’

Early monitoring reports by the International Labour Organisation

suggest that globally the young working population has borne the brunt of

the COVID-19 pandemic. BY T.K. RAJALAKSHMI

MIGRANT WORKERS near Ernakulam Town railway station on June 14. The average age of the migrant worker in Indiarendered jobless by the lockdown is between 25 and 40.

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may sometimes be wrong. Some other viruses may havesimilar features to SARS-CoV-2 (such as the first severeacute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus of 2003 orother coronaviruses). In New York, studies were conduc-ted among people going to supermarkets. In Wuhan,studies were conducted among people in hospitals. Thesedo not represent the whole population. In other cities,serology surveys are finding much smaller shares ofpeople with antibodies. Even in hotspots with decliningor flattened curves, the current waves of infection mayhave only infected the super-vulnerable, and many popu-lation groups may not yet have been exposed to the virus.Therefore, what is needed are studies that use these teststo examine a cross section of a population, giving equalopportunity for all segments of the population (rich andpoor, old and young, good and bad neighbourhoods) aswas done for AIDS. These are called serology surveys andtake time to conduct.

Variations in herd immunity will take time to study.For example, in crowded situations such as pilgrimagesites and sports events or movie theatres, one infectedperson would remain in close proximity to multiple con-tacts for extended periods of time as opposed to aninfected person passing a fellow walker on the street for afew seconds. A hospital waiting room with a mix ofpeople with diabetes and hypertension is different froman airport waiting room. Putting together the currentlyavailable data and lack of evidence on additional factors,herd immunity protection is unlikely to be a reasonableoption in the near future.

V A C C I N E F R O N T R U N N E R S

Therefore, the second and only hope is a vaccine. Manypromising vaccines are undergoing trials. There are 26front runners (https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/covid-19-vaccine-frontrunners-67382) and nu-merous others listed on the clinical trials website, which

is a repository of all trials (https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/who_table). Over 100 treatment options are also listed inthe clinical trials list.

Vaccines will require time to pass through preclinicaldevelopment (mostly in laboratories) to the human trialsphases: phase I (safety in humans), phase II (activityagainst artificial infection in humans) and phase III(safety and efficacy in natural conditions in humans).This will take at least 8-12 months if all goes well. What isseen as promising in laboratory test tubes, often the focusof media attention, may not always work in a humanbeing. Only about one out of 10 candidates from thepreclinical stage will reach final approvals. There may bediseases and medications that challenge the outcome ofsuch studies.

Making vaccines available globally is another chal-lenge, and post-marketing surveillance will still need tobe done. Vaccine hesitancy (people refusing vaccines fora variety of reasons: a disbelief in vaccines, trust in nat-ural immunity, religious reasons, conspiracy theoriesagainst vaccines) remains a challenge to many vaccineprogrammes, which has led to sporadic global outbreaksof diseases such as polio and measles. There is as yet novaccine for the coronavirus, so getting to herd immunitywithout a new and effective treatment could mean manymore infections and many more deaths.

True, there are many diseases without a vaccine orcure. But a lot is known about them. COVID-19 is a newdisease. There are about 7.5 billion people in the world.Even if the possibility of death from COVID-19 is 1 percent, that still means a large number of deaths. As in warsituations, a successful outcome is tied to our ability topredict the behaviour of the enemy, to evade the enemyand, finally, to conquer the enemy. For now, we do notknow what direction this virus is taking. Countries thatopened up after successfully controlling the first wave,including Singapore, China, Japan and South Korea,have all experienced repeat outbreaks. While we shouldrejoice in any pause in outbreaks, that should not lead tocomplacency. Therefore, being cautious with COVID-19would be the best stratsegy for survival. Being cautiousmeans universal face covering, physical distancing andminimising crowding situations. These are not magicbullets, but together, they can help. m

Shahul Hameed Ebrahim, MD, MSc, PhD, is an Amer-ican medical epidemiologist of Indian descent affiliatedwith the University of Sciences, Techniques and Techno-logy of Bamako, Mali. He has advised governments onpandemic mitigation—the 2009 influenza pandemic,the Middle East respiratory syndrome in Saudi Arabiaand the Ebola outbreaks in Congo (2012) and in WestAfrica (2014-15)—and authored over 80 scientific pa-pers, including on COVID-19.N.M. Mujeeb Rahman, MBBS, MS, is a former medicalsuperintendent of MES Medical College, Malappuram,Kerala, and director and consultant surgeon at NizarHospital, Malappuram, and is a member of an interna-tional coalition of COVID-19 researchers advancingmulti-country studies on mitigation.

THE FIRST PATIENT enrolled in Pfizer’s COVID-19

coronavirus vaccine clinical trial, at the University of

Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore in the U.S.,

receiving an injection on May 4.

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COVID-19 infection and tracing the contacts of the infec-ted, as recommended by the World Health Organisation,will reduce labour market disruptions. According to thereport, this strategy has not only helped countries utiliseinformation better and rely less on restrictive measuresbut also increased the level of public confidence which isnecessary for economic activity.

The report underscores the fact that the youngergeneration has been disproportionately affected by work-place closures. Regionally, the Americas, Europe andCentral Asia present the largest losses in terms of thenumber of hours worked. Globally, young people haveendured multiple shocks such as disruption of education,employment, training, incomes and job prospects. Ac-cording to the report, 178 million young workers globally,or four in 10 young workers, were employed in sectorsthat have now been hard hit. About 77 per cent of youngworkers were in informal jobs, as compared with 60 percent of adult workers. Technical, educational and voca-tional and on-the-job training has been severely disrup-ted by the pandemic. According to a joint survey by theILO, UNESCO and the World Bank, 98 per cent of therespondents reported complete or partial closure oftraining and vocational schools. Over two-thirds of suchtraining is provided through online mechanisms. Thelack of digital skills among teachers and students hasseverely impacted educational as well as vocational skilltraining in low-income countries. Owing to a weak infra-structure and limited access to the Internet and Informa-tion Technology (IT), only a minuscule proportion oflow-income countries had shifted to online teaching,preferring instead to listen to television or radio broad-casts or use traditional teaching methods. School clos-ures were reported to be the maximum in Africa.

A joint survey by the ILO and partners of the GlobalInitiative on Decent Jobs for Youth has reported thatsince the onset of COVID-19, one in six young people hadstopped working, and not of their own volition. Amongthe employed youth, a 23 per cent reduction in the hoursof work was reported. As many as 10 per cent of youngstudents reported that they were unlikely to completetheir studies, while half of those surveyed reported thattheir studies had been delayed.

A N X I E T Y A N D D E P R E S S I O N

More than half of young people surveyed had becomevulnerable to anxiety or depression since the onset of theCOVID-19 pandemic. One in six young people surveyedhad stopped working, and 60 per cent of women and 53young men in this survey viewed their career prospectswith uncertainty and fear. Young people who had discon-tinued working ran the highest risk of anxiety anddepression.

According to the ILO Monitor, much of the loss inworking hours is owing to the introduction of publichealth measures such as “strict confinement” and lock-downs, whereas the testing and tracing strategy was seento reduce labour market disruption. Assessing the rela-tionship between the testing and tracing strategy and the

loss of working hours, the report infers that testing andtracing was associated with a reduction in loss of workinghours by as much as 50 per cent. Effective testing andtracing provide valuable information and enable the au-thorities to take proper policy decisions on public healthmeasures and economic interventions.

The report cites the example of the Republic of SouthKorea, where an effective testing and tracing strategy ledto lower probability, duration and severity of confine-ment and lockdown which, in effect, reduced the eco-nomic toll of these measures. By generating more preciseknowledge about the pandemic, these measures alsomanaged to mitigate the impact of the pandemic onconsumption and production. As a result of reduced risksand growing public confidence, economic activity wasresumed. An efficient testing, tracing and isolatingmechanism will help companies better organise work-place activities such as work shifts and sick leave replace-ments and initiate precautionary measures whilemaintaining operational continuity.

In many countries, including India, the levels of test-ing and tracing have been abysmally low. As a result,governments have had to rely on containment and lock-down measures and work-from-home directives as astrategy to contain the coronavirus spread. The ILOMonitor records that there is increasing evidence that thecosts of testing and tracing are, in fact, only a smallfraction of the economic costs that containment entail. In

AT THE FOOD COURT in the recently reopened MarinaBay Sands shopping mall in Singapore on June 19.According to the ILO Monitor, young people employed inlow-end supply chain jobs in food and retail businessesbore the brunt of job losses owing to the pandemic.

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two countries that undertook extensive testing and tra-cing, the costs amounted to less than one per cent of theirGDP. The report suggests that widespread contact tra-cing programmes could also provide temporary employ-ment opportunities in a depressed labour marketscenario.

While recommending that high-income countrieshelp low-income countries with testing and tracing, thereport also notes that the implementation of this strategymust take into account the data privacy of workers, whichmust be protected at all times. Public support is crucialfor the effectiveness of this strategy, and information onthe COVID-19 infection should be collected only to theextent of its relevance to the occupational safety andhealth of workers. Also, this data must be “processedlawfully and fairly” so that it is not used to discriminateagainst workers or jeopardise their employmentprospects.

The COVID-19 pandemic struck at a time when em-ployment opportunities for the youth (15-24 years) werealready stagnant. The global youth unemployment ratebefore the global economic crisis of 2007 was at 12.3 percent, which was less than the unemployment rate of 13.6per cent in 2019. In 2019, 75 per cent or more of youngworkers were engaged in informal jobs in South Asia andAfrica, rendering them vulnerable to economic crises andshocks. The COVID-19 pandemic has only worsened thissituation in terms of overall job losses, collapse of busi-nesses and failure of startups, not to mention labour rights.Before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, labour un-der-utilisation rates were already high among women, atrend which the ILO Monitor says is likely to worsen.Women employed in the garment industries in low- andmiddle- income countries have been the most affected .

Examining data from 64 countries, the report foundthat prior to the crisis, the hourly earnings for prime-ageworkers was, on an average, 71 per cent more than whattheir younger counterparts earned. Compared to prime-age workers, younger people were mostly employed inlow-paid sectors that had been hit hard by COVID-19.These sectors included food, accommodation and retailand wholesale businesses. As supply chains of manufac-turing had been disrupted by the pandemic, youngpeople who were employed in low-end supply chain jobsbore the brunt of the job losses, with their meagre savingsrendering them even more vulnerable to economicshocks.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has beenreported as high in wholesale and retail trade; repair ofmotorcycles and vehicles; manufacturing; real estate,business and administrative activities and accommoda-tion and food services; medium-high in transport, stor-age and communication, art, entertainment andrecreation sectors; medium in mining and quarrying,financial, insurance services and construction; and low tomedium in agriculture, forestry and fishing. The impacton economic output has been low in economic sectorslike education, compulsory social security, health, utilit-ies, public administration and defence. For young wo-men, the double burden of paid and unpaid work hasintensified with the shutting down of schools and child-care centres.

Nearly 70 per cent of international migrants areaged under 30 and have been unable to get re-em-ployed or reach their home destinations. In India, too,the average age of the migrant worker rendered joblessby the blanket lockdown is between 25 and 40. Tilldate, there has been no official estimate of the joblosses by the Indian government. India is the onlycountry where migrant workers were compelled toleave for their homes in the villages, undertaking ardu-ous journeys across the country on foot after theblanket lockdown was announced.

S U G G E S T E D I N T E R V E N T I O N S

Policy interventions including macroeconomic strategiesare desperately needed, says the report. Some of theseinterventions include employment-intensive pro-grammes targeting the young; social protection and sup-port for educational skills and development, andimproving the rights of workers and their workplaceconditions.

One positive intervention suggested by the report isthe mitigation of long-term job losses for young people byadopting the European Union’s counter-cyclical policy ofa Youth Guarantee Scheme targeted at employment re-covery. As most countries struggle with economic recov-ery, the negative effects of job losses on the unemployedwill be mitigated to an extent in countries that have astrong tradition of welfarism and social protection. Theeffects are likely to be more adverse in countries whereinfrastructure is highly privatised and formal employ-ment is negligible. m

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COVER STORY

INDIA’S CENTRAL GOVERNMENT WAS FACEDwith a fiscal crisis even prior to the COVID-19-inducedlockdown. Provisional estimates from the ControllerGeneral of Accounts of actual revenues collected in finan-cial year 2019-20, or the fiscal year that ended March2020, point to an erosion of revenue receipts of criticalproportions. As compared with the original budget es-timate of Rs.19.6 lakh crore, and a revised estimate (orlate-in-year projection) of a lower Rs.18.5 lakh crore,actual revenue receipts are currently placed at just

Rs.16.8 lakh crore. This implies that the actual figure ismore than 14 per cent short of projections in the firstBudget of the second Narendra Modi government and 9per cent short of the projection (revised estimates) forfinancial year 2019-20 in the Budget presented by Fin-ance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman this February.

The revenue shortfall has meant that the Centre’srevenue receipts grew by just 2.9 per cent in 2019-20when compared with the previous fiscal year, which im-plies that real revenues (adjusted for inflation) have in

A neoliberal blowThe fiscal crisis that the Central government is trapped in cannot be

blamed on the COVID-19 pandemic, since the revenue shortfall is

primarily a result of the government’s neoliberal measures such as

business-friendly taxation stance and the GST regime. BY C.P. CHANDRASEKHAR

UNION Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman chairs theGST Council meeting through videoconferencing from heroffice in New Delhi on June 12.P

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fact fallen. This deceleration in revenue growth occurredin a year for which only about a week fell in the lockdownperiod, so the serious revenue shortfall is a pre-COVID-19 phenomenon and cannot be blamed on thesudden stop induced by the pandemic.

Given the government’s obsession with realising un-realistic fiscal deficit targets, this compression of revenuegrowth has meant that the Centre’s dependence on ex-ceptional transfers from the Reserve Bank of India andon receipts from the sale of public assets to meet evenroutine expenditures has increased significantly. Whenthese “exceptional” sources of receipts fall short of expect-ations, as happened in 2019-20, meeting even unambi-tious expenditure plans requires window-dressingbudgetary figures. On the ground, capital expendituresand welfare expenditures, including on health, wouldhave fallen even relative to woefully inadequate budget-ary allocations.

S H R I N K I N G T A X R E V E N U E

Underlying this fiscal mess is the failure to mobiliseadequate resources through taxation at a time when theneed is for substantial additional resource mobilisation.A casualty of the business-friendly taxation stance of theNational Democratic Alliance government has been asubstantial loss of buoyancy with respect to direct taxgeneration, with tax revenues falling despite the low

levels of the Centre’s direct tax to GDP ratio and risingincome inequality in the country. Net direct tax collec-tion, or gross direct taxes adjusted for tax refunds, de-clined in nominal terms from Rs.11.36 lakh crore in2018-19 to Rs.10.49 lakh crore in 2019-20, or by close to8 per cent. The factor dominantly responsible for thisdecline was the decision, in the midst of a demand reces-sion, to seek to stimulate the economy with corporate taxconcessions announced in September 2019.

That “stimulus” took the form of a huge reduction inthe corporate tax rate from 30 per cent (or an effectiverate of 34.61 per cent after surcharge and cess) to 22 percent (or an effective rate of 25.17 per cent) for domesticcompanies that do not avail of tax incentives or exemp-tions. New domestic manufacturing companies incor-porated on or after October 1, 2019, will pay corporationtax at the reduced rate of 15 per cent (which is an effectiverate of 17.01 per cent) so long as they do not avail them-selves of incentives and exemptions. And the minimumalternative tax (MAT), applicable to companies that doavail themselves of incentives and exemptions, has beenreduced from 18.5 per cent to 15 per cent. This is a hugebonanza, which dominantly explains the contraction indirect tax revenues.

The second contributor to the compression in taxrevenues is the limited buoyancy of indirect tax revenuesgarnered through the Centre from the goods and servicestax (GST) imposts. In fact, in four of 12 months, Centralrevenues from GST in 2019-20 were lower than the sumcollected during the corresponding months of the previ-ous year. Overall, the Centre’s revenues from GST rose by8 per cent in 2019-20, despite the lower-than-projectedbase level in 2018-19. To recall, the government hadpromised States a 14 per cent annual increase in revenuesfrom a base-level GST estimate, failing which they wereto be compensated with collections from a special cess.This suggests that, at the very least, the Centre expected a14 per cent growth in GST revenue. The 8 per centrealised in 2019-20 was, therefore, way short of expectedrevenue growth. The GST regime was launched in July2017. So the argument that teething troubles and initialglitches in the implementation of a new “game-changing”measure are responsible for shortfalls in GST receipts nolonger applies. Clearly, the GST regime has proved afailure, even while it has substantially curtailed the lim-ited space that was available for States to increase theirown tax revenues, in pursuit of an unrealisable “onenation, one tax” goal. That failure is now haunting theCentre as well, besides severely damaging the fiscal posi-tion of State governments.

The poor performance with respect to corporate taxrevenue generation and generation of revenues fromGST, which is a second-best adaptation of value- addedtaxation within a federal polity, is a fallout of the shift to aneoliberal policy regime. A defining feature of such a

F RONT L I N E . J U L Y 3 , 2 0 2 0 26

regime is a lenient corporate tax structure, ostensiblyaimed at incentivising private investors and unleashingthe animal spirits they are presumed to possess. That alsoexplains why when a demand recession is dampeninginvestment and curtailing growth, the government de-cides not to spend to revive demand but hands overmoney to the corporate sector with tax concessions,which firms will not divert to investment in depressedmarket conditions.

The GST, too, is a neoliberal measure. The UnitedStates had a role to play in the spread of value-added tax(VAT). The [Carl] Shoup mission to occupied Japanafter the Second World War argued for its introduction.Subsequently the United States Agency for InternationalDevelopment promoted VAT and sought to popularisethe system through financial and technical assistance todeveloping countries. All through that period, the U.S.government was unwilling to implement the system athome. Later the World Bank and the International Mon-etary Fund played a role in pushing the system. Morethan half the countries that introduced VAT in the 20years starting 1991 did so on the basis of advice andassistance from the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department.Thus, the spread of VAT does seem to have a lot to do withthe transition to market fundamentalism and market-friendly polices starting in the 1980s.

This is understandable. A neoliberal strategy sub-stantially reduces taxes on trade. It also requires in-centivising the private sector with light-touch taxation ofhigher incomes and corporate and financial profits. Italso emphasises the need for financial consolidation andreining in public debt. All of this necessitates reliance onforms of indirect taxation other than taxes on trade to

sustain expenditure, however much curtailed. Thenature of VAT helps in such a context. As an indirect tax,VAT is not directly levied on the buyer and the legalliability is that of the producer, so it is less visible.Moreover, since VAT is imposed at each stage of theproduction process, it gets incorporated into costs so thatthe final consumer would only note the tax paid on valueadded at the final stage. This helps to legitimise a shiftfrom progressive direct taxation, especially corporateand income taxes, to regressive indirect taxation. All ofthis favours a shift to VAT under neoliberal regimes,which partly explains its history. It implicitly serves asone more instrument to redistribute incomes from ordin-ary citizens, including the poor, to the very rich. Theproblem in India, however, is that the GST version ofVAT does not work well.

Once these neoliberal shifts on the taxation frontbegin to adversely affect government revenues, within aneoliberal fiscal framework of caps on fiscal deficits orspending financed with borrowing, a corollary is sluggishgovernment spending and lower growth. This had begunto manifest itself in India since 2016, with growth in year2019-20 (pre-COVID-19 lockdown) now estimated at4.2 per cent, the lowest since the new GDP series waslaunched. That sets up a feedback loop, with low reven-ues which curtail government spending, reducinggrowth, which then further reduce revenues for any givenlevel of fiscal buoyancy, or responsiveness of revenuesgrowth to income growth. Revenue growth shrinks bothbecause neoliberal fiscal reform reduces fiscal buoyancyand because growth itself begins to fall.

These trends have other external effects. Neoliberalgovernments seek to address sluggish revenue growthwith the short-sighted measure of selling profitable,revenue-earning public assets to obtain what are eu-phemistically termed “non-debt creating capital re-ceipts”. As the fiscal crisis intensifies, the dependenceon privatisation receipts increases. The Central gov-ernment pursued that trajectory successfully in 2018-19 when, as compared with budgeted receipts ofRs.80,000 crore from privatisation, the governmentactually managed to mobilise close to Rs.95,000 crore,hawking profitable assets and riding on a buoyantstock market. But as growth falters, so does investorenthusiasm for public equity or the firms themselves.In 2019-20, the government had hiked the budgetedreceipts from privatisation to Rs.1,05,000 crore. But asthe economy slowed it managed to mobilise only a littlemore than Rs.50,000 crore.

The picture is now clear. As the government gave upits role as development leader within a neoliberal growthstrategy, growth rode on a credit bubble. With thatbubble bursting and precipitating non-performing assetsin the banking system, the credit-led boom gave way to aslowdown. The neoliberal fiscal response curtailed gov-ernment revenues and expenditures further. Growth fellsharply and so did revenues. In the event, the govern-ment is trapped in a fiscal crisis and the economy is inlow-level disequilibrium. m

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COVER STORY

WHEN STRINGENT LOCKDOWN MEASURESwere announced in March to contain the pandemic,children living on the streets of Delhi took shelter inparks, under flyovers, around railway stations, and inslums. Some were allowed to sleep indoors by their em-ployers. Most slept on half-empty stomachs.

Many children were also seen walking several kilo-metres with families. Some of them, it was feared, weretaken along by child traffickers. In the absence of anyagency—government or non-governmental—to keep acheck on who went where, there was no way to trackchildren's safety.

As the lockdown began to be lifted, children wereback at the street signals, trying to sell pens and otherwares. Desperate for money, one of them asked an activ-ist who was out to make an assessment, “Where have allthe people gone?” They were also confused about whypeople were not rolling down their car windows anymore. The activist explained the pandemic situation tothem and told them they would not be able to make aliving selling pens any more. “But they were so desperatefor money, I am worried they are easy prey for traffickingor sex work. Unless a concerted effort is made to reachout to them and take care of them, we might be staring ata very worrying situation,” said the activist on conditionof anonymity. Some of the children bore marks of injurieswhich had been worsened in the absence of first aid.

The administration’s law and order priority has com-pletely changed with the entire police force being diver-ted to the management of coronavirus cases. Even if onewanted to take a case of wrongdoing to the police, theywere unlikely to attend to it, said Sanjay Gupta of Chetna,a non-governmental organisation (NGO) for street chil-dren. “Most of the labourers have left the cities, therebycreating a rise in demand for labour. Children would beeasily available in slums as a replacement, and because oftheir poor bargaining capacity, would be hired as cheapor free labour. It could make them vulnerable to abuseand could lead to the creation of a new kind of modernslavery,” he told Frontline.

The Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA), another NGO,filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court seeking protec-tion for children who were at risk of becoming “hapless

victims of human trafficking, in the wake of, and as anaftermath of, the COVID-19 pandemic and the resultantextended lockdown”. The BBA urged the government toframe a policy to prevent trafficking and ensure rescueand rehabilitation of affected children and said childtrafficking resulted in child labour and sex trafficking.The number of street children pushed into begging islikely to spike. Considering the deepening agrarian crisis,child labour is likely to be sourced from agriculturalhouseholds as well. The BBA has received informationfrom multiple sources that traffickers have started ap-proaching potential victims and their families and haveeven started handing out advance payments for thechildren.

On June 8, a three-judge bench comprising ChiefJustice of India S.A. Bobde and Justices A.S. Bopannaand Hrishikesh Roy issued notices to the Central andState governments and sought guidelines from the Na-tional Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) to pre-vent child trafficking. The senior lawyer H.S. Phoolkaand Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said in court that

Burden on childrenWith the closure of schools, relaxation in labour laws and migration of

adult workers, child labour and exploitation of children are expected to

rise exponentially. BY DIVYA TRIVEDI

A CHILD WORKER at a motorbike-cleaning shop inNew Delhi, on June 12.

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they would work together and come up with suggestionson how to curb child labour.

Ashok Kumar, convener at Campaign Against ChildLabour (CACL), conducted a rapid assessment by inter-viewing 121 children from Chandauli in Uttar Pradesh.“Of these, 112 were in the labour net in home-based work,brick kilns and the garment industry. Forty-one per centof them were getting an honorarium or maintenance andonly four of them received food support from the employ-ers. In the absence of any reporting mechanism, thechildren are especially vulnerable at this time. A newgroup of children are now in begging and petty delivery-based jobs,” he said.

The International Labour Organisation andUNICEF had warned that millions of children would beforced into child labour as family incomes dropped glob-ally. The pandemic could reverse the gains made in thepast 20 years to decrease child labour by 94 million, theysaid.

In April, child rights organisations Child Fund India,Plan India, Save the Children India, SOS Children’s Vil-lages of India, Terre des hommes and World Vision Indiaasked the government to provide uninterrupted access tocritical services for the most vulnerable children andtheir families. “To overcome the immediate and long-term impact of the crisis, the government should ensure,on a priority basis, access to critical services such ashealth care, nutrition, food security, mental health andpsychosocial support, protection against violence andensure social protection and child-sensitive cash transferinitiatives to the most vulnerable children and poorestfamilies,” they said.

Figures released by Childline 1098, the nationalhelpline for children in India, gave an idea of the scale ofthe problem. Within the first week of the lockdown, itreceived 92,000 SOS calls concerning children in dis-tress. Eleven per cent of the calls related to physicalhealth, 8 per cent to child labour, 8 per cent to missingand runaway children and 5 per cent to homelessness. Itwas also called upon to intervene to prevent abuse, assistchildren in distress and provide emotional support. Intwo months, it answered over 10 lakh calls and carriedout over 50,000 interventions. From March to April, itprevented 898 child marriages from the 6,04,274 calls itreceived concerning the problem.

Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi, founder of BBA,made a statement requesting two months’ amnesty fromprosecution for traffickers and employers of child labourso that they could come forward and release children tothe care of the State. Activists felt that such a move wouldpotentially let human rights abusers off the hook andlead to a further increase in cases of trafficking which theState would not be able to control.

According to Census 2011, the total number of childlabourers in India in the 5-14 age group was 10.11 million.Of these, 4.35 million were categorised as main workersand 5.76 million as marginal workers. Sixty-two per centof child labourers were concentrated in agriculture,forestry and fishing, followed by industries and services.

Children were also involved in “worst forms of childlabour” including forced labour, bonded labour, prostitu-tion, pornography and trafficking of drugs. The totalnumber of adolescent labourers (15-18 years) was 22.87million.

D I L U T I O N O F L A B O U R L A W S

Child Rights and You (CRY) cautioned that the demandfor children in the agricultural sector, home-based enter-prises and small-scale businesses might increase in thefollowing days. Instead of providing protection from ex-ploitation to adult and child workers, 11 States maderelaxations to the Factories Act, 1948, during the lock-down—Rajasthan, Gujarat, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh,Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pra-desh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Assam. Many ofthese States have a high burden of child and adolescentlabour, according to CRY.

The relaxations include extension of a factory work-er’s daily shift from eight to 12 hours a day, six-day week,limited time for rest, reduction in inspections and monit-oring by authorities, restricted grievance redress mech-anisms and limited collective bargaining through labourunions. The International Labour Organisation (ILO)expressed concern as these relaxations violate ILO Con-vention 144, which calls for tripartite consultationsamong government, employers and workers.

While this was bad news for all labour, it might lead toan increase in hazardous work, forced labour, debt bond-age and human trafficking for children and adolescentsworking in factories and industrial setups, said RahulSapkal, Assistant Professor, Centre for Labour Studies,Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS). Adolescentworkers would be especially vulnerable in the absence ofadult labourers who had left for their home towns andvillages. Many of them might be forced to work for longhours, in hazardous and often abusive environments, forlittle or no pay, and often far from home.

Rahul Sapkal said: “The changes in labour laws willweaken enforcement mechanism, which may further in-crease child labour amid this crisis. The child labourlegislation needs to be revised as many aspects of climatechange and hazardous industries are not yet incorpor-ated into it. This revision must include revisiting thedefinition of what constitutes hazardous industries,keeping the developing capacities of children in mind.”

Speaking on a webinar organised by CRY, PriyankKanoongo, chairperson of NCPCR (National Commis-sion for Protection of Child Rights), said that any organ-ised sector industry that depended on the unorganisedsector, such as the automobile manufacturing industry,undoubtedly employed child labour, if not directly thenindirectly. He said unless and until the principal manu-facturer was held accountable for the child labour em-ployed in the unorganised sector linked to their industry,the chain of child labour “from Seelampur to Bawana toMoradabad” could not be abolished.

He stressed the need for civil society organisations topress for the registration of first information reports

(FIRs) against employers. According to him, a family-centric approach would have to be adopted to deal withthe problem of child labour as “a child-centric approachcould only work in countries that had institutional sup-port systems in place”. He suggested that civil societyshould use existing laws efficiently to address the issue ofchild labour. “We need to ensure that we are using theexisting laws, not sitting and feeling helpless. The num-ber of FIRs filed so far is extremely poor compared withthe large number of child labourers in the country.Therefore, it is everyone’s responsibility to report and fileFIRs on child labour,” he said.

C L O S U R E O F S C H O O L S

Sending children to school is considered an importantpreventive measure against child labour. But as schoolsremain closed for the foreseeable future, children areforced to stay at home, which increases their risk ofgetting pushed into the labour market. Given the loss ofincome for families, it is likely that they will be engaged inhome-based or agricultural work. Moreover, out-of-school children are at greater risk of getting caught up intrafficking, begging, debt bondage and other indecentand exploitative work conditions.

While efforts were made to continue education forchildren through remote teaching options such as onlineclasses, radio, television and so on, most children frompoor families do not have access to these media. “Only 8per cent children have access to computer and internet.24 per cent have smartphones,” said Protiva Kundu,Additional Coordinator- Research, Centre for Budgetand Governance Accountability (CBGA). It is critical toensure a continuation of education for all children, espe-

cially the ones from marginalised households at thisjuncture. Protiva Kundu that the situation would have agreater effect on girls and disabled children. Even ifschools reopen, parents would not have the money to payfees and would instead require the child to support thefamily.

She said that there was an urgent need to track thechildren who had gone back to their villages and connectthem to community-level child protection mechanisms,including village child protection committees. Panchay-ati Raj institutions and school management committeesmust track every child in their village and ensure theirsafety, especially from trafficking, underage marriageand forced labour. “The government should expand thecoverage of the National Child Labour Project in alldistricts which is currently operating in 323 districts andspend on survey of identifying child labour. Also, it ishigh time to address dropouts in schools, and the govern-ment should expand RTE [Right to Education] Act up toclass 12,” Protiva Kundu said.

Puja Marwaha, Chief Executive Officer, CRY, saidthat sometimes educated people also justified employingchild labour on the grounds that the child got some food,shelter or hourly education on the side. But the space ofchild labour itself was damaging and harmful for all ofour future generations, she said. “I truly believe that onlywhen all Indians start believing that children below 18years should not have to work because they are poor or forany other reason will we actually start changing thesituation. The advent of COVID-19 seems to be onemajor contributing factor in the undoing of all effortsmade so far in reducing and ending child labour,” shesaid. m

A BOY in the western suburbs of Mumbai selling plastic bags to make ends meet, on June 12.

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COVER STORY

D E L H I

DELHI’S COVID-19 OUTBREAK WENT FROMbad to worse in June, setting off alarm bells in the capit-al’s medical and political circles. Failure on several fronts,especially with regard to the abysmally low levels oftesting, has led to the situation getting out of control. ByChief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s own admission, casesare expected to spike to 5.5 lakh by end July, requiring80,000 beds. By mid June, more than half the availablebeds and ventilators in Delhi’s hospitals were alreadyoccupied.

The absence of any mechanism to trace and isolateinfected persons and their primary contacts resulted in aspurt in cases that soon became unmanageable. Whilemigrants in Delhi who left for their hometowns were saidto have been responsible for a rise in cases in severalStates, the Delhi government itself showed no inclinationto monitor or quarantine people entering the capital. Bymid June, it became impossible to ignore the risingnumber of infections and deaths, as families of patientswere seen struggling between hospitals for beds and

In a mess A sudden surge in the number of COVID-19 cases in June, the low

levels of testing and the controversy over the non-availability of beds

expose the ineptness of the Delhi government’s handling of the

pandemic. B Y D I V Y A T R I V E D I

OUTSIDE Punjabi Bagh cremation ground, New Delhi’s first COVID-19-only burning ghat, on June 14.

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treatment. Bodies piled up in mortuaries, while cremat-oriums and burial grounds were either not available ornon-functional.

News reports pointed to a mismatch in COVID-19fatality rates put out by the Delhi government and thehospitals, causing Kejriwal much embarrassment. How-ever, instead of correcting their data, the Delhi govern-ment took the shocking step of reducing the levels oftesting. Bodies brought to hospitals were no longer to betested for COVID-19 even if the persons had been foundto be symptomatic. This decision not only violated WorldHealth Organisation (WHO) and Indian Council ofMedical Research (ICMR) guidelines but also exposedthose handling the dead to the risk of contracting thevirus. Thereafter, laboratories were told not to testasymptomatic persons regardless of their exposure to therisk of the virus. These orders led to a drastic fall in thenumber of tests conducted in June.

Senior Congress leader Manish Tewari said he had torun from pillar to post to get his wife tested on the writtenadvice of her doctors. “Despite growing up on a hospitalcampus and knowing every medical professional of con-sequence, I had to move heaven and earth just to get mywife tested. Fortunately, she tested negative,” Tewaritweeted, adding: “Delhi’s health systems are broken.”

On June 9, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodiaclaimed that there was no community spread becauseCentral government officials had said so in a meetingwith the State Disaster Management Authority. Com-munity transmission is declared when the source of theinfection in an infected person cannot be determined.The same day, Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain saidthat in 50 per cent of cases the source of infection wasunknown. He added that only the Centre could declarewhether there was community transmission or not as itwas a “technical term”.

Delhi’s Lieutenant Governor, Anil Baijal, overturnedKejriwal’s decision to not provide healthcare in govern-ment-run hospitals to patients from outside Delhi anddid so on the grounds that the decision went against theconstitutional guarantee of right to life and healthcare.

The National Human Rights Commission issued no-tices to the Delhi government and the Union HealthMinistry on the complaint of Congress leader AjayMaken, who pointed out that around 70 per cent ofdedicated beds in Delhi were lying vacant even as pa-tients were struggling to avail themselves of beds. Hestated in the complaint that Delhi has a robust hospitalinfrastructure of 57,194 beds, along with a significantpresence of Central government hospitals, but only 12 percent of Delhi government’s, 8 per cent of the Centralgovernment’s and 7 per cent of private hospital beds wereoccupied and being used to treat COVID-19 patients.

J U D I C I A R Y I N T E R V E N E S

The Delhi High Court came down heavily on the Delhigovernment’s handling of the pandemic. “It appears thatDelhi is fast heading towards becoming the coronaviruscapital of the country, an epithet the city can well do

without. We are of the opinion that it is the need of thehour that all the private hospitals in Delhi who areequipped with a lab to undertake COVID-19 test bepermitted to do the testing without any further loss oftime. This is all the more imperative as the Delhi govern-ment has directed all private hospitals in Delhi to reserve20 per cent beds for admitting COVID-19 patients,” thecourt said on June 6.

On June 12, the Supreme Court pulled up the Delhigovernment for its low testing rates and mishandling ofCOVID-19 patients and bodies of those who had died. Itslammed the government for a “horrendous” situationwhere COVID patients were being treated “worse thananimals”, and asked Kejriwal to explain why testing haddropped from 7,000 to 5,000 when Chennai and Mum-bai had increased their testing from 16,000 to 17,000.

On June 14, Home Minister Amit Shah met Kejriwaland promised initiatives to prop up Delhi’s fight againstthe coronavirus, including 500 railway coaches with8,000 beds, a supply of oxygen cylinders, ventilators andpulse oximeters. A committee would be formed toprovide 60 per cent of the beds reserved for coronaviruspatients in private hospitals at a low rate and testingwould be doubled immediately, Amit Shah said. After sixdays, the tests would be increased by three times, headded. To improve contact mapping in containmentzones, a comprehensive health survey of every personwould be done from door to door. Currently there are 242containment zones in Delhi.

“Extremely productive meeting between Delhi govtand Central govt. Many key decisions taken. We will fightagainst corona together,” tweeted Kejriwal.

With the number of cases touching 41,182 and thenumber of deaths at 1,328 by June 15, Kejriwal quelledrumours and clarified that there would be no extension ofthe lockdown, essentially placing the burden of safety onindividuals. m

MEDICAL staff with patients outside the Special COVID

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M A H A R A S H T R A

“IT IS TIME TO UNDERSTAND AND ACCEPTthat COVID is here to stay for some time. We cannotsay how long, but we will have to learn new ways to livewith it.” This is what a Mumbai municipal official saidon condition of anonymity. “Numbers will increaseespecially after the lockdown is called off becausepeople will mingle more. And we have increased test-ing so more cases will be discovered,” he said.

The city was doing relatively well, he said, pointingout that the March and April predictions for COVIDcases were higher than the actual numbers. He drewattention to a comparison between the numbers ofpositive cases, recoveries and deaths. Until June 13,Maharashtra had 1,01,141 positive cases. Of this,47,796 persons have recovered and 3,717 died.

It took 95 days for the number of cases to touch onelakh after the first case in the State was discovered onMarch 9. Officials say that Maharashtra’s corona curvegoing up slowly can be attributed to the precautionstaken by the government. They compare it with NewYork where cases shot up to one lakh in 22 days, theUnited Kingdom where it went up in 60 days, and Italyand Spain where it crossed the one-lakh mark in 63days.

Maharashtra’s recovery rate is 47.03 per cent andthe mortality rate is 3.07 per cent. This high recoveryrate has encouraged the thinking that there must bemany people who have (or had) the virus and recoverwithout even knowing they had it. So, logic points to anew direction for action—focus on reducing the fatal-ities by caring for the severely infected and therebybringing the situation under control.

“Our practice has been to trace, test and isolateand we still continue to do that, but there’s a changenow. We will be focussing on preventing deaths ofthose who have been severely affected by the virus. So,those with breathing difficulties should be the onesthat get into hospitals. Those with symptoms need to

self-quarantine and be educated on when and if tomove to hospital. This will free up beds. And make thebest use of medical personnel. We’ll control it throughgood, accessible hospital care,” says the same official.

Accessible medical care has been the stumblingblock so far. On the one hand, private hospitals havebeen brought into the COVID treatment system,thereby enhancing medical facilities. The Brihanmum-bai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has said that ifprivate hospitals do not fully turn into COVID carefacilities, they need to reserve 80 per cent of their bedsfor COVID patients. However, according to BMC

Figures in disputeThe Maharashtra government claims an impressive recovery rate, but

the opposition says confusion prevails even over the number of deaths.

B Y L Y L A B A V A D A M

sources many are yet to act on this. There is also aceiling on charges for these beds.

On the other hand, there is a shortage of beds,patients dying because a doctor could not see them orbecause they were denied entry into hospitals, or be-cause of a lack of oxygen support systems and of ventil-ators. There is also a shortage of ward boys, kitchenstaff, cleaners and even nurses. Many hospitals areworking with only 40 per cent of their normal staffcomplement.

There seem to be coordination issues between privatehospitals and the BMC. The State is totally focussed onsetting up jumbo facilities over which it has completecontrol. As many as 8,000 new beds in these facilities willadd to the 7,000 beds in public hospitals and 23,000 inprivate ones currently in use for COVID cases.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been carryingout its own independent research and says that an addi-tional 15,000 beds can be requisitioned from privatehospitals and there is no need to build jumbo isolationcentres.

Another complication confounds this forest of num-bers. The BMC has been accused of fudging the numberof COVID deaths. Former Chief Minister Devendra Fad-navis of the BJP wrote to Chief Minister Uddhav Thack-eray saying 950 deaths had been covered up and notshown as COVID deaths. An investigation is on.

Meanwhile, from the point of view of the averagecitizen, there is a need to know when things will return tonormal. While the municipal source reiterates the prob-

lem of unpredictability of the virus, Chief Secretary AjoyMehta says that infection rate has plateaued in the city.

But with the country opening up and travel beingallowed it is possible that Mumbai’s plateau may becomea rising arc again. This has already been proved in re-verse. Those that left Mumbai for their home States tookthe virus back with them. Dadra and Nagar Haveli,Mizoram, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkimwere COVID-free until their residents returned home.

D E B A T E O N L O C K D O W N

This has revived the lockdown debate again. Said a bur-eaucrat in Mantralaya: “There are two views on the lock-down. One is that we created a false sense of hope andpeople expected that at the end of the lockdown the viruswould have vanished. Frankly I doubt that anyone was sofoolish to think the virus would disappear. The secondview is that when it opened up the virus would get usanyway so what was the point of the restrictions. Criticsquote the Swedish government’s chosen path, but that isnot relevant to the Indian situation.”

“The lockdown gave people an understanding of thegravity of the situation. It also slowed down the spread ofthe virus. There are models that prove this. A group ofscientists [Indian Scientists’ Response to COVID-19]has estimated that the lockdown has prevented 8,000 to32,000 fatalities. NITI Aayog estimates that 37,000 to2,10,000 deaths were prevented,” the official said. IndianScientists’ Response to COVID-19 is a voluntary group ofconcerned scientist citizens who have come together todiscuss the rapidly evolving situation and the need forscience communication.

The lifting of restrictions in Mumbai has highlightedthe city’s dependence on workers from the rest of India.The very people the city was eager to transport back arethe ones who are desperately required now.

Taxis which are allowed to ply are scarce becausemost of the drivers have gone back. Shops can stay openlonger but do not because of a shortage of staff. The samegoes for house help, vegetable and newspaper vendors,and so on.

With no earnings and no way to pay their rents duringthe lockdown the daily wagers had to leave. The bureau-crat says that if States had been given some warning ofthe lockdown “lives of people would not have been im-pacted in the way they were. It was cruel to declare alockdown within hours.” m

A NEW isolation centre at St. Xavier’s College in Mumbai onJune 17. P

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U T T A R P R A D E S H

ON JUNE 11, IN A VIDEOCONFERENCE WITHthe Chief Secretaries and Health Secretaries of the States,Union Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba warned that fiveStates would face a critical shortfall in ICU beds andventilators between June and August in the battle againstCOVID-19. In other words, these States would be foundwanting in providing care to those who fell seriously illwith the deadly infection. Uttar Pradesh was one of theStates identified by the Cabinet Secretary, along withMaharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Delhi and Gujarat. All theseStates were marked as having extreme limitations inrelation to hospital inventory even as the confirmation

rate (percentage of samples tested returning positive)recorded a steady surge. Gauba’s presentation furtherpointed out that the national Case Fatality Rate (CFR)remained stable. Sixty nine districts spread across 13States had CFRs around 5 per cent, rated as very high. Ofthese districts, 11 are in Uttar Pradesh.

Even as the country’s top bureaucrat flagged theseconcerns and practically asked the five States to buck up

High on hypeThe Yogi Adityanath government steps up its self-promotion campaign

rather than mobilise resources to defeat the virus.

B Y V E N K I T E S H R A M A K R I S H N A N

CHIEF MINISTER Yogi Adityanath interacts with doctorsand health staff during his visit at a hospital in Azamgarhon June 8.

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and ensure greater focus on combating the pandemic,the Yogi Adityanath-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)government in Uttar Pradesh was relentlessly pursu-ing its self-congratulatory publicity drives. A day afterthis warning there was much propaganda in the mediaand the government publicity machinery on how theChief Minister had become a messiah of the children ofmigrant labourers as he had sanctioned a dole ofRs.1,000 to boys and Rs.1,200 to girls. The huge rise infatalities in the first 10 days of June was explained awayas something caused by the people’s casual attitudetowards Unlock 1.0. Throughout the first 10 days ofJune the spurt in new COVID-19 cases was at a steady 5per cent, as high as in Delhi and Tamil Nadu, rated asthe worst affected States.

A number of senior officials in various departmentsof the State government, including Health and HomeAffairs, point out in private that one of the major reasonsfor the spurt was the colossal lack of basic health infra-structure across the State. But in their public statements,government representatives, including bureaucrats,highlight the casual public reaction to Unlock 1.0.

A case in point is the statement of Dr Ashok Shukla,Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of Kanpur. Talking to themedia, he pointed out that while there had been two casepeaks in the past for diverse reasons, the surge in earlyJune was basically because of the unrestricted movementof people following the easing of the lockdown. During astringent lockdown it was easier to trace and track theinfection. Now it was becoming extremely difficult. Dur-ing a lockdown there was limited movement of peopleand people remembered every single place they had vis-ited and person they had come in contact with. But nowthey were unable to tell everything. In a recent instance,one person infected as many as 80 people. Officials ofNoida and Ghaziabad districts have also blamed thespurt in infection in their districts to the movement ofpeople from Delhi. State Surveillance Officer VikasenduAgarwal said that in these districts the spillover fromDelhi was adding to the case load.

However, there was a silver lining in the COVID-19data tabulated in early June, in the form of one aspect ofnew infections. This showed that the share of inter-Statemigrants in cases reported “since the beginning of Junehad come down to roughly 26 per cent”. In May, when thereverse migration of labourers from the big cities to rural

Uttar Pradesh was at its peak, their contribution to thenew cases was above 50 per cent. But another nuance ofthe June data causes serious concern. Out of the 321deaths reported in the State between June 1 and 10,approximately 65 per cent—as many as 209—were ofpeople in the 21-60 age group, many of them withoutknown comorbidities. This flies in the face of the widelyaccepted assessment that healthy youngsters are at lesserrisk from COVID-19 than elderly people with long-standing morbidities. Around 31.5 per cent of the deaths,101, were of persons above the age of 60, while 3.5 percent, 11, were of persons under 20 years.

According to a senior State Health Ministry official,the exact percentage of the deceased without comorbidit-ies in the age group of 21 to 60 has not been quantifiedand unless it is done properly it cannot be gauged how farthe early June experience of Uttar Pradesh repudiates thegenerally held view on the connection betweenCOVID-19 and comorbidities. As one who has consist-ently flagged the long-standing deficiencies in Uttar Pra-desh’s public health system, he is not sure whether thecurrent government will take up an evaluation earnestly.“At the moment, there is a huge publicity drive promot-ing the so-called dynamism with which the the self-purportedly ascetic Chief Minister is battling theCOVID-19 crisis even as cases and fatalities keep mount-ing. After all is said and done, herd immunity will arrive,give or take a few thousand deaths, seems to be theprimary attitude of the self-promotion team in the ChiefMinister’s Office in Lucknow,” the veteran officer toldFrontline. m

A CONDUCTOR issues tickets to passengers inside aUttar Pradesh Roadways bus after it resumed services, inMathura on June 1.

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P U N J A B

AT A TIME WHEN MOST STATES ARE REELINGunder the aftermath of the large-scale migration of urbanlabour, Punjab is faced with the challenge of ‘reversemigration’. The labourers who had migrated back hometo Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh following the abruptannouncement of the lockdown in March-end, and en-dured untold hardships to reach their home towns andvillages, are now beginning to trickle back to farms, justin time for the sowing of paddy in the State. While manyhave boarded buses on their own to arrive in time forpaddy-sowing and to resume work in woollens-manufac-turing units, others have been luckier. Their travel ex-penses are being borne by their employers in Punjab. Themigrant labourers who could barely earn anything sincetheir arrival back home are understandably relieved to goback. It is not without its downside, though.

Recently there were reports of some wealthy farmowners and businessmen flying workers back at theirown expense. The labourers who had struggled to reachhome, often taking as many as five days on ShramikSpecial trains (many had even walked for weeks to reachhome), were understandably elated about their first airtravel. The news portal The Wire reported the efforts of aLudhiana-based blanket manufacturer, Bobby Jindal,who brought labourers back from Bihar so that his busi-ness could resume operations with skilled labour.

Incidentally, June is the month when Ludhiana’shosiery industry comes into its own with booming tradein winter products. This year, the absence of skilledlabour meant the factory and farm owners were left withno alternative but to bring the labourers back at theirown expense. Most were happy to pay Rs.2,500 perperson for bus travel from Bihar to Punjab. They are nowproviding the labourers with food and lodging, besidesthe per-unit manufacturing charges of winter goods inurban areas, or in the case of farm labour the charges forpaddy-sowing per acre. Around the same time, other

workers reached Hoshiarpur and Barnala, hoping to re-sume work as factory workers. Unlike the lucky few whoarrived by air, they took the long road back to theirworkplaces, followed by a two-week quarantine period.

The labourers, who realise that they have an edge, aredemanding anything up to Rs.6,000 an acre for paddy-sowing, in contrast to the Rs.2,700 to Rs.3,000 they werepaid earlier.

The farm owners remain hopeful of striking a dealbetween Rs.3,500 and Rs.3,700, though they say even thiswill escalate their costs substantially. Still they consider

Migrants returnFactories in Hoshiarpur, Ludhiana and Barnala and farms across

Punjab are swinging back into action as workers return from their

home towns and villages. B Y Z I Y A U S S A L A M

this option better than having an en)tire paddy crop ruined with unskilledlabour.

The contrast to the time whenmillions of migrant labourers leftPunjab for their home towns in Ut-tar Pradesh and Bihar could not bemore marked. Then they were left tofend for themselves by the Centraland State governments and theiremployers.

Professor Maitrayee Chaudhuriof Jawaharlal Nehru University’sSchool of Social Sciences says, “Acrisis usually exposes the hiddenstructure of a society. The pandemichas revealed it in a dramatic fashion.It is important, however, not to‘blame everybody’ for this mess or ‘so-ciety’ at large. The migrants too are part of our society.Blaming everyone amounts to blaming nobody. All coun-tries are battling this enormous crisis. But we did not seesuch visuals from anywhere else. The reckless and callousstate decision to give four hours to pack up for a lockdownresulted in this. The average urban middle-class personmay or may not be aware that lockdown has very differentimplications for different sections of people. But the state issupposed to know. It is in the business of governance. Thatour cities run on the labour of poor migrants should not be

something that the government doesnot know....

“Two points emerge here fromwhat I call ‘cognitive invisibility’ ofthe urban poor in dominant con-sciousness. Firstly, poor people arenot ‘people’ like us. We see themphysically, but as ‘labour’ not‘people’. And the government doesnot seem to see them as ‘citizens’either.... So in the addresses of thePrime Minister we see that the ad-dressee is the urban middle class.This is true cognitive invisibility atwork. Until they spilled out onto thestreets, it did not strike anyone.Secondly, in India this attitude,what was termed as ‘the middle classsecession from poor Indians’ has

grown and flourished since the 1990s.” It is this middlc class that has brought migrant labour

back to looms and farms. This seems a good-for-all solu-tion on paper, but it exposes the hidden crevices of asociety that looks at men/women as labour or merestatistics rather than as people. “They are ‘labour’, instru-mental for their business, industry or agriculture, tofunction and profit. The idea of humanitarianism like theidea of fellow citizenship is dead.”

However, it is not as if only the farm or businessowners stand to gain. The economy, which is staring at ashortfall of up to 70 per cent, also gets the much-neededshot in the arm. And the migrants, who could barely hopeto earn Rs.200 a day working on agricultural fields inBihar are happier earning three times the amount.

How does one arrive at the complete picture with boththe haves and the have-nots needing each other at thistime? Prof. Chaudhuri says: “Migrants need the jobs. Butwe need to phrase this in terms of democratic rights.Right to employment, fair wages, livelihood, security...define our constitutional values. (So the ‘dues’ that em-ployers owed the migrants was their ‘right’.) They are thecore of a democracy. Democracy has been reduced to aPR exercise. Not adherence to the three basic core ideasof equality, liberty, fraternity.” She pointed that out in theearly weeks of the lockdown things were different aslabour was considered expendable to middle-class re-quirements in the short run.

“The migrants were not just forgotten, but beaten andmaltreated in fear of the ‘virus’. Old ideas of class, casteand communities came to the fore. The tension betweenformal equalities granted by the Constitution and thedeep inequalities [that exist] were on display. Inequalit-ies won the day,” she said.

That may be true. For the moment, though, Punjabcould do with the helping hand provided by the return ofworkers. The factories in Hoshiarpur, Ludhiana andBarnala and farms across the State are swinging backinto action. Never mind the rising costs of the labour andthe consequent increase in cost of production. m

FARM workers planting paddy seedlings with the onset ofthe Kharif season at Kajjal Majra village in FatehgarhSaheb district of Punjab, on June 10. A

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T A M I L N A D U

WHEN SHE CRIED IN AGONY INDICATINGthat her chest felt like exploding, the medical team thatattended to her stood helpless. Though she was a Type Idiabetes mellitus patient, doctors were optimistic thatshe would respond to the treatment. After all, she was inher teens. “But sadly, she collapsed and never recovered,”said a senior nurse who attended to the 17-year-old Chen-nai girl who became the 126th victim in Tamil Nadugovernment’s burgeoning COVID-19 list of the dead.

The girl died just under four hours of her admission toone of the leading government hospitals in Chennai onJune 3. A note from the Health Department claimed thatshe died from “COVID-19 Pneumonia, Cardio PulmonaryArrest, Acute Kidney Injury, Uncontrolled Hyper-glycaemia, Left Pyelonephritis and Diabetic Ketoacidosis”.On the same day a 25-year-old woman from Krishnagiridistrict died of respiratory failure and asthma. Anotherperson to die of COVID complication was a 33-year-oldmother soon after childbirth. Another 27-year-old womanin Chennai died of the infection on April 27.

A large number of the people who died had co-mor-bidities such as diabetics, hypertension, heart and kidneyailments, lung diseases, cancer and, predominantly, res-piratory failures and sepsis shock. Two senior privatemedical practitioners, two senior nurses and a laboratorytechnician, too, succumbed to the infection. J. An-bazhagan of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam becamethe first sitting MLA to die of COVID in the country. Thelist of the dead is growing long and the virus also seems tobe breaking the barrier of age.

Front-line workers and health care personnel areworried about the increasing death rate, especially in the30-60 age group, although the fact that a few over 90years of age have recovered offers some solace. FromApril 29, the day the State Health Department startedissuing daily bulletins on COVID deaths, to June 13, asmany as 25 patients who lost their lives were in the 20-40age group, 127 were in the 41-60 age group and 208 wereabove 61. On June 13 and 14 there were seven deaths eachof people in the 40-60 age group who had no otherillnesses.

The situation forced Health Minister C. Vijayabaskar tosay that “the virus’ strain is intensely virulent today in theState”, suggesting that more patients were on emergencymedicare and in need of oxygen. As the infection rate rose tonearly half a lakh in the third week of June, many peoplestarted thronging hospitals in what physicians call “clinic-ally precarious condition” — most of them requiring nasaloxygen and ventilators. Correspondingly, the death ratealso started going up, raising alarm.

“That many COVID patients need oxygenation baresthe seriousness of the issue today,” said a senior infec-tious disease specialist. “Fortunately, all major govern-ment hospitals have integrated oxygen plants to meet themassive emergency requirements of today. The MaduraiRajaji Government Medical College Hospital in Maduraihas one such plant, besides adequate number of ventilat-ors. We are well-equipped to meet any emergency,” saidDr J. Sangumani, the hospital’s dean. A major referralcentre for the southern districts of the State, it recentlysaved a 54-year-old COVID patient with plasma therapy.The hospital has so far recorded three deaths of over 450patients there.

A study on COVID-related death in Tamil Nadu

Dying young COVID deaths of people below 60 and with no other illnesses,

especially in Chennai, pose significant concern to the authorities.

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39 F RONT L I N E . J U L Y 3 , 2 0 2 0

reveals many shocking details. The State recorded thefirst double-digit number in deaths, 12, on May 28. ButJune has seen an all-round spike in terms of infection andmortality. On June 5, 12 people died and the next day 19,among whom eight had no other serious illnesses. As onJune 7, the death toll stood at 269; one of this was in the10-19 age group, four in the 20-29 age group, 17 in the30-39 age group, 31 in the 40-49 age group, 61 in the50-59 age group, 71 in the 60-69 age group, 65 in the70-79 age group, 17 in the 80-89 group and two above 90.

As on June 12 the State recorded 367 deaths, with amortality rate of 0.90 per cent. Chennai city’s death tollthat day was 294 with a 1.01 per cent death rate.

The death toll in the State touched a new single-daypeak, 38, on June 14. Of these, seven persons had noco-morbid conditions.

Chennai’s infection rate vis-a-vis the State as on June12 was 64 per cent. The number of infections in Chennaiconstitues two-thirds of the State’s total, though accord-ing to Health Secretary J. Radhakrishnan, who is also thepandemic nodal officer for Chennai city, just 16 per centof the city’s 37,000 streets, mainly in north Chennai,were infection-prone.

“Chennai remains a danger zone,” said a senior Cor-poration health officer. The sheer density of populationin the city is the critical reason why containment hasbecome difficult though the incompetence of the GreaterChennai Corporation cannot be overlooked.

Besides doctors and postgraduate medics, 155 staffnurses in all government hospitals have been infected inthe last two months. Two of them, Joan Mary Pricilla, 58,Grade I Nursing Superintendent of Madras Medical Col-lege Hospital, who continued her service even after herretirement in May, and Thangalakshmi, 54, of RajivGandhi Government General Hospital, lost their lives inthe line of duty.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has asked the TamilNadu government to file a status report on how some 30children of the government-run juvenile home in Chen-nai tested positive. The Chennai City police, following acomplaint from the Chennai Corporation, are on thelookout for 199 persons of north Chennai who testedpositive and jumped quarantine.

As many as 734 pregnant women were admitted forCOVID treatment in various government hospitals; ofthese 547 had recovered until June 12. Two died. “Manyof these women were denied treatment by private doctorsand hospitals they had been going to before they testedpositive. They were referred to our hospital and theyrecovered, many of them despite having co-morbidities,”said a senior physician of the Institute of Child Healthand Hospital for Children at Egmore, Chennai. As onJune 15, the hospital had 62 patients.

K E E P I N G M O R T A L I T Y R A T E L O W

“Since the virus is erratic and not confined to any setpattern that epidemiologists have perceived, we havedecided to ‘indigenise’ our action plan, especially inChennai,” said a city-based epidemiologist. As a result,

the focus has shifted to hospitals, disease managementand recovery so that the State-level mortality rate ofaround 1 to 1.5 per cent can be maintained.

Reports claim that hospitals in Chennai have startedoverflowing with patients. The State government claimsthat 70,000 beds, apart from corona care centres, havebeen augmented to meet the rising demand. It says it hasalso undertaken a massive exercise to recruit doctors andparamedical staff, besides laboratory technicians andhealth workers.

As the infection is on the rise in the State, especially inChennai, pressure is mounting on the administration. Abatch of 23 nurses staged a brief sit-in on the premises ofthe Omandurar Government Super Speciality Hospital,where over 400 patients are being treated, complainingthat they were stressed out because of long working hours.It prompted the government to recruit, temporarily, 2,400health care professionals and 1,000 postgraduate doctors.Doctors and paramedical staff in the districts are also beingbrought to Chennai to bolster the manpower, and addi-tional ambulances have been added to the fleet.

D I S C R E P A N C Y I N D E A T H T O L L

Allegations are rife that the government is not maintain-ing transparency while providing the statistics onCOVID-19-related deaths. A visibly embarrassed ChiefMinister, Edappadi K. Palaniswami, told the media inSalem that there was no need for the government toindulge in such activities. “How can one hide or cover upa death?” he asked. Media reports, however, claimed thatin Chennai Corporation limits around 398 people couldhave died of virus infection until June 4 as against theHealth Department’s number of 166.

On June 7, opposition leader and Dravida MunnetraKazhagam president M.K. Stalin expressed his shock onTwitter over the discrepancies and contradictory claimsof various departments on the death toll. One reportclaimed that the death of 20 persons in the SouthernRailway Hospital at Perambur had not been included inthe statistics provided by the Health Department. “Manydeaths go unreported. While the intensity of infection ison the rise, the death rate remains surprisingly low. Themedia have to insist on the state maintaining transpar-ency and providing correct statistics. From the beginningthere has been a huge gap in the coordination of variousagencies that are dealing with the pandemic,” said asocial activist.

As the issue emerged to be a hot topic, Health Secret-ary, Dr Beela Rajesh, who was transferred from the poston June 12, said that a committee had been formed to“reconcile” the statistics on deaths and admissions re-ceived from Chennai Corporation and private hospitalswith that of the Health Department.

“The task is clear and could hardly be more urgent.We have to save as many lives as possible,” said aninfluenza specialist. Meanwhile, with infection spread-ing, the government has declared a lockdown for 12 daysfrom June 19 in Chennai and parts of Tiruvallur,Chengalpattu and Kancheepuram districts. m

A MOBILE testing centre in Chennai on June 16.

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COVER STORY

B I H A R & J H A R K H A N D

All THROUGH THE LOCKDOWN BIHAR ANDJharkhand occupied centre stage in the collective con-sciousness of the nation, not because of a surge inCOVID-19 infections but because of the numbers ofmigrant labourers on the road struggling to get backhome from far-off places in the country, with some ofthem losing their lives on the road, on railways tracks andinside trains. In Bihar, a total of 20.46 lakh migrantsreturned in May, while in Jharkhand seven lakh reachedhome. Their arrival also saw an increase in the number ofinfections in the two States.

Bihar had recorded only 1,016 cases and seven deathsuntil May 15, but by June 14 it had a total of 6,475 cases,with 36 lives lost, and the number of infections is stillrising. Similarly, Jharkhand had recorded only 204 casesand three deaths as of May 15, but by June 14 it had 1,761cases and 10 deaths.

“But our recovery rate, at 62.5 per cent, is much abovethe national average. Also important is the fact that themaximum number of deaths due to the coronavirus hasbeen of those who had co-morbidities. Pure coronavirusdeaths in Bihar are very few,” said Dr Sunil Kumar Singh,a Janata Dal (United) leader who is also a practising

doctor. But the way cases are increasing is a matter ofconcern, he said. In Bihar, so far only government hospit-als—of which there are only three, in Patna (NalandaMedical College and Hospital), Bhagalpur and Gaya—and district government hospitals are treatingCOVID-19 patients. Realising the gravity of situation, theBihar government has converted the Patliputra IndoorStadium in Patna into a COVID care facility, therebyincreasing the number of fully equipped beds at its dis-posal by another 400-500.

It is also mulling over the possibility of co-optingprivate hospitals for COVID-19 treatment, if required.“So far we are able to meet our requirement at govern-ment hospitals. But if the situation demands, we will askprivate hospitals to reserve beds for COVID care too. Thegovernment has written to all the private hospitals re-garding this,” said Dr Sunil Kumar Singh. Significantly,the Bihar government closed all its quarantine centres,15,000 in all, with effect from June 15. “Those arrivingfrom outside will be kept quarantined at home. There isno need for these centres now,” said a senior governmentofficial.

The government does not seem to have utilised the

Contrasting tales The stark difference in the manner in which Bihar and Jharkhand

tackled the issue of migrant labourers struggling to reach home during

the lockdown is noteworthy. BY P U R N I M A S . T R I P A T H I

MIGRANTS whoarrived from Keralavia a ShramikSpecial train at HatiaRailway Station,Ranchi, on June 13.(Right) Migrantsboarding a bus at theDelhi-Noida borderin New Delhi totravel to their nativeplaces in Bihar onJune 13.

long lockdown period to create more facilities despite thefact that it anticipated a spurt in cases once migrantsstarted returning. “We spent the time understandingwhat exactly was required. Now, as and when the needarises, we will act upon it,” said Dr Sunil Kumar Singh.

The State has done well to increase the number oftests being conducted. Over 3,500-4,000 tests are beingdone every day, and the target is to increase it to 10,000 aday. So far 1,23,629 people across the State have beentested. The extent of migrants’ contribution to the spikein infections can be deduced from the fact that theyaccounted for 4,449 of the total of 6,475 positive cases onJune 14. The fact that 3,975 people have recovered givesthe Bihar government hope that he severity of the infec-tion may not be very high in the State. “Our mortality rateis low, so we can afford to take some risks and start someeconomic activities while taking all precautions,” said asenior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Among theprecautions being taken are distribution of masks andsoap in rural areas and the creation of awareness aboutphysical distancing.

J H A R K H A N D

In Jharkhand, too, most of the deaths are of people whohad co-morbidities such as high blood pressure, heartconditions, diabetes or cancer. Here too, the recoveryrate is high: out of a total of 1,761 cases, over 900 patientshave recovered so far. As is the case in Bihar, inJharkhand, too, returning migrants account for a largenumber of the total of 1,396 cases. The State has also beendiligent about testing. Up to the time of writing, a total of1,06,171 people have been tested in the State.

However, there is a striking difference in the way thetwo States are dealing with the issue of migrants. WhileJharkhand has started rehabilitating those who have comehome, Bihar is still in the process of mapping their skills. InBihar, all that migrants are being offered are jobs under theMahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment GuaranteeScheme, which pay a measly Rs.250-300 a day. This hasresulted in a great deal of unrest in rural areas, and people

have already started going back to other States, especially toPunjab where the paddy transplantation operations havebegun and workers are in demand. Farmers in Punjab areluring these workers with the promise of increased wagesand better facilities. But all this is happening at an informallevel in Bihar, without the government coming into play.Busloads of workers are said to be leaving the State secretlyin the dead of night.

JHARKHAND-BRO AGREEMENT

In Jharkhand, on the other hand, the government hastaken it upon itself to seek guarantees from those whowant to recruit workers from the State. Chief MinisterHemant Soren, who personally ensured that workersstranded in places such as Leh-Ladakh and the Andaman& Nicobar Islands were airlifted and brought home, hassought written undertakings from prospective employersabout the welfare of workers from Jharkhand. “We haveseen how our people in other States were not givenproper treatment, nor were they treated with dignity.Now we will not allow any compromise with their labour,welfare, rights, benefits and dignity,” he told the media inRanchi after he had negotiated a memorandum of under-standing with the Border Roads Organisation (BRO),which recruits workers from Jharkhand for road-build-ing work in the border areas of Jammu and Kashmir,Leh-Ladakh, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh..

In a first of its kind move anywhere in India, theJharkhand government signed an agreement with the BROon June 8 for the recruitment of 11,800 workers from theState. The Jharkhand government has invoked the Inter-State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment andConditions of Service) Act, 1979, for this purpose, whichrequires the BRO to register itself as an employer that canrecruit directly without the services of middlemen contract-ors, called Mates, as was the practice so far. Under thisagreement, the BRO will pay wages that are higher by 15-20per cent directly into the bank accounts of the workers,unlike the practice so far where the Mates took their cutfrom the wages. The BRO will also have to provide benefitssuch as health care facilities, accident insurance, transportto and from home, and proper housing.

The BRO has been taking workers from Jharkhandfor years, in two batches: April-May and October-November. It was this October-November batch of work-ers that got stuck in Leh-Ladakh in March because of thelockdown and was airlifted by the State government. Itwas then that the Chief Minister, who received them atthe Ranchi airport, actually realised their plight anddecided to institutionalise the recruitment system.

A total of 11 special trains have been organised to take11,800 workers to the border areas. Two trains havealready left. The Chief Minister flagged off the first trainon June 13 and told BRO officials that these workersshould return with similar smiling faces in October. Alsoin the offing is a special government insurance schemeworth Rs.10-15 lakh for those going out of the State towork. “No more compromises with either the safety orwelfare of our workers,” Hemant Soren promised. mP

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F RONT L I N E . J U L Y 3 , 2 0 2 0 42

COVER STORY

G U J A R A T

GUJARAT CONTINUES TO BE AMONG THEfive States witnessing the highest numbers of COVID-19cases and deaths in the country: 23,544 positive casesand 1,477 deaths, as of June 15. The contagion shows nosigns of abating, and the State machinery appears com-pletely overwhelmed and the health care system seems tohave broken down. Private hospitals are reportedly al-lowed to charge astronomical amounts for COVID-19treatment. A social worker from the State said: “Threemonths into the pandemic, the State, for all its bombaston its development model, is in a shambles because it didnot have the infrastructure to cope. Mumbai is in anequally bad condition, but it seems to be handling itmuch better than Ahmedabad.”

Ahmedabad, with 1,187 deaths, remains the epi-centre. Community transmission is believed to berampant in the city. Gujarat’s highest single-day tally was

517 cases on June 14, with Ahmedabad accounting for311.With restrictions imposed on movement betweendistricts, the spread is contained within the city, but thatmay change rapidly once the restrictions are removed. Asof June 15, the three other major cities reporting positivecases were Vadodara (504), Surat (654) and Rajkot (59).“If there is a noticeable change in these cities’ figures, itcould be blamed on Ahmedabad, and so the need tocontain the disease here is critical,” the social workersaid.

A doctor at Ahmedabad Civil Hospital, which hasseen 60 per cent of the deaths take place in its wards,said: “Essentially, the lack of adequate health care facilit-ies and stringent procedures in testing and treatment iscausing much of the surge.” The Ahmedabad MunicipalCorporation (AMC) has increased the number of hospit-als dedicated to COVID-19 treatment. Yet there seems to

Unable to cope There are 127 hospitals in the State with COVID treatment facilities,

but the situation continues to be grim and private hospitals charge

as they please. B Y A N U P A M A K A T A K A M

43 F RONT L I N E . J U L Y 3 , 2 0 2 0

be little improvement in the recov-ery rate, which hovers around 41per cent. “The government hos-pital is being called the ‘dead body’hospital. We are unable to copewith the numbers. We are ex-hausted and there is no end insight,” the doctor said.

Gujarat government figuresshow there are 127 hospitals iden-tified across the State to treatCOVID-19 patients and provideisolation facilities, but doctors saythis is not enough. Speaking of theabsurdly high rates being chargedby private hospitals, Dakshin Ch-hara, a film-maker who lives inAhmedabad, said: “I heard some-where that hospitals were taking adeposit of Rs.1 lakh to admitCOVID patients. The pandemichas become a business opportun-ity for private businesses and thegovernment. The rich will recoverbecause they can pay, while thepoor will die. We have filed an RTI[Right to Information] petitiondemanding to know how theseamounts are decided.” He shared aphotograph of a signboard postedoutside a private hospital listingcharges for COVID patients. Itsaid: Single day charges for a general ward is Rs.9000,High Dependency Unit (HDU) costs Rs.12600 per day,Isolation plus Intensive Care Unit (ICU) is 18,050 perday, and the combination of ventilator, ICU and Isolationwould be Rs.21,850 for a single day.

Chhara, who lives in one of Ahmedabad’s many low-income community ghettos, said residents of the areatook matters into their own hands when the AMC failedto respond to the growing number of cases there andbegan disinfecting the streets and homes. That seemed tohave helped, he said.

Stories of patients running from pillar to post insearch of isolation beds and treatment appear every dayin the local press. Mohammad Pathan, who owns a phar-macy, said: “I took my neighbour to the Civil Hospital.We waited for hours before being admitted. Meanwhile,people around me were being given the news of relativespassing away owing to COVID-19. I don’t think I will everforget the tragedy that was unfolding in front of me.”

The State government had recently earned the Gu-jarat High Court’s ire over its mismanagement of thecrisis.

U N L O C K I N G

Following the Union Home Ministry’s guidelines issuedon June 1, Gujarat issued guidelines for a phased reopen-ing. Businesses in the highly industrialised State have

been asking for relaxations sincemid May. In its “Unlock-1”guidelines, the State governmenthas allowed industries to operatewith 100 per cent capacity withmandatory safety processes inplace. Additionally, all private andgovernment offices, banks, shops,salons, and even coffee shops havebeen allowed to reopen understrict physical distancing andsafety protocols. Local residentssay that other than the display ofmasks, everything else seems to beback to normal, including thetraffic jams.

Soon after the unlockingbegan, Chief Minister VijayRupani announced a Rs.14,000crore relief package to revive theState’s battered economy. Term-ing it Gujarat’s plan for becoming“atmanirbhar” (self-reliant),Rupani said the relief measurescomprised rebates on property tax,loan interest subsidies and sector-wise allocation of funds to supportand promote businesses. A sum ofRs.466 crore has been earmarkedfor labour welfare; this includesRs.35,000 for each tribal labourerwho works as an intra-State mi-

grant. Free rations and a direct transfer of Rs.1,000 to theaccounts of families living below the poverty line areother relief measures. Most importantly, the governmentis giving Rs.100 crore each to the Health Department andthe municipal corporations of Ahmedabad, Surat,Vadodara and Rajkot to improve health care facilities inorder to combat the virus.

Surat’s famed textile markets and diamond cutting/polishing units are working with physical distancingnorms in place. “While we are happy to restart, theproblem is every time someone tests positive, we have toshut the unit,” says Manglesh Shah, who owns a dia-mond-cutting unit. “There is a slowdown in the economy,so the demand is low. Between labour and demand, I amnot sure how we are going to survive this.” The construc-tion industry has also restarted but it suffers from labourshortage, said a contractor.

A Vadodara businessman said: “All this seems goodon paper. Hopefully, they will make the payouts, as it iscritical for survival. While they have allowed us to operatefully, the problem is without labour most of us are work-ing to about 50 to 60 per cent capacity. Gujarat absorbsmassive skilled labour from other States. With their ex-odus, we are struggling with a labour issue. They need todo something about that. Unless quarantine rules relax,we will not be able to function fully. It is very easy to shutdown. But not that easy to restart.” m

A DOCTOR wearing a protective face shield uses a thermal scanner to measure the temperature of a child at hismobilehealth clinic, after his clinic and its adjoining areas were declared a micro-containment zone following the easing oflockdown restrictions, in Ahmedabad on June 15.

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A POSTER outside a private hospital inAhmedabad lists daily charges for COVIDpatients: Rs.9,000 for general ward,Rs.12,600 for High Dependency Unit(HDU), Rs.18,050 for Isolation plusIntensive Care Unit (ICU) and Rs.21,850 fora combination of ventilator, ICU andisolation.

F RONT L I N E . J U L Y 3 , 2 0 2 0 44

COVER STORY

M A D H Y A P R A D E S H

IN MADHYA PRADESH, LEADERS OF THEruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) continue to courtcontroversy even as the public health crisis relating to thecoronavirus pandemic deepens and the fatality rateshows no sign of abating. As of June 15, the number ofpositive cases in the State stood at 10,802 and the num-ber of casualties at 459, for a death rate of 4.24 per cent.

Since early March, Madhya Pradesh has been theepicentre of political machinations that political observ-ers believe compromised the State’s ability to deal withthe disease. Another high-decibel political drama sur-faced on June 10 after an audio clip emerged on socialmedia claiming to expose the BJP top leadership’s pur-ported role in hatching the coup against the erstwhilegovernment. Former Chief Minister Kamal Nathlaunched a scathing attack on the Shivraj Singh Chouhanregime, asserting that the Congress’ charges against theBJP had been validated.

“I was claiming since day one that the BJP hadtoppled my democratically elected government througha conspiracy and allurement as I was waiving loans offarmers, offering employment to the youth and safe-guarding dignity of women,” Kamal Nath tweeted.

The Congress maintains that the BJP’s power grabfollowed by Chouhan’s one-month-long absolutist rule,during which the State did not have either a HomeMinister or a Health Minister, is responsible for theexplosion of infections across the State, particularly in itsfinance hub, Indore. The June 10 audio clip allegedly hasChouhan saying: “It was the decision of Central leader-ship which said that this government should be toppledor else it will ruin everything.”

The COVID-19 pandemic in Madhya Pradesh is in-deed entering a fraught phase, with the number of posit-ive cases increasing in rural pockets. The latest reportfrom the State government revealed that as many as 961people in 462 villages have contracted the virus, unleash-ing a major fear of community spread. Of the 951 whowere found positive in a testing drive, 32 succumbed tothe disease. At least 479 of those who tested positive are

migrant labourers who recently returned to the State. The pandemic’s speedy spread in the hinterland is

obvious when one looks at the numbers. On May 21, only186 villages had infections. Over the next 22 days, theinfection spread to 462 villages.

The Congress has time and again pointed out thatpolitically motivated transfers of administrative offi-cials, the lack of a Health Minister for over a month,and the shocking number of positive cases amongstHealth Department officials are responsible for in-creasing the coronavirus threat in the State. AbbasHafeez, State spokesperson of the Congress, who spoketo Frontline over the phone from Bhopal, iterated thatthe government lacked a road map. “If this governmenthad had any sense of urgency in dealing with the virus,the virus would not have spread in all 52 districts. Thenumber of positive cases would not have crossed the10,000 mark. Shivraj Singh Chouhan has his prioritiesfixed on the upcoming byelections, and all that hispartymen are doing is flouting physical distancingnorms, stepping up membership drives and focussingon winning the 24 Legislative Assembly constituenciesthat have fallen vacant.”

“The BJP has thrown caution to the wind. They arefocussed on creating defections. Every day they are bring-ing Congress workers from green zone districts to the redzone of Bhopal and getting them to join their party so thatthe optics show that they are on a strong footing. Whenthese workers travel back to the green zones, they becomepotential carriers. Some time ago, half of our districtswere coronavirus free and now the situation is alarming,”Hafeez said.

BJP leaders’ mass contact programmes, as caught oncamera, give potency to Hafeez’s argument. On June 12,former BJP MLA Sudarshan Gupta organised a pro-gramme at Banganga area in Indore to celebrate UnionAgriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar’s birthday.Gupta gathered 2,000 families to distribute rations tothem; chaos ensued. The next day the police registered acase against unidentified persons under Section 188 of

Rural spread Even as the coronavirus infection moves rapidly across the villages of

Madhya Pradesh, the BJP government pats itself on the back for its

handling of the situation but continues to focus on consolidating its

political power. BY A N A N D O B H A K T O

45 F RONT L I N E . J U L Y 3 , 2 0 2 0

the Indian Penal Code (disobeying a government offi-cial’s order banning public assembly). Later, Gupta wasalso named in the first information report. InspectorSanjay Mishra of the Malharganj police station con-firmed to the media that the organisers had not asked forpermission for the event. The situation in Indore is grimwith 4,069 cases as of June 15.

The recklessness reoccurred on June 14: State Cab-inet Minister Govind Singh Rajput of the BJP attended alarge gathering in Rahatgarh town of Sagar districtwhere physical distancing norms were openly flouted. InDecember 2018, Rajput won the Surkhi Assembly seat asa Congress candidate and was among the 22 rebels whoquit the party following Jyotiraditya Scindia’s decision tojump ship to the BJP. Since then Rajput has stepped uphis efforts to get the BJP ticket from Surkhi. Rahatgarhtown is the political nucleus of Surkhi.

However, the BJP has been giving itself credit for itsdeft handling of the pandemic in Madhya Pradesh. On

June 14, Chouhan told the media: “All parameters in theState have improved significantly as there has been adecrease of 151 active cases over the past 24 hours. Aremarkable number of 300 patients have recovered fromthe infection over the same period across the State. Nowthe number of active cases stands at 2,666 and the doub-ling rate of the cases has increased to 34.1 days. Therecovery rate stands at 71.1 per cent. While the doublingrate is the best in the country, the recovery rate is secondonly to Rajasthan’s 75.3 per cent.”

During the lockdown the State government has comeout with programmes such as the Rojgar Setu Portal,Covid Mitra, and the “Sarthak Light” app. According tothe government, the Rojgar Setu Portal, which has re-gistered 7.30 lakh migrants and 5,246 employers and jobproviders since its launch on June 10, generated employ-ment for 302 migrant workers in just three days.Through Covid Mitra, the government plans to rope involunteers who will be provided with an oximeter tocheck the oxygen levels of people. The purpose of theSarthak Light app is to inform people about the locationof the nearest COVID-19 treatment facility and samplecollection centre. m

SUPPORTERS of BJP leader Jyotiraditya Scindiaperforming a yagna at a temple for the speedy recovery oftheir leader from COVID-19, in Bhopal on June 15.

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THE COVID SITUATION IN WEST BENGAL IS“grim”, the Supreme Court said on June 12 in a harshnegation of the State government’s claim that its man-agement of the public health crisis has been among thebest in the country. As on June 15, the State had 11,494cases, including 5,478 active cases, and 495 deaths. Thedisease has been spreading exponentially in the State,exacerbated by the return of lakhs of migrant workersfrom different parts of the country, and the governmenthas struggled to cope with the situation amid allegationsof mismanagement and protests in quarantine centresacross the State. The government also finds itself underrelentless political attack from opposition parties, partic-ularly the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which clearlyhas its eye on the Assembly election due next year.

While on the one hand the people are reeling underthe dual impact of the pandemic and the super cycloneAmphan, which devastated the southern part of Bengalin May, on the other hand the relaxation of the lockdownand the lack of sufficient public transport is turning outto be a nightmare for the working people of Kolkata andits surrounding areas. With commuters forced to ignorephysical distancing norms in the limited number of buses

that are operated, the danger of the spread of COVID hasbecome acute. Kolkata alone accounted for 104 of the407 fresh cases reported on June 15.

In the face of the impending catastrophe, the twomain political adversaries in the State, the ruling Trin-amool Congress and the BJP seem to have shifted theirattention to the 2021 election. On June 9, Union HomeMinister Amit Shah sounded the battle cry for the elec-tion through a “virtual rally” when he called for“paribartan” (change). At a time when the State is facingan economic and social crisis, the BJP installed around70,000 smart television sets across the State for therally, inviting criticism from political quarters. In hisaddress to party supporters across the State, Amit Shahnot only attacked Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee andher government on every front, but also spelt out whatthe BJP planned to achieve once it assumed power in theState.

The BJP chose to strike at a time when the Trinamoolseems to be in a vulnerable situation. The ruling party hasbeen facing criticism from social and political circles overits alleged mismanagement of the COVID crisis and thecyclone relief. Those confined in quarantine centres, in-

Political parties focus on the 2021 Assembly election even as the

COVID situation continues to deteriorate. B Y S U H R I D S A N K A R C H A T T O P A D H Y A Y

VILLAGERS wait in a long queqe in Bali island in theSunderbans to receive aid from groups from Kolkata tryingto reach them with relief materials.

DEBASISH BHADURI

cluding migrant workers, have been staging protestsagainst the lack of basic amenities or the delay in testing.Some people have reportedly escaped from quarantinecentres.

The BJP’s steady campaign against the State govern-ment’s alleged reluctance to allow the return of migrantworkers for fear that they could cause the spread of thevirus, has put further pressure on the Trinamool.Mamata Banerjee made matters worse by claiming thatthe people of the State called the Shramik Special trainsthat brought back migrants “corona express”, giving theBJP yet another reason to attack the government.

While the Trinamool has been pummeled by criti-cism for the past three months, the BJP has kept up asustained attack on the ruling party on practically everyissue—failure to enforce the lockdown, absence of healthinfrastructure, confusion over COVID deaths, lack oftesting, delay in giving test results, irregularities in thedisbursal of ration during the lockdown, and misman-agement of the post-Amphan situation. The BJP hastried to derive political mileage from the present crises inthe State. A senior Trinamool leader admitted to Front-line that the “political narrative in the State has goneagainst the party in the last two months”.

If until March the saffron party was on the defensivein view of Mamata Banerjee’s intense political movementagainst the Citizenship Amendment Act, by June thepolitical fortunes had once again reversed. The COVIDoutbreak and Amphan put the Trinamool on the backfoot, and it was the BJP that emerged as the aggressor.

Joyprakash Majumdar, vice president of the BJP’sState unit and head of the political analysis wing of theparty, told Frontline: “The future of Bengal’s politics hasbeen decided in the last three months of the lockdown,and decided unequivocally in favour of the BJP. If wecompare the present situation with that prevalent in2009-2010 before Mamata Banerjee came to power, wesee the anti-incumbency sentiment against theBuddhadeb Bhattacharjee government was not as pro-nounced as it is now against the Trinamool.”

The Trinamool’s reactions to the BJP’s attacks havebeen tepid, lacking their usual vitriol. A normally com-

bative Mamata Banerjee said: “At a time when we aretrying to overcome disasters, one particular politicalparty is saying remove Trinamool from Bengal. Is this thetime to do politics? I am not saying drive out NarendraModi from Delhi, because I believe this is not the time….Why are you doing this now?”

However, in spite of her protest against the politicisa-tion of the COVID crisis, the Trinamool has been gearingfor the election. Mamata Banerjee has directed her partyleaders at the central and the grass-roots levels to counterthe “communal” propaganda of the BJP, and, accordingto reports, the party is setting up an army of technology-savvy workers for an online battle with the BJP.

The political battle, which has been a virtual one sofar, is now spilling over to the streets. If earlier there wasviolence over area domination, in recent weeks it hasbeen over relief distribution. BJP leaders and workershave repeatedly complained that they are being preven-ted by Trinamool members and the police from visitingAmphan-affected areas to distribute relief.

According to the well-known political observer andpsephologist Biswanath Chakraborty, in a politically act-ive State like Bengal, it cannot be expected that the issueof COVID will be kept outside the purview of politics.“But the intensity of politics in this pandemic situation isunprecedented, mostly because the Assembly election isjust 10 months away. Whereas Mamata Banerjee hasbeen trying to use the COVID situation as a success storyfor her government, the BJP and other opposition partieshave been trying to establish the government’s efforts as acomplete failure. In the perception battle that is takingplace, the BJP at present appears to have gained theupper hand,” he said.

However, with the “grim” situation threatening toturn grimmer by the day, it is doubtful whether thegeneral populace, weighed down by financial worry andissues of health and safety, will be concerned about whowill come to power in 2021. m

Politics amidpandemic

COVER STORY

W E S T B E N G A L

COVER STORY

H A R Y A N A

HARYANA SEEMED TO HAVE BROUGHT THECOVID situation under control in the initial weeks of thelockdown, but there was a rapid deterioration from theend of May. There were only 1,213 confirmed casesbetween March 14 and May 25. By June 15 there were anadditional 6,509 cases, the sharpest rate of growth in anyState since May 25. Neighbouring Delhi also recorded asurge in this period, but Haryana was ahead of it. Hary-ana’s doubling rate (the number of days over which casesdouble) at present is half of the national average. Thenumber of active cases, which had stayed under 500 formost of May, increased to 4,057 by June 15. This surgeexplains why Haryana’s recovery rate at 46.17 per cent islower than the national average of 52.47 per cent.

The contagion seemed to be concentrated in the dis-tricts and densely populated urban centres close to Delhi.Gurugram, Faridabad and Sonipat districts account forthe bulk of the caseload−5,481 out of 7,722 cumulative

cases reported up to June 15, accounting for 71 per cent of

the total caseload.

The pattern suggests that this is part of a trend in the

National Capital Region. Gurugram accounts for 3,477

cases, or 45 per cent of the State’s caseload. The majority

of the cases were found concentrated in the Gurugram

Municipal Corporation area.

There are, however, indications that the pandemic

may soon acquire a wider geographical spread in Hary-

ana. On June 11, the State Chief Secretary (Medical

Dangerous drop Haryana saw a surge in COVID cases from May-end, and most of the

cases were in districts close to Delhi. BY T . K . R A J A L A K S H M I

TRAFFIC congestion on the Delhi-Gurugramhighway on June 1.

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Education and Research) told the media in Rohtak that

the number of COVID patients in the district might go up

to one lakh by August. He said that this projection was

based on feedback from Pandit Bhagwat Dayal Sharma

University of Health Sciences. The authorities had been

directed to get 3,500 beds ready as 3 per cent of patients

might require oxygen support. As of now, Rohtak ac-

counts for 4.1 per cent of the total cases in the State and

4.6 per cent of the active cases.

Curiously, the surge in Haryana cannot be attributed

to increased testing. Between May 1 and May 25, the

number of people tested in Haryana increased from

3,0191 to 99,987. In the three weeks after May 25, the

rate of testing did not increase as rapidly, and only

1,89,914 tests had been done up to June 15. Haryana’s test

positivity ratio (number of positive cases to total samples

tested) upto May 25 was exceptionally low at 1.21 per

cent, but it jumped to 4.19 per cent by June 15.

Haryana’s fatality rate at 1.3 per cent is lower than the

national average of 2.89 per cent but may go up with the

increasing proportion of active cases. The low fatality

rate shows that the number of critical cases, as of June 15,

remains low. There are only about 51 patients on critical

support (33 on oxygen support and 18 on ventilator),

according to the State government.

It also appears that most patients are in home isola-

tion, rather than in hospitals or COVID care centres. In

Gurugram, which accounts for half of the active cases

(1,999 as of June 14), as many as 1,509 were in home

isolation. According to the district surveillance unit bul-

letin for Gurugram, only 167 persons were admitted in

dedicated COVID hospitals. The surge appears to be

related to the easing of lockdown restrictions. It cannot

be blamed on the return of migrant workers, as has

happened in some States, because Haryana is a destina-

tion rather than an origin State for migrants. As late as

June 15, migrants were still leaving Haryana for their

home towns and villages in other States. The 100th

Shramik Express left Haryana on June 15, taking mi-

grants back to Chhattisgarh.

F U L L W A G E S D E N I E D

Jai Bhagwan, general secretary of the Centre of Indian

Trade Unions (CITU), told Frontline that only 25-30 per

cent of industrial activity was under way and that too only

in some big units. The smaller establishments, he said,

had not restarted activities. There is a shortage of work-

ers, and even those who have returned to work are re-

portedly getting paid only for the days they worked. “It’s

like a daily wage. Where a worker should be getting

Rs.16,000 in a month, he’s getting Rs.10,000 only. These

are violations, but the government is turning a blind eye,”

he said.

The lockdown has been lifted in several parts and

inter-State bus services have resumed operations. But

there are not many commuters as people are afraid of

catching an infection. Paradoxically, in red zone areas

such as Gurugram and Faridabad, social distancing

norms are flouted openly, especially after the easing of

lockdown curbs. Jai Bhagwan said: “This can explain the

surge in cases. Many people, even if they have the symp-

toms, are not isolating themselves for fear of getting

quarantined in some unknown place. They are quarant-

ining themselves at home and infecting others as a res-

ult.”

The CITU has held several protests seeking adequate

personal protective equipment (PPE) for health care

workers and adequate compensation for the risky work

involved. A letter sent by the Accredited Social Health

Activist (ASHA) union on June 9 to the Chief Minister

said that health workers did not have adequate sanitisers

and PPEs. The union also demanded that workers be

tested on a monthly basis as they were vulnerable to

infection. The union complained of attacks by anti-social

elements on ASHA workers and demanded a risk allow-

ance of Rs.4,000, which the government has not con-

ceded. On June 12, ASHA workers held protests at

Primary Health Care (PHC) centres in the State.

While hospitalisation and mortality figures may sug-

gest there is no acute crisis, many people are apparently

avoiding getting tested despite developing symptoms.

People fear the stigma attached to COVID infection.

There are also fears that proper treatment will not be

available.

If this trend continues, full resumption of economic

activity in an important economic hub like Gurugram,

and also elsewhere, may take longer than usual. The

deepening of the COVID crisis may also delay the return

of migrant labourers, who have left in large numbers. m

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K A R N A T A K A

KARNATAKA RECORDED A TOTAL OF 7,000COVID-19 cases by the evening of June 14. Strangely,even as the State witnessed a surge in cases, the govern-ment did away with the practice of holding evening pressconferences. Suresh Kumar, the Minister for Primaryand Secondary Education tasked with the job of briefingthe press on COVID, had not conducted a single pressconference since June 1, busy as he was with the affairs ofhis own Ministry.

With the increasing arrival of domestic travellersfrom different parts of the country, particularly Maha-rashtra, since late May, there has been a surge in thenumber of cases with a clear correlation between districtsthat saw a high arrival of returnees and the spike in thenumber of COVID cases. Seventy per cent of the 7,000cases in the State were domestic travellers. The majorityof them, 4,386 persons, had returned from Maharashtrawhile 1,340 other cases were their contacts.

Bengaluru Urban had the highest number of caseswhen the pandemic broke out in the State but this posi-tion changed since the start of June, when Udupi district,

known for its historical linkages with Mumbai, saw adrastic increase in the number of cases with people re-turning to their home towns. Udupi district recorded1,026 cases, the highest in the State, followed by Kalabur-agi (896 cases) and Yadgir (809 cases), the two northerndistricts which are known for seasonal migration, andBengaluru Urban (690 cases). With the return of mi-grant workers from other parts of the country, the num-ber of cases in the two northern districts saw a significantincrease. Similarly, Vijayapura, Belagavi, Raichur andDakshina Kannada districts, which also saw a return ofmigrant workers, witnessed a major increase in the num-ber of cases. Significantly, 3,955 of the 7,000 cases haverecovered and have been discharged, with the daily rateof recovery exceeding the number of new cases reportedin mid June. The number of deaths stands at 86.

While Karnataka’s testing capacity, in terms of thenumber of laboratories has gone up, actual testing hascome down since the beginning of June to around 7,000tests a day from a high of around 11,000 a day. Personsdisplaying symptoms of ILI (influenza like illness) and

Rising trendWith the increasing arrival of domestic travellers from different parts of

the country, particularly Maharashtra, Karnataka sees a surge in the

number of COVID cases. BY V I K H A R A H M E D S A Y E E D

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SARI (severe acute respiratory infection) are being testedon a priority. In spite of a decrease in testing, healthofficials told Frontline that symptomatic cases amongtravellers were immediately quarantined and tested. Theofficials were confident that they would be able to handleany increase in the number of cases as only 14.3 per centof the 22,872 hospital beds earmarked for COVID-19patients were in use now.

While government officials are confident that thepandemic is under control, Dr Srinivas Kakkilaya, a doc-tor based in Mangaluru, said, “It is clear that there iscommunity spread now [meaning that the source of theinfections cannot be traced] and there will be a rise in thenumber of cases over the next two months. Why can’t thegovernment tell the people that there is communityspread and change its approach? Why is it still creatingpanic?” The change in approach Kakkilaya advocatedwas decentralisation of health services. “The problemshould be addressed at a cluster-wise level. Districts areno longer categorised as red or green zones. Instead,houses are sealed now.”

“In the days to come, no lockdown is going to help. Itwill help to reassure the people that there is no need topanic. Ideally, people should feel reassured of healthcheck-ups, and the Health Department should have mo-bile units. As it is, 85 per cent of the patients will not show

any symptoms. Patients who have symptoms, who arealso super spreaders and have comorbidities, should beadmitted to hospital,” Kakkilaya said.

This point was reiterated by Dr Anil Kumar Avu-lappa, a doctor associated with the People’s HealthMovement and based in Bagepalli. “The State govern-ment is not acknowledging that there is communitytransmission. If they acknowledged it, they would have tochange their whole strategy of tracing-testing-isolation.When COVID-19 is in the community, the health caresystem should change in such a way that it reaches thepeople so that people displaying symptoms don’t moveabout freely. Instead of paying attention to this, thegovernment is extending the insurance model, which willonly benefit large corporate hospitals,” Avulappa said.

In Bengaluru, where the number of containmentzones increased to 142, houses of patients are beingsealed now. Apart from these containment zones, signi-ficant economic activity has resumed in most parts of thecity. This is when the city is seeing an increasing numberof ILI and SARI cases being diagnosed as coronaviruspositive. Several parts of Karnataka saw huge gatheringsflouting physical distancing rules, leading to fears thatpeople in the State were not vigilant. At Karjagi village inHaveri district, thousands of devotees gathered for theannual festival at the Brahmalingeshwara temple.Health Minister B. Sriramulu participated in a weddingin Ballari on June 15, where a large number of guests hadgathered. Photographs of the event, which went viral onsocial media, showed the Minister on the stage with themarried couple without maintaining physical distance orwearing a mask. m

COLLECTING samples for swab test of primary contacts ofa policeman who tested positive at the Kalasipalya policestation in Bengaluru, on June 16. (Facing page) Migrantsfrom Uttar Pradesh at Palace Grounds in Bengaluru readyto depart on June 16.

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COVER STORY

A N D H R A P R A D E S H

MORE THAN 7,000 PEOPLE IN ANDHRAPradesh have tested positive for COVID-19 and nearly 90have died. The number of new cases almost doubled inthe first 16 days of June since Unlock 1.0, with newhotspots emerging across the State’s 13 districts. While ittook the State nearly three months (March 9 to May 31)to register 3,571 positive cases, the figure went up bynearly 3,000 in just a fortnight. Kurnool, Krishna andGuntur continue to be the worst-affected districts, with1,092, 791 and 671 cases respectively as of June 16, fol-lowed by Anantapur (513), Nellore (423), East Godavari(399) and Chittoor (363). The most number of fatalitieshave been in Kurnool (29) and Krishna (27) districts.Disturbingly, the problem has reached rural areas also.Health workers, including doctors, on the ground attrib-ute this to the return of migrant workers, many of themfrom hotspots like Maharashtra.

With COVID-19 spreading its tentacles across theState, health experts and bureaucrats, including K.S.Jawahar Reddy, Special Chief Secretary, Health andFamily Welfare, have predicted that Andhra Pradesh willhave to be prepared for hospitalisation of 40,000 morepeople within the next two months. Plans are afoot to add10,000 hospital beds to supplement the present 30,000.The 40,000 beds will be spread across 23 governmentand 60 private hospitals. Indications are that there mightbe a gradual increase in the number of cases first inKurnool, Guntur and Krishna districts followed by Nel-lore, Chittoor and Anantapur.

P R I O R I T Y F O R T E S T I N G

The Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy-led Andhra Pradesh gov-ernment has vowed to test, trace, quarantine and treat itscitizens. With the emphasis on testing, officials from theState proudly proclaim that Andhra Pradesh has (as ofJune 16) conducted over 6,00,000 tests, a figure thatincludes both TrueNat (which was recently made a con-firmatory test) and real-time reverse transcription–poly-merase chain reaction (real-time RT–PCR) testingprocedures. Officials also claimed that their “robust test-ing regime”, which has a testing capacity of 15,000 to

17,000 per day (currently 14,000 to 15,000 tests arebeing conducted per day), is gearing up for testing20,000 samples per day. Said an official: “We are under-taking 9,500 tests per million of the population, which isone of the highest among all States.” The State has apopulation of 5.22 crore.

Speaking to Frontline, Jawahar Reddy said that test-ing on as large a scale as possible was essential for thechain of infection to be broken and for identification ofpeople, communities and areas where the infection wasprevalent and, most importantly, to reduce mortality.Said Jawahar Reddy: “Testing early is essential to bringdown the mortality rate. Early testing will give doctorsmore time to treat patients. As things stand today manycases are being reported late, giving doctors very littletime, hardly a day, to treat a patient from the time he hasbeen declared COVID-19 positive. This increases themortality rate. We are working to ensure that there isadequate time to stabilise a patient. I have also told allDistrict Collectors and health officials to test more andidentify as many people as they can and not to worryabout the number of positive cases. The focus is onreducing mortality rates and saving lives rather thanbeing concerned over the rising number of cases. Un-detected cases are more of a worry since they can spreadthe virus in the community. This far we have tested 10 percent of our target.”

At the behest of the State Health Department, theSpeaker of the Legislative Assembly agreed to direct

Testing regime Andhra Pradesh’s strategy is to reduce the number of fatalities with

community surveillance, identification of positive cases, cluster

containment, contact tracing, quarantining and treatment. BY R A V I S H A R M A

The government also

plans to screen 60 lakh

people falling in the

high-risk category in over

500 containment zones.

legislators attending the four-day session to undergotesting for COVID-19. Andhra Pradesh has also conver-ted some of its State transport buses into mobile centresfor collecting samples. Each district has four mobilecollection centres.

P R O A C T I V E M E A S U R E S

With community surveillance, identification of positivecases, cluster containment, contact tracing, quarantin-ing, and treatment according to the risk profile of apatient, Andhra Pradesh has embarked on a number ofproactive measures. Village ward communities havebeen formed and fever survey clinics conducted. Thegovernment also plans to screen 60 lakh people falling inthe high-risk category—people over 60 years of age andthose having abnormal blood pressure and blood sugarlevels—in the State’s over 500 containment zones. In thefirst phase 70,000 people are to be screened for bloodpressure and sugar levels, oxygen saturation, fevers andcoronavirus-like symptoms.

The State has been testing people at random fromdifferent categories or walks of life. Testing forCOVID-19 are being undertaken at industrial and whole-sale market hubs and temples on people who have ar-rived from outside the State and among vendors, as theycould be super-spreaders.

According to Jawahar Reddy, the State’s “PharmacyApp”, which helps pharmacists gather and collate in-formation from customers purchasing medicines forfevers and then pass it on to the jurisdictional medicalofficer, has been a good source of data gathering. Ex-

plained Jawahar Reddy: “The respective medical officerthen calls the customer and gets to know more about theillness.”

Testing on such a large scale has not been easy. Theeffort to set up testing facilities by convincing politicalbosses and the finance department has been a challenge.When the first COVID-19 case surfaced, Andhra Pradeshhad no testing facility, and samples from Kurnool townhad to be sent to a private laboratory in Hyderabad fortesting.

Today every district has at least one COVID-19 test-ing laboratory. There are 18 centres for real-time RT-PCR testing and 48 (all in the government) for TrueNattesting. Testing has placed a huge burden on the State asit spends Rs.1.5 crore per day on testing. The figure isbound to go up as the State further opens up and thenumber of cases increase. For most people the cost of thetest and related procedures, even at private hospitals, ispaid for by the government through the Aarogyasrischeme. Around 20 private hospitals are registered un-der the scheme now.

However, the opposition does not think that the gov-ernment’s testing initiatives have been successful. SaidSake Sailajanath, president of the Andhra Pradesh Con-gress Committee: “Cases are steadily increasing. In Vijay-awada out of the 59 wards, 42 are containment zones.Quarantine camps are in a bad condition. And worst, theState has failed its migrant workers. These workers werethe backbone of the mining, construction and manyother industries. But the government failed to recogniseand address their issues. We just dumped them. I havetold Jaganmohan Reddy ‘try to rule the state, don’t try todeal away the state.’” m

TESTING at Rajahmundry in Andhra Pradesh on June 16.

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T E L A N G A N A

THE TRIBULATIONS OF THE KALVAKUNTLAChandrasekhara Rao (KCR) government in Telanganacontinue unabated as it attempts vainly to tackle thecoronavirus disease in the State. The statistics arechilling: over 5,406 positive cases, 191 deaths and a poortesting record. This despite the fact that the governmenthad announced a lockdown, on “sarvajana hitam (publicinterest)”, on March 22, two days before the nationwidelockdown was announced.

The pandemic has knocked the stuffing out of theChief Minister’s image of a tough man of action. Theopposition is baying for his blood; the doctors are be-moaning the physical and emotional burnout due to thepressure-filled long working hours and the lack of PPEsand other essential equipment; and the Telangana HighCourt and the Central government are criticising theState for inadequate testing. On June 14, KCR an-nounced that 50,000 tests would be conducted in 30Assembly constituencies in Hyderabad (including thebustling Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporationarea, which has the highest number of positive cases inthe State), Rangareddy, Vikarabad, Medchel, and San-gareddy districts over the following 10 days. After stead-fastly refusing for nearly three months, he accepted thewidespread demand to allow private hospitals and labor-atories approved by the Indian Council of Medical Re-search (ICMR) to conduct COVID-19 tests and providetreatment to those who tested positive.

A. Shanti Kumari, Special Chief Secretary to the Gov-ernment in the Health, Medical and Family WelfareDepartment, told this correspondent that “it would be anarea-specific, community-based, targeted approach”.The number (50,000 tests), contrary to what some manymay think, was “quite big”, she added.

The numbers tell a gory tale. Between May 25 andJune 16, COVID-19 positive cases more than doubledfrom 1,920 to 5,406. The number of deaths in the sameperiod, even more chillingly, skyrocketed from 56 to 191.

The State’s mortality rate (the number of deaths dividedby the number of officially confirmed cases) at 3.53 percent (as of June 16) compares poorly with the other southIndian States—Andhra Pradesh (1.28 per cent),Karnataka (1.24 per cent), Tamil Nadu 1.09 per cent )and Kerala (0.84 per cent). Telangana’s 3.53 per cent islower than Maharashtra’s 4.88 per cent. Only Delhi, with4.11 per cent, and Gujarat, with 6.22 per cent, have worsemortality rates. Cases of infection have also been risingrapidly. Among the infected are 153 doctors and otherfrontline health care personnel, besides politicians,journalists and bureaucrats. Recently, Finance MinisterT. Harish Rao, legislator of the ruling Telangana RashtraSamithi (TRS) representing the united Warangal dis-trict, tested positive for COVID-19 and went into self-quarantine. Earlier his personal assistant was found in-fected by the virus. An officer on special duty assistingHealth Minister Eatala Rajender and 23 journalistsworking for various media houses also have tested posit-ive. The Collectors of Siddipet and Yadadri Bhuvanagiridistricts, A.P. Venkatrami Reddy and Anitha

Peaking chaos The uncontrolled spread of the pandemic in Telangana has knocked

the stuffing out of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhara Rao’s image

as a tough man of action. BY R A V I S H A R M A

AN ICMR TEAM conducting surveillance at Balapur inHyderabad on May 31. P

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Ramachandran respectively, have gone into self-quar-antine after people they met tested positive for the virus.On June 12, Greater Hyderabad Mayor Bonthu Rammo-han took a COVID-19 test after his driver tested positive.

The biggest facility dedicated to COVID-19 in theState, the Gandhi Medical College and Hospital atSecunderabad, Hyderabad’s twin city, has become a hotspot of cases. The chaos there recently resulted in one ofthe resident medical officers being suddenly transferred.

KCR’s statement on June 14 promising “home quar-antine for those who test positive but have no serioussymptoms”, according to the opposition, has hardly en-thused the population. Said Telangana Pradesh CongressCommittee (TPCC) president N. Uttam Kumar Reddy:“The Chief Minister is adopting an irrational, illogicaland unscientific approach to combating the coronavirus.For nearly three months, despite calls from the opposi-tion and strictures from the High Court, he refused toallow the private sector to be engaged in testing. Only onegovernment hospital was exclusively designated forCOVID-19 patients. Patients are being sent homewithout being cured. He has refused to call an all-partymeeting or meet a Congress party delegation. He doesn’tallow anybody else to function and he doesn’t know howto function.” Minister Rajender dismisses this allegationas rubbish. He told Frontline that the situation in Telan-gana was well under control and that the number of caseswas far from overwhelming. He explained: “Not manycases are coming. And it is only in the crowded ‘Old City’areas of Hyderabad that there are many cases coming up.We are containing this by increased testing and contain-ment measures.”

But there is widespread fear that a huge number ofcases have gone undetected given the fact that Telanganahas one of the worst testing records in the country.According to Rajender, the government had until June16 conducted 44,431 tests. This rate pales in comparisonwith that of its neighbours Karnataka (443,969), TamilNadu (748,244) and Andhra Pradesh (583,286 tests).

Telangana’s test positivity rate—the percentage of teststhat yield positive results—stands at 12.16 per cent (as ofJune 16), which is higher than the national average ofaround 5.99 per cent. The only States with comparable orhigher test positivity rates are Maharashtra (15.16 percent), Delhi (14.67 per cent) and Gujarat (8.31 per cent).A higher number indicates not only wider spread of theinfection but also the fact that only the symptomatic arebeing tested, leaving out large sections of the population.

In May, the High Court, criticising the KCR govern-ment for the poor testing rate, said it should not hidebehind the “fig leaf of financial constraints”. It was highlycritical of the government’s decision, despite its mandate,to do away with tests on dead bodies before they werereleased from government hospitals. The governmenthas appealed the High Court’s ruling in the SupremeCourt. According to Rajender, the High Court’s order isimpossible to implement since “over 1,000 people dieevery day for various reasons”. Making matters worse isthe State government’s decision to do away with themandated quarantine for railway passengers arriving inTelangana. Explained Shanti Kumari: “Telangana hasfollowed the ICMR protocol in every respect. The ICMRhas clearly stipulated that only symptomatic and house-hold contacts of a positive case need be tested. Again, theICMR suggests that testing ought to be moderate andjudicious. In Telangana, testing is done on reasonablesuspicion. Testing involves precious government re-sources, so it cannot be undertaken on anyone and every-one. Some States are testing more aggressively andshowing a 1 per cent test positivity rate. How long will aperson who has tested negative today remain negative?”

On the government’s refusal not to allow the privatesector a role in testing, Rajender explained that if thetesting facility was freely available and everyone “justwalked in and sought a test, the number of COVID-19cases would disproportionately go up, frightening thepublic”. Said the Minister: “We have now put into place aregulatory framework based on ICMR guidelines. Forexample, only a person who has been prescribed a test bya doctor will be tested. And what can the private sector doonce a person tests positive? It is us, the government, whowill be called to trace the patient’s contacts, contain thearea concerned and ensure that the virus does notspread.” Officials cited past experience of the privatesector not divulging information on positive cases andalso aggressively marketing their services.

The Telangana government has not endeared itself tothe migrant workers, whose number some people put at20 lakhs. According to a survey conducted by the Hy-derabad campus of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences(TISS) in collaboration with the Rachakonda PoliceCommissionerate, 76 per cent of them did not receive themonthly aid of 12 kg rice and Rs.500 that State govern-ment had announced with fanfare. Based on a samplesize of 10,672 workers spread across eight police stationlimits, the survey showed that the migrants were given araw deal. The State did not even arrange enough trainsfor their journey back home. m



COVER STORY

K E R A L A

STREETS ARE FILLING UP FAST, FOOTFALLSare rising in offices and supermarkets, and the influx ofexpatriates is slowly overwhelming health and quarant-ine facilities as Kerala turns its attention to its mostpressing concern today: foiling chances of a communityspread of COVID-19.

“Being prepared” has been the State’s most effectivestrategy from the very beginning, with the requirementsof “tracing, quarantining, testing, isolating and treating”.And people adhered to the government’s advisories withremarkable eagerness.

However, the government realises that even the mostwell-planned containment strategies could fail if the fa-tigued official machinery becomes slack or people fail toadhere to prevention and control measures.

With the rising demand for liberal entry require-ments and quarantine norms for incoming expatriatesand a change of attitude among the public regardingcontainment norms, there is concern about three issues:

One is about the role people without symptoms (whoaccount for over 60 per cent of all those who have testedpositive in Kerala) might play in a possible COVID-19spread; two, about the number of health workers gettinginfected in the State or being forced to go into quarant-ine; and three, the possibility of a spread through un-known contacts.

For instance, in Thrissur, one of the worst affecteddistricts, several persons were infected through contactson June 12. They included four sanitation workers in thecivic corporation, four headload workers at the ware-house, one ambulance driver and a remand prisoner.

On June 14, in Kattakkada panchayat inThiruvananthapuram district, a public health workertested positive, but despite the district administration’sefforts to find out the source of the infection, no epidemi-ological link, such as confirmed travel history or contactwith known COVID positive cases, could be established.

More than 500 contacts of the patient, spread over sixwards of the panchayats, have been traced. All the wardswere declared containment zones and the contacts wereasked to undergo home quarantine.

The above instances are only indicative. Such cases

are being reported in many parts of the State every day.Until June 16, the State had recorded 2,543 con-

firmed cases, 1,348 (53.03 per cent of the positive cases)active cases, 1,174 recovered cases (46.17 per cent), and20 deaths (0.79 per cent). Seven of the 14 districts hadover a 100 active cases. They are Malappuram (192),Thrissur (138), Palakkad (155), Kasargod (115), Kannur(110), Alappuzha (107), and Pattanamthitta (104). Thehighest number of 772 positive cases were recorded inMay, but in the first 16 days of June, 577 new cases weredetected. The daily spike in the number of cases beganafter May 18, when the fourth phase of the lockdownbegan with the easing of restrictions.

The highest daily increase in positive cases was onJune 5, when 111 people tested positive. At the same time,the rate of recovery of COVID patients was also increas-ing. Over 65 per cent of those who died (until June 16)had imported the infection from outside Kerala, 15 percent had contracted the disease through contacts, and 20per cent had no travel or contact history. All the 20persons who died, including a seven-month-old child,had comorbidities. As on June 16, of the 2,543 cases inKerala, 2,148 (77.93) were those who had travelled fromother places into the State and 395 (22.07 per cent) hadgot the infection from contacts.

Meanwhile, even as the third phase of the VandeBharat mission to bring expatriate Indians back homebegan on June 11, as many as 40,653 persons had alreadyregistered from other countries. In all, 5,59, 125 personsfrom other States and abroad had registered in theNORKA ROOTS website for returning to Kerala.

Moreover, Kerala is expecting more than 300chartered flights to bring 50,000 to one lakh passengersfrom abroad in the coming days.

COVID Care Centres have been established in alldistricts with a view to accommodating people who needinstitutional quarantine facilities. The quarantine statusas on June 15 was 1,20,727, with 1,18,704 persons under-going home quarantine and 2,023 in hospitals.

From June 12, with the increase in the number ofKeralites coming from other places testing positive in theState, the governments began allowing them to stay at

Reworking strategyKerala’s effective early strategies helped contain the spread of COVID,

but its pressing concern today is preventing community spread.

BY R . K R I S H N A K U M A R

home, too, if they had facilities there, provided they gavean affidavit agreeing to quarantine regulations.

This need not be a cause for worry, the governmentsaid, because Kerala had already proved the effectivenessof home quarantine in its containment efforts, with over2.5 lakh people staying in home quarantine at onejuncture.

In recent weeks, Kerala has allowed inter-districttravel, and reopened restaurants and cafes and places ofworship on a limited scale. But Sunday curfew continues.

Meanwhile, nearly 4.5 lakh children from State gov-ernment-run schools and those in CBSE (Central Boardof Secondary Education) schools are being offered classesonline or through the popular VICTERS television chan-nel. There are, however, complaints of exclusion becauseof the digital divide, including lack of Internet connectiv-ity or access to devices, and about the handicap ofclassroom interactions.

D I G I T A L I N I T I A T I V E S O N E D U C A T I O N

But despite these initial hiccups, the State EducationDepartment’s remarkable effort in reaching digital facil-ities to nearly 2.5 lakh students who did not have them,providing food at home to anganwadi students, and dis-tributing TV sets and, in some cases digital devices, tounderprivileged students with the help of volunteers, aresome of the model initiatives in recent months.

With only a few months remaining for the local bodyelections, the opposition has been trying to pick holes in

the State’s COVID containment efforts by highlightinginstances where it has been caught on the wrong foot.

The latest instance is the vexed issue of the need tofacilitate the return of Keralites from other States orabroad, when such an influx is already leading to anincrease in infections in the State.

The opposition United Democratic Front and theState unit of the BJP are taunting the ruling Left Demo-cratic Front (LDF) government on this issue, obviouslyseeking political mileage. This, after the State toyed withthe idea of insisting that Keralites who are planning toreturn by chartered flights should carry with them certi-ficates received within 48 hours showing that they havetested negative for COVID-19.

In the context of concerns over physical distancing inflights among fellow travellers, the idea seemed aprudent one. But opposition leaders described it as “im-practical” if not “inhuman”, as in many countries, espe-cially those in the Gulf region, obtaining such certificateswas a herculean and costly task and could dash the hopesof those wishing to return home. The case of the return-ing expatriates is, therefore, a politically sensitive issue inKerala, which has a huge expatriate population.

Health Minister K.K. Shailaja, however, said that theneed for a COVID-negative certificate for those returningby chartered flights was only a suggestion made by theState as a precautionary measure for the safety of passen-gers travelling in these flights. It was for the Centre totake a final decision on it, she said. m

PASSENGERS arriving from Jeddah by an Air India flight at Kochi International Airport on June 10.

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COVER STORY

R A J A S T H A N

THE GOVERNMENT OF RAJASTHAN, WHICHtided over a phase of political uncertainty when someattempts were allegedly made to topple the government,seems to have handled the COVID-19 situation fairlywell.

On June 10, Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot expressedconcern about the emergence of fresh cases betweenJune 1 and June 10, which he felt was caused by greaterinter-State movement in the “Unlock-1” period. He cau-tioned that the inter-State movement of people must beregulated and that people moving in and out of the Stateshould be screened. He also said that home quarantineshould be strictly followed.

The State twice faced a situation when the number ofactive cases threatened to become overwhelming, yet onboth occasions it managed to stabilise the situation. Themore recent occasion on which it managed to do so was in

the period when the lockdown restrictions were eased.On April 1, Rajasthan had 120 confirmed cases, but

the figure increased to 1,888 by April 22. The number ofactive cases increased from 117 to 1,517 in the sameperiod. After that, while new cases continued to be repor-ted, the number of recoveries neutralised the spike sothat the number of active cases remained stable. On May10, the number of active cases was down to 1,465.

In the two weeks after that, however, the number ofconfirmed cases rose from 3,814 on May 10 to 7,536 onMay 26; and the number of active cases more thandoubled to 3,090. But then again the daily recoveriescompensated for the new cases being reported. So onJune 15, there were only 2,895 active cases. This meantthat the State had achieved a 75.38 per cent recovery rateby June 15, which was way ahead of the national averageof 52.47 per cent. Also, the fatality rate (deaths as a

Stable for now The COVID-19 infection threatened to go out of control at least twice

in Rajasthan, but the government managed to retrieve the situation

each time. BY T . K . R A J A L A K S H M I

FOLK ARTISTS

perform at theJantar Mantar inJaipur after theRajasthangovernmentdecided to reopenhistoricalmonuments, fortsand museums fortourists, on June 1.

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percentage of the confirmed cases) at 2.32 per cent waslower than the national average of 2.89 per cent.

H I G H T E S T I N G R A T E S

Rajasthan has conducted 7,886 tests per million of thepopulation against 4,312 in Gujarat, 5,620 in Maha-rashtra, 6,624 in Haryana and 3,138 in Madhya Pradesh.The positivity ratio has been low as a result of hightesting. As of June 15, Rajasthan had 12,981 confirmedcases out of 6,09,296 samples tested, which gives a posit-ivity ratio of 2.13 per cent against the national positivityratio of 5.8 per cent.

COVID cases in Rajasthan seem to be more thinlyspread over a wider geographical area and are not con-centrated in a few hotspots, unlike in other States. InMadhya Pradesh, out of 10,935 cases, almost 58 per centwere concentrated in Indore and Bhopal. In Maha-rashtra, Mumbai alone accounted for almost 54 per centof the cases while Thane and Pune together accounted for28 per cent of the cases. In Gujarat, Ahmedabad accoun-ted for over 70 per cent of the cases, followed by Suratwith 11 per cent. In comparison, in Rajasthan the highestnumber of cases is in Jaipur, which accounted for 19.1 percent of the cases, followed by Jodhpur with under 17 percent, and Bharatpur and Pali at 8.16 and 6.18 per centrespectively. Udaipur, Nagaur and Kota lay between 4and 5 per cent each in terms of confirmed cases. There-fore, the cases in Rajasthan have a wider geographicalspread compared with other States where cases tend tobe concentrated in a few hotspots. This poses someunique challenges to containment.

Between May 25 and June 15, 5,681 cases were addedto the 7,300 confirmed cases that the State had on May25. This was less than the numbers added in the same

period in Haryana, even though the latter had only 1,213cases on May 25. According to the State government dataon COVID facilities in the State, there are 25,490 isola-tion beds apart from 7,028 oxygen-supported beds, 1,753ICU beds and 899 ventilators distributed among dedic-ated COVID hospitals, COVID health centres and dedic-ated COVID centres. Since the number of activeconfirmed cases never crossed 3,000, a substantial partof this infrastructure must have been organised at theexpense of possible non-COVID treatment.

Public health experts like Narendra Gupta, who ispart of the People’s Health Movement, feel that non-COVID patients were ignored in this entire period. InJaipur, for instance, the Sawai Man Singh GovernmentHospital and the ESI hospital were converted to COVIDhospitals, leaving patients suffering from other ailmentsat the mercy of private hospitals.

According to Anil Goswami, who represents the Ra-jasthan Nagrik Manch, which is a broad front of civilsociety organisations, the emergence of cases in parts ofMewar and Marwar regions might have been caused bythe return of migrant workers from Surat andAhmedabad in Gujarat. Rajasthan, which is an origin aswell as a destination State for migrants, seemed to havemixed success as far as the movement of migrants to andfrom the State was concerned. Goswami said that whilethere was a record of the migrant workers who travelledby buses and train, there was little record of those whowalked back home.

There were other problems, too. “In the Shramiktrains, there was hardly any social distancing. We werethere helping distribute food and water, and we saw thesituation,” Goswami said. He also felt that in some dis-tricts like Bundi, Pratapgarh or Ganganagar, the actualnumber of infections would not come to light as testingfacilities were not available, and the district hospitalswere in a bad shape.

“The samples of cases in Bundi district would be sentto Kota and it would take three days for results to come.Similarly, samples taken in Dholpur would be sent to atesting centre in Bharatpur. Whether the samples aresent with proper paraffin wrapping is not known. Inmany places, small private clinics are charging the moonfor treating non-COVID patients. In villages, quarantin-ing does not work. A quarantined person is allowed tograze his cattle and then return to the camp. Now thegovernment itself is saying that people should quarantinethemselves at home. The quarantine facilities are beingclosed down,” he said. The Rajasthan government, hesaid, had not yet allowed the opening up of places ofreligious worship, which was a good thing.

Rajasthan has a relatively low population density. Itscities are not as densely populated as metros like Mum-bai, Kolkata, Delhi or Ahmedabad. This might haveworked to Rajasthan’s advantage. In view of the impend-ing monsoon, the government has planned a specialawareness campaign involving health workers betweenJune 21 and June 30 in order to ensure that unlocking isaccompanied by the necessary precautions. m

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O D I S H A

AS THE FIGHT AGAINST COVID-19 GETStougher in Odisha with the number of cases almost doub-ling in the first fortnight of June, the State government isre-strategising its approach to cope with the emergingcrisis.

Although the cases are not rising at the scale wit-nessed in most other parts of the country, the administra-tion is making serious efforts to ramp up testing andreinforce restrictions in migration-prone zones to con-tain the spread of the virus.

The government said the next four to six weeks werelikely to be crucial because the number of cases was risingwith many returnee migrant workers testing positive.

The authorities said that as the majority of migrantshad returned from other States and abroad, detection of

cases could start showing a decline when the returneescompleted their quarantine period and the samples of allthose with symptoms and their close contacts weretested.

As per the government’s estimate, more than 5.5 lakhOdia migrants had returned to the State by June 15. Butgoing by the current trend, the situation is not likely toimprove soon as many migrants are still returning everyday.

The first COVID-19 positive case was detected in theState on March 15. On June 15, the total number of casesstood at 4,055, of which 1,951 cases were detected in thefirst half of June. The majority of the new cases werefound in migration-prone zones. The fight against thevirus has become tougher since at least 16 doctors and

Change in approachOdisha is re-strategising its approach to cope with the rising number

of infections by reinforcing restrictions and ramping up testing

in migration-prone zones. BY P R A F U L L A D A S

POLICE personnel enforcing theshutdown in Bhubaneswar on June 7.

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many paramedical staff deployed at various hospitals totreat returnee migrant workers have contracted theinfection.

The administration has enforced weekend shutdownuntil June 30 in 11 migration-prone districts that haverecorded the maximum number of cases. Quarantinemeasures are being enforced strictly to prevent com-munity transmission.

The Ganjam district administration has ordered thecontinuation of lockdown and weekend shutdown untilthe end of June.

The only encouraging indication is that most of thenew cases were detected in the temporary quarantinecentres where returnee migrants were sent for institu-tional quarantine with the active participation of thepanchayati raj institutions.

However, the authorities are worried about thesteady increase in cases reported in the community. Atleast 10 per cent of the cases found in the first two weeksof June belonged to the local community outside thequarantine facilities.

Although the government had announced that ag-gressive contact tracing was being carried out, more andmore local cases started emerging. The month of Junebegan with 31 of the 141 positive cases tagged as locals.The subsequent days consistently recorded infection inthe community putting the administration on a spot ofbother. Of the 1,951 positive cases detected in the firsthalf of June, 199 were local contacts.

Odisha, however, is not taking chances. When oneCOVID-19 case was found in the largest slum inBhubaneswar, samples of 250 persons belonging to thelocality were tested and all were found negative.

In a novel initiative, the government launched a spe-cial drive by engaging ASHA (accredited social healthactivist) and ANM (auxiliary nurse midwife) workers toundertake a door-to-door survey between June 16 andJuly 31 to find out if any member of any family hadsymptoms of COVID-19. The samples would be collectedand tested immediately.

Senior officials claimed that Odisha had become amodel State in managing the COVID-19 situation in thecountry with a high rate of testing and recovery and a lowmortality rate.

With importance given to detection, testing is beingconducted in 17 testing labs in 10 districts, including theRegional Medical Research Centre, Bhubaneswar. Thenumber of samples tested had crossed two lakhs by mid-June and efforts were on to ensure that all those havingsymptoms or coming in contact with infected personswere tested.

As per official date provided on June 16, the govern-ment has created a bed capacity of 7,62,345 in 16,815temporary medical centres in 6,798 gram panchayatsacross the State for quarantining returning migrants andproviding COVID health services. However, in some mi-gration-prone pockets the number of returnees out-numbered the beds at these centres, while in other areasthe beds were vacant.

Odisha is one of the States that has borne the entirecost, from testing to treatment, of COVID patients. Thisis giving the people the strength to cope with the pan-demic, and adhere to the restrictions that are in force tocontain the infection.

The State police have won the appreciation of ChiefMinister Naveen Patnaik for enforcing the lockdown andweekend shutdown and making security arrangementsat the quarantine centres, which have been declaredcontainment zones.

By June 11, the police had collected Rs.1,25,84,180 asfine from people for not wearing a mask in public places.The use of mask in public was made mandatory on April9. The police collected a fine of Rs.11,74,350 for violationof physical distancing norms. Those fined included aBharatiya Janata Party Member of Parliament and 20 ofher party workers.

Even as it was handling the health crisis, the Stategovernment devised and implemented schemes to createemployment opportunities for migrant workers and dailywagers in order to reboot the economy. It announced thecreation of 20 crore mandays under the MahatmaGandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. Atarget has been fixed for digging 1.3 lakh farm pondsunder the employment generation drive and planting 15crore saplings by August end under the afforestationprogramme.

As part of its rigorous efforts to contain the pandemic,the government urged the people to self-regulate in orderto save their family from coronavirus infection by using aface mask, maintaining physical distancing and follow-ing hand hygiene. It has to continue with its hard work tocope with the situation. m

STRANDED passengers seen outside the Bhubaneswarrailway station as city observes weekend shutdown onJune 7.

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COVER STORY

THE PANDEMIC SURGES ON UNABATED,with Latin America now becoming the epicentre. SouthAsia is not too far behind for that matter. Countries thatfailed to prepare adequately to deal with the pandemicdespite being given sufficient warning are now paying aheavy price. Only a handful of countries such as NewZealand, South Korea, Cuba, Venezuela and Vietnamhave been able to fight the virus without suffering signi-ficant numbers of casualties. By the third week of June,Brazil, India and Mexico had higher death tolls per daythan the United States. More than eight million peoplearound the world had been affected by the pandemic bymid June with around 440,000 recorded deaths. Even inthe West, the death rate is being under-reported. So far, areal accounting of the mortality rate has yet to be doneworldwide.

As far as the infection rate is concerned, India hasovertaken the United Kingdom and is now number fourafter Russia. Pakistan and Bangladesh are also witness-ing a spike in infection rates. Pakistan lifted its nationallockdown on May 9, and within a month, the infectionrate surged to over 100,000. The government is no doubtaware that the real numbers are much more. Accordingto figures released in the second week of June, at least2,400 Pakistanis have died after contracting the virus.The World Health Organisation (WHO) has putPakistan on the list of the top 10 countries where the virusis on the rampage.

P A K I S T A N

The WHO wrote to the government in Islamabadstrongly criticising its handling of the pandemic and thedecision to lift the lockdown. The WHO has recommen-ded that the lockdown be reimposed, stating that thegovernment had not met any of the criteria needed for itslifting. Experts have warned that the virus will peak inJuly/August and could claim more than a million lives.The medical infrastructure in Pakistan is in no conditionto cope with the pandemic. Very little testing is beingdone. The mortality rate among doctors is among thehighest in the region. In the first week of June, the

medical association in Punjab province reported that 40per cent of the doctors working in hospitals were infectedwith the COVID-19 virus. There are reports of medicalworkers getting assaulted on a daily basis by relatives ofCOVID-19 patients angry with the unavailability of bedsor the treatment being given.

There are only 600 beds available for intensive carepatients in a city such as Karachi that has a population ofmore than 20 million.

The WHO estimates that Pakistan, the fifth mostpopulous nation in the world, with a population of morethan 200 million, has only around 750 dedicated ventil-ators for those affected by the pandemic.

Prime Minister Imran Khan was initially reluctant toorder a lockdown, prioritising the economy over thepandemic threatening the lives of millions of citizens. Hewas, however, overruled by the military establishment.Imran Khan was of the view that a country like Pakistancould hardly afford the luxury of a lockdown, but themilitary establishment and he are now on the same page.The World Bank has projected that the country’s eco-

Soaring numbersExcept for a handful of countries, the rest of the world continues to

grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic. BY JOHN CHERIAN

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nomy will shrink by 0.2 per cent in the next fiscal year andthat more than 18 million of the country’s 74 million jobswill be lost because of the pandemic.

B A N G L A D E S H

In Bangladesh, one of the most densely populated coun-tries in the world, the pandemic has hit hard. By thesecond week of June, Bangladesh had more than 70,000recorded cases of people infected with the virus. Expertsexpect the numbers to double before the end of June. Thetesting facilities are limited. In the limited tests that wereconducted, it was found that one out of five people testedin Dhaka, the capital, turned out to be positive. Thenumber of deaths due to the pandemic has not beenproperly quantified according to health professionals inthe country and international agencies.

The country has the lowest ratio of hospital beds topatients in the world. More than 34 doctors have alreadydied from the infection. The official death toll by thesecond week of June is around a thousand, but this figurein all probability is misleading. The national lockdownordered by the government in the last week of March waslifted in the first week of June even before the pandemicshowed any signs of easing. A catastrophe seems to be inthe offing in South Asia, with countries such as Nepal toowitnessing a surge in infections.

If the situation in South Asia is dire, Latin America iscurrently worse off. Brazil has recorded more deaths thanall countries barring the U.S. Most Brazilians hold theirPresident, Jair Bolsonaro, responsible for the mess thecountry finds itself in. He is the only head of state toopenly oppose any restrictions to stop the spread of thecoronavirus. After initially dismissing the deadly newvirus as nothing more dangerous than an attack of the flu,he soon resorted to flaunting miracle cures.

In late March, taking the cue from his close ideolo-

gical friend, U.S. President Donald Trump, the BrazilianPresident touted chloroquine as the drug that would saveBrazilian lives and make the pandemic go away. “God isBrazilian. The chloroquine is right here,” he proclaimedin early March. Since then over 45,000 Brazilians havedied after contracting the coronavirus, and the dailydeath toll now is the highest in the world. The BrazilianHealth Ministry had a proven record of fighting theepidemics that hit the country in the past and had advoc-ated physical distancing and other safe practices as soonas the coronavirus surfaced. Initially, Bolsonaro too sup-ported the Ministry’s actions but then suddenly took adiametrically opposite stand. Luiz Henrique Mandetta,the Health Minister at the time, ascribed Bolsonaro’sabrupt change of stance to his prioritising economicstability over health.

A study by the Sao Paulo Medical School estimatesthat the number of COVID-19 infections in Brazil couldbe 15 times higher than the official figures being put out.Bolsonaro had ordered the mass production ofchloroquine and hydroxychloroquine in the pharmaceut-ical laboratories run by the Brazilian military. Brazil hadimported large quantities of raw material for the produc-tion of the drugs from India. According to epidemiolo-gists, the country has wasted immense resources inproducing drugs that have a minimal impact on thetreatment or curtailment of the virus. If the predictionsby the Sao Paulo Medical School are accurate, Brazilwould have had more than five million patients by theend of May.

Bolsonaro even now opposes quarantines and phys-ical distancing measures and has vociferously encour-aged his fellow citizens to carry on with life as usual. Herefuses to wear a mask and is seen every other day mixingand shaking hands with his supporters. As the deathrates started spiralling in early June, the Presidentordered the government to stop publishing comprehens-ive statistics on the number of deaths and the infectionrate of the coronavirus.

“We are sorry for all the dead, but that’s everyone’sdestiny,” the President remarked when the death ratewas soaring in the first week of June.

The Brazilian Supreme Court had to intervene andforce the Health Ministry to keep on releasing the dataregarding the scope and trajectory of the spread ofCOVID-19 in the country. Gilmar Mendes, a SupremeCourt judge, described the government’s “manipulationof statistics a tactic of totalitarian regimes”. He said that“the trick would not eventually absolve the governmentfrom an eventual genocide”.

Two eminent doctors who had served as Health Min-isters in the Federal government left office in the lastcouple of months because of unscientific diktats thatemanated from the presidency on the ways to handle theoutbreak. The new appointee as Health Minister is aserving military officer with no expertise in communic-able diseases. He promptly issued guidelines for thewidespread use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquineto treat patients.


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The President urged his supporters to stage publicprotests against State governments that have imposedlockdowns and quarantine measures while discouragingthe use of hydroxychloroquine. Eduardo Bolsonaro, thePresident’s politician son, claimed that there was a con-spiracy hatched by the left wing to downplay the efficacyof the drug in the treatment of COVID-19. “The objectiveis to demonise the medicine even though they know thatit is effective to save lives,” he said. Damares Alves, anevangelical pastor and the Minister of Human Rights,Family and Women, described hydroxychloroquine as a“miracle drug”.

All the clinical trials carried out so far have found thedrug to be ineffective in the treatment of the coronavirus.The Bolsonaro government is in fact trying to implementa “herd immunity” policy with its propagation of thechloroquine-based drugs.

The Brazilian police launched raids on the offices andhomes of Bolsonaro’s right-wing supporters who havebeen staging noisy demonstrations almost on a daily basisin major cities demanding the lifting of the lockdown andthe imposition of military rule. As the evidence of corrup-tion, mismanagement and malfeasance pile up against thePresident, his only hope for survival comes from sectionsof the Brazilian military. Eduardo Bolsonaro recentlystated that military rule was inevitable. “It is no longer anopinion about if but when it will happen,” he said.

There is suspicion that the business cronies and polit-ical associates of the President are funding these sectionsof the military. The anti-Bolsonaro protests in cities suchas Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are much bigger andspontaneous. Bolsonaro’s public approval ratings havedramatically sagged after the coronavirus devastated the

country. With the health system unable to cope and theeconomy in free fall, there have been growing demandsfor the impeachment of an incompetent President. Legis-lators have already made 35 impeachment requestsagainst him. The majority of them were submitted afterthe pandemic hit Brazil. “Having failed to unite Brazili-ans in the face of a pandemic, Bolsonaro and his govern-ment could be the first to be toppled by it,” said RobertMuggah, director of the Igarape Institute, a Brazilianthink tank. Bolsonaro is already being investigated forcorruption and electoral misconduct. The most damningcharge against him is that he poses a threat to the publichealth system in Brazil.

The President and his supporters, on the other hand,are calling for the dissolution of the Congress and theSupreme Court and for the reimposition of military ruleto deal with the growing instability. As it is, Bolsonarohas filled his Cabinet with military men, both serving andretired. There are more military men in the Cabinet nowthan there were in the two decades when the army ruledBrazil.

Augusto Heleno, a retired general serving as the Na-tional Security Adviser to the President, warned of “un-predictable consequences for national stability” after theSupreme Court let a corruption enquiry into Bolsonaro’ssupporters go forward. Bolsonaro served in the army andhas at every opportunity been praising the military’sright-wing coup of 1964.

He is the only democratically elected President tovirtually be requesting his army to stage a coup and takeover. He thinks only the army can clear the mess he hascreated in the country mainly through his disastroushandling of the pandemic. m

WAITING TO collect identity cards for aid outside a government office in Peshawar, Pakistan, on June 16.

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BRAZIL WAS THE FIRST NATION TO REGISTERa case of COVID-19 in February. Since then, the govern-ment, led by the far-right Jair Bolsonaro, has been cava-lier about the spread of the virus and the impact of thedisease. The President has minimised the severity of thevirus and has called it a “little flue” and a “cold”. Bolson-aro has mocked the media for its “hysteria” and deniedthe rising infection and death rate in his country. InMarch, he said Brazilians “never catch anything” evenwhen they dive into sewage, and that they probably havethe antibodies to halt the spread of the virus. As of thiswriting in mid-June, there are almost 900,000 con-firmed cases in Brazil with over 44,000 fatalities. Brazilhas emerged as one of the epicentres of the globalpandemic.

Rather than follow the basic protocols established bythe World Health Organisation (WHO), such as testing,contact tracing, physical distancing, and social isolationof hotspot areas, Bolsonaro dismissed the contagiousnessof the virus and encouraged his supporters to take to thestreets in mass rallies. As Governors of the variousprovinces not associated with Bolsonaro’s politics estab-lished quarantine measures, Bolsonaro fought hard toundermine them. He mocked any attempt to be seriousabout the virus and dismissed concerns as essentiallyanti-national.

Like United States President Donald Trump, Bolson-aro masqueraded as a health profes-sional, urging his Health Ministry toencourage the use of chloroquine andhydroxychlorquine as an antidote tothe disease. It is true that these anti-viral drugs are being studied for theirefficacy in fighting COVID-19, butthere is as yet no evidence that theseare viable treatment methods. Two ofBolsonaro’s Health Ministers had toexit when they disagreed with theirleader over the pandemic. Luiz Hen-rique Mandetta, a pediatric ortho-paedist, had clashed with Bolsonaroabout physical distancing and aboutthe anti-viral drugs; he was fired. His

successor, Nelson Teich, an oncologist, could not agreewith Bolsonaro on the anti-viral drugs; he lasted amonth. These doctors were replaced by EduardoPazuello, an Army General who had managed securitylogistics during the Olympics. He has no medical back-ground but is loyal to Bolsonaro. Neither Bolsonaro norPazuello has placed a comprehensive plan before thepublic to tackle the outbreak. Health officials bemoan thelack of a national strategy.

In early June, the Health Ministry took down theofficial website for a day. It was this site that had beenpublishing the COVID-19 data. When the site returnedthe next day, all the data on past COVID-19 cases hadvanished. There was simply no way of assessing anyofficial numbers on infection rates or death rates. Theopposition criticised this action, with Rodrigo Maia, alsoa politician of the right, saying on twitter that “the healthministry is trying to cover the sun with a sieve. It is urgentto restore the credibility of statistics. A ministry thatdistorts numbers creates a parallel universe to avoidfacing the reality of facts”. It took the intervention of theSupreme Court to restore the data.

Bizarrely, Bolsonaro told his supporters to “invade”hospitals and inspect the COVID-19 wards and see thatthey are largely empty. He continues to contest the num-bers of those infected. On June 4 and June 9, this is justwhat his party members and others did. They photo-

graphed the ICU wards and disruptedthe integrity of the isolation sections.“This behaviour endangers the phys-ical integrity of the brave profession-als who dedicate themselves toreversing a health care crisis unpre-cedented in the country’s history,”said Brazil’s Attorney General Au-gusto Aras. Bolsonaro sniffed at thiscriticism.

Anger and distress at Bolsonaro’sdeliberate incompetence was cap-tured by a statement made by Brazil’sformer President Luiz Inacio Lula daSilva. Speaking to CNN from hishome in Sao Paolo, Lula said that

Nightmare in BrazilJair Bolsonaro’s cavalier attitude towards the spread of COVID creates a

serious health crisis in Brazil with the country emerging as one of the

epicentres of the pandemic. BY VIJAY PRASHAD

PRESIDENT Jair Bolsonaro.

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Bolsonaro has been “irresponsible” and “negligent”.Bolsonaro, Lula said, “has committed many crimes ofirresponsibility and I think he already deserves to bepunished for that.” His punishment should be his im-peachment from office.

A U T O - C O U P ?

There is a serious political crisis in Brazil that comesalongside the health crisis. Society is polarised with a firmright-wing among considerable sections that remain be-hind Bolsonaro and are itching for a strong responseagainst Brazil’s left. Bolsonaro has indicated that he isnot averse to setting aside the country’s Constitution andbringing in the Army to govern with him. This is verychilling.

Bolsonaro filled his own Cabinet with military menand has often spoken favourably about the long period ofmilitary rule from 1964 to 1985. The Constitution pre-vents a return to military rule and makes it illegal tospeak about the suspension of democracy. Bolsonaro hasskirted the edge of legality with his statements. He, andhis Vice President, General Hamilton Mourao, are openadherents of military power. This is not a new phe-nomenon for them.

What piqued Bolsonaro was an investigation by theSupreme Court over corruption allegations against hisfamily. His former Justice Minister Sergio Moro, whoplayed a disruptable role in the case against Lula, went toprosecutors and provided an eight-hour depositionabout Bolsonaro’s attempt to interfere in this case.Leaked recordings of Bolsonaro’s conversations withMoro show that he wanted the head of the Federal Police,Mauricio Valeixo, to be replaced. When Moro refused,Bolsonaro fired Valeixo and brought in a friend of hissons, Alexandre Ramagem (of Brazilian intelligence), asthe replacement.

Even Moro, who was not above using the dirtiest

tricks against Lula, could not stomach this behaviour; heresigned. The Supreme Court would not allow the ap-pointment of Ramagem, so Bolsonaro appointedRamagem’s close associate Rolando Souza to the post.Rolando Souza came to office and removed the man whowas overseeing the investigation of Bolsonaro and hisfamily.

Bolsonaro has been regularly meeting with the milit-ary members of his Cabinet and with other military mento secure consensus that the Supreme Court is out of line.At a May protest at the court, the tone was chilling.Rumours of an “auto-coup” sizzled through the country.

F O R A B O L S O N A R O

As the lockdown began to ease, Domingo Alves of theHealth Intelligence Laboratory said, “We are sending thepopulation to a slaughterhouse. The city of Sao Paoloopens its shops today, with a rising death rate; this showsa cynicism both from the Governor of the state of SaoPaolo and now from the city’s mayor.”

A hashtag began in Brazil, #ficaemcasa or #StayHo-me,to urge Brazilians not to listen to the frivolous anddangerous statements from Bolsonaro. The only reasonto go out has been to join the protests against the callouspolicy of the government and its threats of a militarycoup. Residents of the cities on occasion go out on theirbalconies and bang pots and pans–a panelço–to call forBolsonaro’s impeachment.

The slogan is Bolsonaro Out–Fora Bolsonaro. An-other campaign, initiated by the economist EduardoMoreira, emerged with the hashtag #Somes70porcent or#WeAre70percent, reflecting a majority that seems to beagainst Bolsonaro’s handling of the crisis.

Protests against Bolsonaro, however, have been metwith rising right-wing violence.

This reflects the uneven polarisation in the country,with the right-wing eager to escalate any demonstrationinto violence precisely because it does not command amajority of the population. m

AT A CROWDED market in Rio de Janeiro on June 17.

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INDIA & CHINA

FOR the first time in 45 years, asizeable number of Indian soldierswere killed in the line of duty alongthe Line of Actual Control (LAC), thede facto border between India andChina. The Indian Army confirmedin a statement on June 16 that 20Indian soldiers, including a seniorofficer, were killed in the altercationand violence that took place in thedisputed Galwan Valley in theLadakh sector.

The statement emphasised thatthere were many casualties on theother side too, but there has so farbeen no confirmation from thePeople’s Liberation Army (PLA)about deaths and injuries on theChinese side. A few critically injuredIndian soldiers remain in hospital.Ten soldiers whom the PLA hadtaken prisoner were released on June18.

The Indian Army said that theincident happened even as the “de-escalation” process was going on inthe area. The PLA’s version is thatIndian forces illegally crossed theLAC in the dead of night in contra-vention of the agreement reached onJune 6 between senior commandersof the two armies.

The PLA issued a statement put-ting all the blame on the IndianArmy. “The Indian Army broke theirpromise and once again crossed theLine of Actual control to engage inillegal activities,” it said. “They delib-erately launched a provocative as-sault, leading to an intense physicalclash that caused death and injury.”

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Line of conflict The Galwan Valley incident, one of the most serious confrontations

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disrupt the bilateral relations forged over a few decades. BY J O H N C H E R I A N


other side was responsible for trig-gering the confrontation. Althoughno bullets were fired, the June 15incident is one of the most seriousconfrontations between India andChina since the disastrous 1962 war.Interestingly, it was China that firstlodged a complaint about the incid-ent. Vikram Misri, the Indian Am-bassador to Beijing, was called to theForeign Ministry for a meeting withChinese Vice Foreign Minister LuoZhaohui to discuss the issue.

Indian External Affairs MinisterS. Jaishankar and Chinese ForeignMinister Wang Yi had a telephonicconversation later. Following thediscussion, the blame game contin-ued. Jaishankar said that China wasresponsible for “the violence and thecasualties” and urged Beijing “to re-assess its actions and take correctivesteps”.

Wang said that it was the Indianmilitary’s “violent” and “adventurousconduct” that had led to the unto-ward incident. He urged the Indiangovernment to “strictly control” its“front-line troops and immediatelycease all provocative actions”.

Addressing the nation on televi-sion on June 18, Prime Minister Nar-endra Modi vowed that the sacrificesof the dead soldiers “would not be invain”. He said that the countrywanted “peace but if provoked, Indiais capable of giving a befitting reply”.However, since the June 15 clash,both sides have committed them-selves to disengaging their militaryforces from close proximity along thedisputed borders.

At the same time, the Indian gov-ernment is encouraging calls for theboycott of Chinese goods and ser-vices.

According to reports, instruc-tions have been given to the telecomsector and the Railways to cancelcontracts with Chinese companies.Most Indian political commentators,former diplomats and retired Armyofficers are calling on the govern-ment to formally junk its non-aligned policy and join the UnitedStates-led military alliance againstChina.

Tensions along the LAC had star-ted escalating dramatically from the

first week of May after Indian andChinese soldiers had a serious phys-ical confrontation on the shores ofthe Pangong Tso (lake) situated at analtitude of 4,200 metres. Both sidesconsider the disputed area strategic-ally important and have been com-peting with one another in recentyears to create new facts on theground. In the next couple of days,there were reportedly three morephysical encounters between the twosides.

Three of the clashes took placealong the de facto border separatingLadakh from Aksai Chin. The otherclash took place more than 2,000kilometres away in Naku La alongthe Sikkim-Tibet border. After theseincidents in May, both the IndianArmy and the PLA had moved troopsforward all along the 3,488-km-longdisputed boundary that the twocountries share.

The situation along the easternLadakh border calmed down afterbrigade-level talks were heldbetween PLA and Indian Army com-

manders on June 6. After this meet-ing, the Ministry of External Affairsspokesperson said that the two sideswould keep on talking “to ensurepeace and tranquillity in the borderareas”.

At the same time, Indian officialssaid that the Indian Army wouldcontinue to exert its militarystrength at the field level until itreached an acceptable agreementwith China. Speaking to an Indiannews agency on June 12, GeneralM.M. Naravane, Chief of the ArmyStaff, expressed the hope thatthrough “continued dialogue all per-ceived differences will be set to rest”.The Indian Army chief had emphas-ised that the situation along the LAC“is under control”. Three days later,on June 15, the bloodiest confronta-tion in 45 years happened. Both sidescontinue to talk of de-escalation, butat the same time, they have beenblaming each other for the GalwanValley incident.

The PLA had altered the statusquo in eastern Ladakh, including in

the Galwan Valley where the latestclash took place. In the statementissued after the bloody clash, thePLA claimed that the “sovereignty ofthe Galwan Valley always belongedto China”. The India has strenuouslycontested this assertion, but Chinahad refused to discuss withdrawalfrom the area, claiming that it alwayshad control over the mountainranges on the banks of the Galwanriver. The Indian military post inGalwan was the first to fall to thePLA in the 1962 war. Now, with thePLA dominating the valley, it hasstrategic control over the Darbuk-Shyok-Daulat Beg Oldi road thatconnects Leh to the Karakoram Passarea.

The External Affairs Ministrysaid in a statement issued on June 16that the Chinese side had broken the“consensus” that was arrived at afterthe meeting between the senior armycommanders from both the sides onJune 6 to maintain the “status quo”in the Galwan Valley.

Just days before the bloody con-frontation, Sun Weidong, China’sAmbassador to India, said that hewas hopeful of a diplomatic solutionand highlighted the efforts of the two

countries to jointly fight thecoronavirus pandemic. In fact, theinternational community was sur-prised that the two countries wereconfronting each other militarily inthe midst of a global pandemic. TheChinese Foreign Ministry also issueda statement saying that actions werebeing taken by both the sides to“ameliorate the border situation”.

According to the reports appear-ing in the Indian media, after theJune 6 talks both sides had startedwithdrawing to their earlier posi-tions in the Galwan and Hot Springsareas and that the Chinese troopswere staying put only along theshores of the Pangong Tso such asthe Finger 4 area claimed by India.(The mountain folds around the 134-km-long lake are referred to in milit-ary jargon as fingers.)

It is well known that the two sideshave differing perceptions of wherethe LAC passes through in the Pan-gong Tso area. India asserts that theLAC starts at Finger 8, while Chinaclaims that it starts at Finger 2,which is under Indian control.

The PLA has also established apresence along the road to DaulatBeg Oldi, situated besides the

Karakoram Pass, a de facto trijunc-tion between China, Pakistan andIndia. The all-weather 225-km sec-tion of the road, which India finishedconstructing in 2019, is situated just20 km from the Karakoram Pass.The new road will help the IndianArmy move soldiers and heavyweaponry quickly to areas to which itdid not have easy access earlier. Be-sides beefing up the road and railnetwork along the LAC in a bid tokeep up with the infrastructure de-velopment on the other side, the In-dian Army has raised two newMountain Divisions, each with astrength of 15,000 troops, capable oflaunching quick-reaction ground of-fensives against the PLA.

B I G D E F E N C E B U D G E T S

China and India have the second andthird biggest defence budgets in theworld. According to the StockholmInternational Peace Research Insti-tute, in 2019 China spent $261 bil-lion on defence and India spent $71billion. The U.S., in contrast, spent$732 billion on defence last year. TheU.S. Congress is preparing to passthe Forging Operational Resistanceto Chinese Expansion Act that willauthorise an additional $43 billionin defence spending. The Pentagonhas again shifted from its “war onterror” strategy to “great powercompetition”.

The PLA was conducting milit-ary exercises in the border region be-fore the events in May. When thePLA made its move on the LAC inApril this year, the Indian Army wasapparently caught by surprise andwas heavily outnumbered. Accord-ing to Indian military sources, thePLA has effectively taken control of60 sq. km of disputed land in the areathat is claimed by India. Home Min-ister Amit Shah continues to vehe-mently deny that there has been anyloss of Indian territory under Modi’swatch. While addressing a virtualelection rally for the upcoming elec-tions in West Bengal, Amit Shahcompared India to the U.S. and Is-rael. He said that like these twocountries that he perceived as hisrole models India knew how to de-fend itself. Divisional commanders

ARMY PERSONNEL pay tribute to the mortal remains of jawans of theBihar regiment killed in Ladakh’s Galwan Valley, at Jaiprakash NarayanAirport in Patna on June 18.

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of the two armies continue to holdtalks on a regular basis to amicablyresolve the issue.

The Chinese side admitted lastmonth itself that the clashes alongthe LAC were triggered by India’sconstruction of a road in the Galwanriver valley, an area bounded byLadakh on one side and Aksai Chinon the other. One of the main reasonsfor the 1962 war was India’s claimover the Aksai Chin area. After thewar China had started constructingthe Xinjiang-Tibet road to connectits two remote provinces. This road iseven more important to China todayas it connects to the China PakistanEconomic Corridor (CPEC), an im-portant component of its ambitiousBelt Road Initiative (BRI), in whichChina has invested more than $60billion. India and the U.S. are theonly two notable critics of the BRI.Beijing believes that the two coun-tries are plotting to undermine ma-jor components of the BRI such asthe CPEC.

Chinese commentators naturallyput the blame on India for the rise intensions along LAC. “According tothe Chinese military, it is Indiawhich forced its way into the GalwanValley. So, India is changing thestatus quo along the LAC,” said LongXingchun, president of the ChengduInstitute of World Affairs. The latestincidents along the LAC are the mostserious since the Doklam standoffbetween the two militaries that las-ted more than two months in 2017.India had rushed troops to theBhutan-China border to stop thePLA from building a road there.China was taken by surprise by theIndian Army’s move, which camejust before Prime Minister Modi andthe President Xi Jinping were tomeet at a BRICS (Brazil, Russia, In-dia, China and South Africa) summitin China.

After the face-off ended, the PLAremains ensconced in an all-weatherpermanent military complex in Dok-lam. Modi had met with Xi in Wuhanin April 2018 to defuse tensionsalong the LAC and put bilateral rela-tions back on track after the Doklamepisode. The two leaders solemnlyagreed not to jeopardise their core

national interests. China expectedIndia to stay away from militarygroupings and alliances aimed at de-railing its peaceful rise to super-power status. Modi stuck to thescript for some time, talking aboutthe need for India to retain strategicautonomy in foreign affairs and stay-ing away from military alliances. Butsoon after, India further deepened itsstrategic alliance with the U.S. byagreeing to a series of defence agree-ments, including the Logistics Ex-change Memorandum ofAgreement, which gives U.S. forcesaccess to Indian military bases.

In the first week of June, Indiasigned an agreement with Australiagiving that country a similar militarybasing agreement. The Modi govern-ment is negotiating a similar agree-ment with Japan. India has becomeopenly supportive of the U.S. stanceon the South China Sea. India hasalso strengthened relations withTaiwan, which China considers abreakaway province. Under theModi government, India has beentransforming itself into a virtualfront-line state in the military stra-tegic offensive that the U.S. has de-cided to launch against China. ThePentagon is now giving more im-portance to India than it does to thecountries in the North AtlanticTreaty Organisation militaryalliance.

T R I F U R C A T I O N O F J A M M U A N D

K A S H M I R

The Indian government’s decision tochange the constitutional status ofJammu and Kashmir had come in forstrong criticism from China. Incid-ents along the Ladakh sector of theLAC have increased since the Modigovernment unilaterally changed thestatus of Jammu and Kashmir lastyear and converted Ladakh into aseparate Union Territory. A map theIndian government published lastNovember after the trifurcation ofthe State shows Aksai Chin as part ofIndian-administered Ladakh.

Senior leaders of the BharatiyaJanata Party openly talked of recap-turing the Pakistan-administeredpart of Kashmir along with the Gil-git-Baltistan area through which the

CPEC passes. Amit Shah made astatement to this effect in Parliamentlast November. In the new map, theIndian government also included thedisputed Kalapani area claimed byNepal as part of its territory, dramat-ically reopening a festering territ-orial dispute with anotherneighbour. The government in Kath-mandu claimed at the time that theGovernment of India had with onecartographic stroke stolen 2 per centof Nepalese territory.

After the recent incidents alongthe LAC, the Donald Trump admin-istration, which has seemed keen ontriggering a new cold war with Chinafor some time, was quick to issuestatements branding China as an ag-gressor. Alice G. Wells, the U.S. StateDepartment’s top official for SouthAsia, said that China was using thesame tactics it used to make territ-orial gains in the South China Sea. Ina statement issued in May, shetermed the Chinese behaviour “asprovocative and disturbing”. Shesaid that at the end of the day it

would only be the U.S. that wouldstand with India against “the con-stant Chinese probing of Indian sov-ereignty”. Nicholas Burns, a formerU.S. diplomat who had played a key

role in the signing of the India-U.S.nuclear deal and the forging of closemilitary ties between the two coun-tries, said that India and the U.S.should work together to force an “au-

thoritarian” China to follow “the ruleof law”.

During the Doklam crisis, theTrump administration had poin-tedly refrained from supporting In-dia and had asked for an earlysettlement of the issue. This time, theTrump administration is pointedlyasking India to take an uncomprom-ising stand on the border impassewith China.

President Donald Trump, to thesurprise of the Indian establish-ment, offered to mediate in the “ra-ging border dispute” along the LACin the last week of May and claimedthat he was in touch with the govern-ments of India and China. He alsotold the media that he had a talk withModi on the issue and that the In-dian Prime Minister was “not in agood mood because of what is goingon with China”. Both India andChina were quick to issue state-ments saying that they would resolvetheir issues bilaterally and that therewas no need for any third-party ar-bitration.

Indian officials were quick todeny at the time that Modi had askedTrump to mediate or had, for thatmatter, spoken to him on the issue.But the two leaders did speak to oneother a few days later, on June 2. TheIndian side admitted that the recentincidents on the border and the con-troversy generated by the Trump ad-ministration on the functioning ofthe World Health Organisationfigured in the discussions. After theJune 15 incident, the U.S. State De-partment said that it was “closelymonitoring” the situation. “Both In-dia and China have expressed a de-sire to de-escalate, and we support apeaceful resolution to this dispute,”the statement said.

Modi has accepted Trump’s in-vitation to attend the G7 summit heproposes to host as a special invitee.China has been excluded from thesummit despite being the secondbiggest economy globally. Trumpwants to create a new G12 that willinclude India and Russia.

The Russian Foreign Ministrysaid that it made no sense for such agrouping to be created if China wasnot part of it. m

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A CONVOY on the Manali-Leh highway on June 19.

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AN ARMY CONVOY moves along the Srinagar-Leh National highway inKashmir’s Ganderbal district on June 17.


POLITICS

EXPECTATIONS were highamong the political class as well asobservers when Prime Minister Nar-endra Modi broke with his own con-ventions and called for an all-partymeeting on June 19 with the pro-fessed objective of discussing theface-off with China at the Galwanvalley in eastern Ladakh, which ledto the killing of 20 Indian soldiersand grievous injuries to many more.Throughout his six-year-long re-gime, in two terms, Modi has beendistinctively antipathetic to the ideaof conversing with the oppositionand building a consensus, whetherthrough formally convened all-partymeetings or through informalconsultations.

Even in exceptional crisis situ-ations such as the COVID-19 pan-demic, the Prime Minister hassystematically ignored appeals, espe-cially from opposition parties, forconsultations across political andideological barriers. The manner inwhich he stayed away from a formalall-party meeting in February 2019,following the dastardly Pulwamaterror attack in which 40 Indianparamilitary personnel were killed,put the stamp on the approach thatModi has evolved in relation tobroad-based consultations.

Thus, when the initial calls wentout for the June 19 meeting, therewas a sense that the Prime Ministerand his government had taken theeastern Ladakh face-off with China

with extra seriousness. As many as23 parties were invited to the onlinevideoconference, including 15 be-longing to the opposition.

Its formal outcome, as recordedby several agencies and media for-ums, including the publicity depart-ments of the Union government, wasthat all parties asserted the sover-eignty and integrity of India and ex-pressed solidarity with the IndianArmy and the government in its mil-itary and diplomatic battle againstthe country’s “superpower” neigh-bour. At its core, this outcome under-scored the commitment of theIndian political class as a whole tothe national interest.

However, very many nuances re-lating to the gathering, including themanner in which it was conducted,the evident mismatch in the posi-tions adopted by the Prime Ministerin the meeting and the one advancedby the Minister of External Affairsearlier, the studied indifference topointed questions about the Galwanface-off, all once again laid bare thefact that the conclave was not backedby any real intent or conviction abouthaving broad-based consultationsand building consensus. Almost allthe trappings of the meeting and itsdetails in terms of presentation andstructuring were marked by diver-sionary manoeuvres, accompaniedby emotive rhetoric, both key fea-tures of the Modi style of governance.In the process, Modi and his minis-

terial colleagues seemed to turn up-side down the very nature of theconflict that has built up in easternLadakh since early May.

D I V E R S I O N A R Y T A C T I C

Consider this: making his first directstatement on the happenings in east-ern Ladakh, the Prime Ministerstated categorically that India didnot lose any territory to China in re-cent months. “Neither have they in-truded into our border, nor has anypost been taken over by them.Twenty of our jawans were martyred,but those who dared Bharat Mata,they were taught a lesson.”

Accentuating the emotional quo-tient, Modi went on to add: “Today,we possess the capability that no onecan eye one inch of our land. India’sarmed forces have the capability tomove into multiple sectors at onego.... Till now, those who were neverquestioned or stopped, now ourjawans stop them and warn them atmultiple sectors. Our Army has beenmonitoring even those areas whichwere not attended to earlier at theIndia-China border.... Whether it isdeployment, action, counter-ac-tion… air, land or sea, whatever ourarmed forces have to do to protectour country they will do.”

Modi chose to speak at the fagend of the conference, after which itwas declared closed. So, there was noopportunity to seek clarifications onhis pronouncements. Before Modi’s

Crisis of leadership If the June 19 all-party videoconference raised hopes that the

government had come around to engaging opposition parties in the

handling of the border crisis with China, the way in which the Prime

Minister brushed aside questions raised by the opposition showed that

nothing had changed. BY V E N K I T E S H R A M A K R I S H N A N .

concluding speech, Defence Minis-ter Rajnath Singh and Minister ofExternal Affairs S. Jaishankarbriefed the conference. This was fol-lowed by interventions by severalleaders, including Congress presid-ent Sonia Gandhi and Chief Minis-ters Uddhav Thackeray(Maharashtra) and Nitish Kumar(Bihar).

A glaring characteristic of Modi’sfinal intervention was that it wascompletely at variance with what Ex-ternal Affairs Minister S. Jaishankarhad recorded in his interaction withhis Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi,on June 17. In that interaction, S.Jaishankar had said that Chinesetroops had sought to erect a structurein Galwan valley on the Indian sideof the Line of Actual Control (LAC).He also recalled that in the meetingof senior military commanders heldon June 6, an agreement was reachedon de-escalation and disengagementalong the LAC.

A statement issued by the Min-istry of External Affairs (MEA) afterthat interaction said: “Ground com-manders were meeting regularly toimplement this consensus through-out the last week. While there wassome progress, the Chinese sidesought to erect a structure in Galwanvalley on our side of the LAC. Whilethis became a source of dispute, theChinese side took premeditated and

planned action that was directly re-sponsible for the resulting violenceand casualties. It reflected an intentto change the facts on ground in viol-ation of all our agreements to notchange the status quo.”

A day before this, on June 16,MEA spokesperson Anurag Srivast-ava said that the Chinese side had“departed from the consensus to re-spect the LAC in the Galwan valley”.He asserted that India was clear thatall its activities were always withinthe Indian side of the LAC. “We ex-pect the same of the Chinese side,” hesaid.

The import of all these state-ments and the give-and-takebetween the Foreign Ministers was,clearly, that incursions and violentengagements had taken place, ac-companied by disputes about occu-pation of territories. But, in the June19 conference, Modi’s contentionwas that “neither has anyone in-truded into Indian territory nor hasanyone captured any military posts”.So, what was the whole sequence ofevents that led to the killing of 20Indian soldiers?

C L E V E R W O R D P L A Y

Even a cursory analysis of Modi’sstatement would expose the cleverplay on words. His claim is that noone has intruded into Indian territ-ory. Indeed, the LAC is Line of Actual

Control and does not literally comeunder international border specifica-tions. Thus, the region where theface-off took place is not exactly In-dian territory. The second part of hisstatement says that no one has cap-tured any Indian military posts. Thisis also in keeping with this tactic ofobfuscation because there are noposts to be captured in the face-offregion.

The defence expert and colum-nist Colonel (Retd) Ajai Shukla ques-tioned Modi’s contentions onTwitter: “Did I see prime minister@narendramodi redrawing theSino-Indian border on TV today?Modi said nobody entered Indianterritory. Has he conceded to Chinathe Galwan River valley and Fingers4-8 in Pangong Tso -- both on ourside of the LAC -- and where Chinesetroops now sit. If, as @naren-dramodi said today, nobody enteredIndian territory, what is all the fussabout? Why the military-to-militarydialogue, why the diplomatic talks,why the military disengagement,why the deaths of 20 soldiers?Twenty Indian soldiers gave up theirlives while evicting Chinese in-truders from Indian territory. ButModi says nobody entered Indianterritory. Then where did these sol-diers die? Is Modi saying – like Chinais saying – that they crossed intoChina? Was Prime Minister @nar-

PRIME MINISTER Narendra Modi’s all-party videoconference. Also seen in the photograph are (clockwise from top right)Congress president Sonia Gandhi, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Union Home Minister Amit Shah,Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.

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endramodi knowingly dissembling?Or was he incorrectly briefed? Ordoes the government believe it cansay anything and get away with it inthis post-truth world?”

Responding to similar questionson a television debate, the BharatiyaJanata Party (BJP) leader Rajiv Pra-tap Rudy squarely branded anybodyraising questions on a statementmade by the Prime Minister as anti-national. “Many things may havebeen said by many people, includingexperts and senior officials of thegovernment and the Army at differ-ent points of time. But when thePrime Minister makes an official an-nouncement, that is the final word.Anybody who disputes that is insult-ing the country, doing a great na-tional disservice,” he argued.

However, defence experts likeShukla and a number of retiredsenior Army officers are of the viewthat Modi’s obfuscation and word-play are working against the nationalinterest on the Sino-Indian border. Aformer Lieutenant General toldFrontline: “That is the real nationaldisservice. In one stroke, the PrimeMinister has given up a positionstrongly maintained by successivegovernments India has had since In-dependence and given superior cre-dence to the Chinese position.”

Q U E S T I O N S R A I S E D

B Y O P P O S I T I O N

Political leaders, including Com-munist Party of India (Marxist) gen-eral secretary Sitaram Yechury,Congress leader Manish Tewari andAam Aadmi Party (AAP) RajyaSabha member Sanjay Singh ques-tioned Modi’s contention. SanjaySingh said: “Has India dropped itsclaim on the Galwan Valley? If Chinahas not occupied our territory thenwhat are we discussing with China?”Yechury said: “Then there is no con-flict? Why have our brave soldiersbeen martyred? Why this all-partymeeting? This blatant obfuscation ofthe real picture is yet another act ofcriminal cover-up by the Modi gov-ernment. It may give the ruling dis-pensation some temporary reprieve,but the doubts are real and are boundto come back to haunt the country

sooner than later. So, the raising ofquestions would continue.”

Manish Tewari, too, flagged theimportance of continuing to raisequestions. He did so after Modi con-cluded the all-party onference withhis “final intervention”. Earlier in theday, Modi and his associates com-pletely bypassed and brushed asideCongress president Sonia Gandhi’spointed questions with utter disreg-ard. Asserting that her party hadsome specific questions for the gov-ernment, she had said: “On whichdate did the Chinese troops intrudeinto our territory in Ladakh? Whendid the government find out aboutthe Chinese transgressions into ourterritory? Was it on May 5th, as re-ported, or earlier? Does the govern-ment not receive, on a regular basis,satellite pictures of the borders of ourcountry? Did our external intelli-gence agencies not report any un-usual activity along the LAC? Did themilitary intelligence not alert thegovernment about the intrusion andthe build-up of massive forces alongthe LAC, whether on the Chineseside or on the Indian side? In thegovernment’s considered view, wasthere a failure of intelligence?”

She went on to add that the gov-ernment had kept everyone in the

dark about many crucial aspects ofthe crisis and that it should have con-vened the all-party meeting immedi-ately after May 5 when it gotinformation about the Chinesebuild-up on the border. “The entirecountry would like an assurance thatthe status quo ante would be restoredand China will revert back to the ori-ginal position on Line of Actual Con-trol,” she said. Modi and hiscolleagues did not respond to any ofpertinent questions and points sheraised. However, many leaders of theruling National Democratic Alliancewelcomed her assertion that “the en-tire nation fully supported the gov-ernment in the steps to defendIndia’s territorial integrity”.

D E N I A L M O D E

Before the June 19 conference,former Congress president RahulGandhi raised pointed queries onTwitter asking why Indian soldierswho were killed were unarmed onthe China border. “How dare Chinakill our UNARMED soldiers? Whywere our soldiers sent UNARMEDto martyrdom?” he asked in histweets. Unlike the indifference thatwas meted out to Sonia Gandhi’squestions in the conference, RahulGandhi’s drew a response from

EXTERNAL AFFAIRS MINISTER S. Jaishankar with his Chinesecounterpart Wang Yi during a meeting in New York in September 2019.

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Jaishankar: “All troops on borderduty always carry arms, especiallywhen leaving post. Those at Galwanon 15 June did so. Long-standingpractice (as per 1996 & 2005 agree-ments) not to use firearms duringface-offs.”

The courtesy that Jaishankarshowed in engaging with RahulGandhi, was, however, an exceptionrather than the rule. Apart from thesequence of events over the May-June period, there are several in-stances showing how the Modi re-gime has systematically ignoredspecific pointers and warnings aboutChina-India border issues.

P O I N T E R S N O T H E E D E D

The fate of the 2018 parliamentaryStanding Committee’s report afterthe Doklam crisis of 2017 is a case inpoint. The report titled “Sino-IndiaRelations Including Doklam, BorderSituation and Cooperation in Inter-national Organisations” was submit-ted to Parliament in September2018. The committee, chaired byCongress Member of ParliamentShashi Tharoor, had stressed theneed for a comprehensive border en-gagement encompassing the opera-tions and functioning of the IndianArmy and China’s People’s Libera-tion Army (PLA), subsuming all es-tablished mechanisms forconfidence-building, including bor-der personnel’s meetings, flag meet-ings, meetings of the WorkingMechanism for Consultation andCoordination on border affairs(WMCC) and other diplomatic chan-nels. The report underscored that itwould always be better to have asense of “healthy scepticism” whiledealing with China and had ex-pressed discontent over the neigh-bouring country’s “deliberateencirclement policy of India”.

The report also pointed out thatChina kept the border and LAC dis-putes alive in order to throw India offbalance whenever it desired: “In somany respects the track record ofChina does not inspire confidence inthe Committee. The Committeewould therefore strongly desire thatIndia should prevail upon China toensure that application of the prin-

ciples arrived at are given due respectand adhered to and that sanctity ofthe process should be scrupulouslymaintained by China.” It expressedconcern that Chinese infrastructurebuilt uncomfortably close to the tri-junction had not been dismantledand stressed the importance ofbuilding better ties, in this context,with other neighbouring countries.

“Despite the Ministry’s ambival-ence on whether this reflects somesort of a deliberate encirclementpolicy of India by China, the Com-mittee would be inclined to see it asnothing less than a veiled contain-ment policy. Therefore, it is imperat-ive that India should urgently takeup the business of re-energising itsties with our neighbouring countries.It is clear that we now have to con-tend with the possibility of some ofthe countries in our neighbourhoodplaying the China card as leverage intheir relations with us,” the reportsaid. In October 2017, Jaishankar,who was then Foreign Secretary, ap-peared twice before the panel, whichhad Rahul Gandhi, the NationalistCongress Party’s (NCP) Supriya Suleand the BJP’sFeroz Varun Gandhi,Raghav Lakhanpal and SwapanDasgupta as members.

Jaishankar deposed before thepanel that there had been “constantactivity in many sectors every year”.Making a specific reference to theLadakh sector, he said that in thecase of Pangong Tso, this was a lakewhere the two countries’ respectiveperceptions of each other’s Line ofActual Control did not coincide. “It islike a long lake. They believe the lineis here; we believe the line is there.So, there is an overlapping area ofdispute in terms of what each partysays,” he said.

Clearly, what the world has wit-nessed unfold in eastern Ladakh wasnot unexpected or unforeseen. Therewere sufficient pointers and warn-ings. But, in an individualistic pur-suit of defence and foreign policies,essentially dictated and controlledby the Prime Minister, these werenot addressed properly.

What took place in the June 19meeting, and also the run-up to it,has exposed several fault lines of the

Modi government and its approachto governance on a range of issues,including management of defencematters and diplomacy. The conductof the meeting once again high-lighted the Modi government’spathetic record in terms of engagingwith the opposition in accordancewith the principles of democracy.

The omission of parties such asthe AAP and the Rashtriya JanataDal (RJD) from the conference un-derscored the impertinence withwhich the government treats import-ant opposition parties. The AAP isthe ruling party in the national cap-ital of Delhi and the principal oppos-ition in Punjab. The RJD is theprincipal opposition in Bihar, whichhas borders with Nepal, the countrywhich has recently developed ten-sions in its relations with India and isclosely associated with the currentChinese leadership. Evidently, omit-ting both these parties was bad polit-ics and bad diplomacy.

Cumulatively, what all theseomissions and commissions exposestarkly is the resounding crisis ofleadership that India is goingthrough. A closer inspection of thepolicies and governance measureshave time and again revealed thatthis crisis of leadership has existedright through the first five years ofthe Modi government. But thesecond term, which followed a biggermajority for Modi and his party inthe May 2019 general election, hasbeen marked by an alarming descentto what could well be described asplummeting to the nadir.

Not just the developments ineastern Ladakh, but the colossalmessing up of the handling of theCOVID crisis, causing immeasurablehardships to the poor and the mar-ginalised, especially lakhs of migrantworkers hailing from northern andeastern India, and the manner inwhich Nepal, hitherto a neighbour oflong-standing friendliness, adoptedopenly adversarial diplomatic pos-tures have all underscored this phe-nomenal plunge in terms ofleadership. The still unexplained tra-gic happenings in Galwan and Pan-gong Tso have aggravated a sense offoreboding. m


boundary of Nepal. But Nepal andIndia have different interpretationsabout the source of the river. Nepalinsists that the river emerges fromLimpiyadhura while India claimsthat it starts from Lipulekh. The dis-puted land lies in between thebranches of the two rivers.

However, it is also a fact that thestrategic areas of Limpiyadhura andKalapani have been under effectiveIndian control since the 1962 India-China war. The Nepalese monarchy,in a show of solidarity with the In-dian government, had allowed theIndian Army to take over the areas asit confronted the Chinese army in theconflict. In those days, Nepal’s de-fence policy was virtually supervisedfrom Delhi.

The ground realities in Nepalhave considerably changed in the last

decade. The ruling Communist Partyis no longer willing to bend to diktatsfrom Delhi on issues pertaining to itssovereignty. The statement of the In-dian Army chief, General ManojMukund Naravane, that Nepal’s ob-jections to the construction of theroad were at “someone else’s behest”ignited a furore in Nepal. GeneralNaravane was implying that Chinawas instigating Nepal to take an ag-gressive diplomatic stand against In-dia on the issue. To add fuel to thefire, Uttar Pradesh Chief MinisterYogi Adityanath warned Nepalileaders to “remember whathappened to Tibet”.

Nepal’s Defence Minister, Ish-war Pokhrel, described the IndianArmy chief’s comments as an insultto the thousands of Nepali soldiersfighting in the Indian army. Accord-

ing to many Nepalese commentat-ors, China was, in fact, in favour ofthe Indian road as it would improvecross-border trade between the twocountries. There was palpable disap-pointment in Kathmandu thatBeijing had failed to raise objectionsto a road being built through “dis-puted” territory.

China’s People’s LiberationArmy (PLA) had objected to Indianroad-building in eastern Ladakh andother areas along the Line of ActualControl (LAC) but was silent on theIndian Army-built road leading tothe trading post of Lipulekh. Nepalhad objected to the 2015 India-China agreement that had opened upthe Lipulekh pass for bilateral tradewithout its consent. Beijing views thedispute between India and Nepal asa purely bilateral one and has refused

INDIA AND NEPAL

THE Narendra Modi govern-ment faces another challenge on itsnorthern borders, adding to its prob-lems in its immediate neighbour-hood. In the second week of May, theNepalese government strongly pro-tested against the construction of aHimalayan road by the Indian Armythrough an area that Kathmanduconsiders a “disputed zone”. The 80-km “link road” that was inauguratedon May 8 by Defence Minister Ra-jnath Singh, lies at a three-way junc-tion where the borders of India,Nepal and China intersect.

The new road, besides consider-ably shortening the distance for pil-grims going to Kailash-Mansarovar,is also meant to help boost Sino-In-dian trade. It will be the shortest andmost feasible trade route betweenthe two countries. The trading postin Lipulekh was one of the first to beestablished between the two coun-tries. While inaugurating the road,Rajnath Singh said that it was im-portant to the nation for “strategic,religious and trade” reasons.

What evidently irked theNepalese government was the publi-city the Indian government gave thenew road. The opposition parties aswell as rivals of Nepalese Prime Min-ister K.P. Sharma Oli within the rul-

ing Communist Party, were quick toseize upon the issue of the new In-dian road passing through territorythat Nepal haslaid a claim to. Nepalhas insisted for long that the areas ofLimpiyadhura, Kalapani and Lip-

ulekh have historically been part ofthe country and were recognised assuch in the 1816 Sugauli treatysigned with the British colonial ad-ministration. Under the treaty, theKali river is specified as the western

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NEPAL’S Foreign Minister PradeepGyawali during an interview with theAssociated Press in Kathmandu onJune 9. On June 13, Nepal’sParliament approved a ConstitutionalAmendment to change the nation’smap that includes territory claimed byboth Nepal and India.

Ties on testNepal redraws its western border with India on map following

differences over a road that India has built in what Nepal

maintains is a “disputed” zone. BY J O H N C H E R I A N


JAMMU AND KASHMIR

THE Kashmiri diaspora, so farseen as a politically inconsequentialand scattered community, is makingserious efforts to organise itself andlaunch a sustainable, multiple stake-holder-led campaign against theNarendra Modi government’s polit-ical incursions in the Kashmir Val-ley. The diaspora played a significantrole in highlighting the post-August5 excesses in Jammu and Kashmir,after the State’s semi-autonomousstatus was revoked. As the Kashmirissue set a feverish debate the worldover, with major members of Parlia-ment and rights bodies condemningModi’s “muscular policies” vis-a-visthe disputed valley, the diaspora be-lieves the time is now ripe to counterthe well-oiled Hindutva machinerythat has long dominated the narrat-ive abroad.

Soon after August 5, Majid Butt,Wajahat Dedmari, Nadeem Reshi,

Art Ashai, Zeeshan Khan and Eht-isham Ashai among other KashmiriAmericans geared up to internation-alise the clampdown imposed by thegovernment on Kashmir and thehealth care and economic exigenciesit entailed. They held back-to backmeetings with Senators and mem-bers of the House of Representativesin the United States.

They were instrumental in lobby-ing with California CongressmanBrad Sherman, who is the chairmanof the House of Representatives sub-committee on Asia, the Pacific andnon-proliferation, which held ahearing on Kashmir on October 22,2019. The Kashmiri diaspora playeda keen role in the selection of wit-nesses to testify at the hearing. It alsobriefed Congressmen on New Delhi’scrackdown on Kashmir’s main-stream and separatist actors beforeits August 5 action and the high-

handed quelling of dissent thatsporadically erupted across the Val-ley in its aftermath.

Buoyed by the world’s renewedinterest in Kashmir, Majid Butt, Wa-jahat Dedmari and Nadeem Reshifloated Justice for Kashmir (JFK),which will be the diaspora’s vehiclefor advocating the rights of the Kash-miri people and “raising awarenessagainst the injustice, crimes, and at-rocities being committed in Kash-mir”. The JFK, which has beenregistered as a non-governmental or-ganisation (NGO), is collaboratingwith eminent figures from amongthe U.S.’ intellectual, administrativeand political elites to counter thegrowing cacophony of Hindu nation-alism through its proxy bodiesnestled abroad. The diaspora ishopeful that the JFK will helpstreamline its on-going efforts aimedat building important relationships

Diaspora pitches inThe Kashmiri diaspora gathers strength to internationalise

resistance against the government’s political incursions in the

Kashmir Valley. BY A N A N D O B H A K T O

THE KASHMIRI DIASPORA protested against the continuing lockdown in Kashmir, in Los Angeles on August 18, 2019.

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to take sides. After the domesticpolitical uproar, the Nepalese gov-ernment introduced a new Constitu-tion Amendment Bill in Parliamentto secure approval for a new mapwhich formally incorporated thearea under dispute with India withinits boundaries.

Before it took the decision, theNepalese government had called forurgent talks with India on the issuebut New Delhi prevaricated, citingthe COVID-19 pandemic as the ex-cuse. “If the coronavirus is anobstacle to not hold a diplomatic dia-logue soon, it should have been anobstacle for the opening of the linkroad as well,” said Nepal’s ForeignMinister, Pradeep Gyawali. “Wehave expressed time and again thatNepal wants to sit at the table andresolve the problem.” The Nepalesegovernment had first made requestsfor talks on the disputed territory inend 2019 and subsequently this May.

The Nepalese Parliament unan-imously approved the new map onJune 13. India’s External AffairsMinistry spokesman was quick to re-ject the territorial claims by theNepalese government. “The artificialenlargement of claims is not basedon historical facts or evidence and isnot tenable. It is also violative of ourcurrent understanding to hold talkson outstanding boundary issues,” thespokesman said.

Within a month, the territorialdispute has become the most seriousissue bedevilling relations betweenthe two countries since India’s eco-nomic blockade of the land-lockedcountry in 2015 a year after the Bhar-atiya Janata Party-led governmenttook over in New Delhi. Even the proIndian parties such as the NepalCongress and the Madhesi politicalgroupings have refused to supportDelhi on the issue. However, Nepal’sopposition parties have emphasisedthe need for talks with Delhi on theissue.

In the third week of June, theIndian government signalled that itwas willing to sit down for talks onthe boundary issue with Nepal. In-dian sources indicated that they werewilling to negotiate on the areasclaimed by Nepal, except on the issueof Lipulekh and Limpiyadhurawhich are also included in the newmap approved by the Nepalese Par-liament. Nepal’s upper house alsounanimously approved the new mapin mid June.

“We have enough facts and evid-ence and we’ll sit with India to re-solve the dispute through diplomaticnegotiation”, Nepal’s Law Minister,Shiva Maya Tumbahamphe, toldParliament.

The new map incorporating ter-ritory claimed by India has beenformally approved by the President

of Nepal, Bidhya Devi Bhandari, andnow has constitutional validity un-der the country’s Constitution. Ac-cording to MEA officials, Nepal’slatest uncompromising move camedespite feelers from Delhi for talks tobe held expeditiously to resolve theboundary issue. Prime Minister Olisaid that the unanimity exhibited byall political parties showed that thecountry was united on the Kalapaniissue. Nepal’s Army chief, GeneralPurna Chandra Thapa, visited theborder post near the disputedKalapani area after the NepaleseParliament approved the new map.

The Nepalese side has upgradedits border post and it will now bemanned throughout the year. Previ-ously, the post, manned by the NepalPolice, remained closed during thewinter months.

According to Indian officials,Nepal’s claim on these two areas con-tradicts India’s boundary agreementwith China. At the same time, Indianofficials have warned that Nepalwould have to pay a price if it doesnot come to the negotiating table.

The two countries have had openborders for people and trade andNepal is one of the biggest recipientsof development aid from India. Themilitaries of the two countries havestrong institutional links. Theirchiefs enjoy the status of honorarygenerals in each other’s armies. m

A BANNER with the new political map of Nepal, on June 13.

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imperative upon the entire world tocome forward and help in resolvingthe Kashmir issue, otherwise we mayhave three nuclear powers—India,China and Pakistan—heading for ashowdown,” he said.

The JFK’s core idea is to chal-lenge the optics set by New Delhi’s“narrative controllers”. In the U.S.,the Hindutva groups’ acquisition ofpolitical prominence is a fascinatingstory spanning over several decades.A section of the Indian-American di-aspora is understood to have closelyworked with Modi since the middleof the 2000s. As early as 2005 whenModi, who was Gujarat Chief Minis-ter, was denied a visa by the U.S.State Department to address a con-vention of Asian American HotelOwners Associations in Florida,some influential Indian-Americansbegan to put their act together tolimn an “investor friendly” global im-age of him. A significant step towardsthis direction was taken in 2007 byBharat Barai, assistant professor ofmedicine at Indiana University’sMedical School. He organised avideoconference for Modi to addressthe Indian diaspora. That same year,Ramesh Shah, another influentialIndian-American, organised a majorrally in Houston to celebrate Modi’sre-election as Gujarat’s Chief Minis-ter for the third time in a row.

A report released by the SouthAsia Citizens Wire in July 2014stated that between 2001 and 2012India-based affiliates of theRashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh(RSS), the ideological fountainheadof BJP, received funds to the tune of$55 million from its U.S.-basedwings that exist as tax-exempt non-profit organisations.

In January 2014, four monthsbefore Modi captured power at theCentre, the Overseas Friends of theBharatiya Janata Party (OFBJP)held a global meet in New Delhi with160 delegates from around theworld. Simultaneously, in Houstonclose to 700 volunteers kicked off aphone-banking initiative to press forModi as the next Prime Minister. Oflate, groups such the RepublicanHindu Coalition, chaired by the In-dian-American business tycoon

Shalab Kumar, have been allegedlypromoting the Hindutva agenda inthe U.S. Among other such outfits isthe Hindu American Foundation,known for its aggressive tactics toinfluence political discourse in fa-vour of Hindutva ideologues.

Angana Chatterji, a scholar at theUniversity of California, Berkeley,said the environment now was con-ducive for “a growing movement ofKashmiris and allies, calling forjustice and accountability”. “Theconditions on the ground in Kashmirhave led to increasing and urgentconcern among political leadersacross the spectrum for the sanctityand security of Kashmiris, and re-garding the stability of the regionand India’s capacity for democracy,”she told this reporter over phonefrom San Francisco.

Angana Chatterji is the author ofMajoritarian State: How Hindu Na-tionalism is Changing India. She isinvolved with the JFK team and test-ified in the October hearing. She is ofthe opinion that Modi’s unrelentingHindutva push unwittingly broughthis government under the interna-tional scanner. “Unremitting milit-aristic and legal hostility towardsocial dissent have become charac-teristic of the BJP’s governance. Themore proximate to harsher realities,the more intensified the targeting,and this makes people fearful. SinceDecember 2019, peaceful civil soci-ety protests [with few exceptions]have taken place across the countryin dissent to the CAA [CitizenshipAmendment Bill], NPR [NationalPopulation Register], and NRC [Na-tional Register of Citizens],” shepointed out.

Indeed, the Modi governmenthas been in the line of fire. This year,six resolutions were tabled ahead ofthe European Union Parliamentplenary, which began in Brussels onJanuary 29. They dismissed the CAAas “fundamentally discriminatory innature”. In June 2018, the office ofthe United Nations High Commis-sioner for Human Rights released areport which questioned, amongother things, the arbitrary use of thePublic Safety Act (PSA) by the In-dian state.

The U.N. report titled “Report onthe Situation of Human Rights inKashmir: Developments in the In-dian State of Jammu and Kashmirfrom June 2016 to April 2018, andGeneral Human Rights Concerns inAzad Jammu and Kashmir and Gil-git-Baltistan”, revealed that morethan 1,000 Kashmiris were held un-der the PSA between March 2016and August 2017.

It is not a coincidence that high-lighting the practice of unlawful de-tentions is one of the JFK’s key areasof focus. Despite the coronaviruspandemic, the JFK has launched a“Set Them Free” project. It will re-visit the policies and statutes govern-ing the functioning of prisons inJammu and Kashmir and the condi-tion of prisoners thereof. The ulti-mate aim of the project is to preparea dossier on the desired prison re-forms, which will be presented tovarious stakeholders on the comple-tion of the project and provide freelegal aid to maximum number of de-tainees. It will ensure comprehensivelegal aid to undertrials and inmates,right from applying for bail to theconclusion of trial and filing appealsagainst convictions, if any.

Post August 5, illegal detentionsbecame rampant in Kashmir. TheCentre in November informed theRajya Sabha that 5,161 people weredetained after Jammu and Kash-mir’s constitutional autonomy waswithdrawn on August 5, 2019. Butthis could be a conservative figure. Asper an AFP report, at least 4,000people were arrested in the two firsttwo weeks after the abrogation ofArticle 370 in Kashmir.

Majid Butt says that the SetThem Free initiative would be an ef-fective starting point to augment theexisting information on the state ofhuman rights in Kashmir and con-solidate world opinion for a just andhonourable resolution of the Kash-mir conflict. “For the past few dec-ades, India has been using differentstrategies and lobbying againstKashmir not only in the U.S., but theworld over. We have facts on our sideand the need of the hour was to putmore effort, so that we could counterIndia’s false narrative.” m

in the U.S. Congress and around theworld and use diplomatic leverage toquell India’s “hard-fisted” policies inKashmir.

Majid Butt, founding member ofthe JFK who spoke to Frontline overthe phone from Los Angeles, shedlight on the diaspora’s post-August 5initiatives, the role it played in press-ing the House subcommittee for ahearing on Kashmir and the neces-sity to structure these endeavours.“August 5 was a turning point for allKashmiris, including KashmiriAmericans. We have been raising theKashmir issue over the past 10 yearsbut our efforts lacked coherence. Thetime has come to amplify the mes-sage of Kashmir,” Butt said.

In the weeks that followed therevocation of Kashmir’s specialstatus, the members of the diasporaheld a series of meetings with influ-ential American politicians, who in-cluded 25 Congressmen and threeSenators, notably Democratic Partyveterans Kamala Harris and CoryBooker.

Three meetings were held withBrad Sherman in August andSeptember 2019. Information on thehistoricity of the Kashmir struggle,the phases of betrayals by India as itincrementally eroded the guaranteesgiven to the State under Article 370were shared with him during thesemeetings. Presentations were madeon the cycles of violence, illegal de-tention and crackdown on religiousfigureheads that have emerged as apersistent feature of the Modi years.As per the information available,Pakistani-origin Democratic Partyleader Asif Mahmood was instru-mental in facilitating the meetingsbetween the members of the Kash-miri diaspora and the U.S.politicians.

When contacted, Mahmood toldthis reporter: “The Kashmiri voicesneeded to be heard, so I decided toextend all possible support that Icould, in their pursuit to freedom,justice, and liberty, which are im-portant values enshrined within our[U.S.] Constitution. We held a seriesof official meetings with congres-sional leaders that proved very pro-ductive and helped us yield a

significant response in the form of ahistoric congressional hearing.”

B R I E F I N G O N K A S H M I R

Ahead of the congressional hearing,the diaspora held a major briefing forCongressmen in Capitol Hill. SaidMajid: “India has dominated thenarrative for very long. India’s fram-ing of the Kashmiri struggle as aproxy war thrust by Pakistan, with anovert Islamist character and endgoal, has prevented informed debateon the issue of right to self-determin-ation. We held a briefing for over 150Congress staffers. We shared feed-back on the excesses of the Modi gov-ernment and distributed handoutson why the decision to abrogate Art-icles 370 and 35A were constitution-ally unviable.”

The effort paid off. The congres-sional hearing riled the Modi gov-ernment by rebutting its policiesvis-a-vis Kashmir. Ilhan Omar, aSomalia-born Democrat from Min-nesota berated the “Hindu national-ist project” of the Bharatiya JanataParty (BJP). She noted that Modi’sexclusivist policies shook the verypremise of the partnership betweenIndia and the U.S. “At what point dowe no longer share values with In-dia? Are we waiting for the Muslimsin Assam to be put in those [deten-tion] camps?” she asked. Brad Sher-man, who made the openingremarks, questioned India for deny-ing permission to Senator Chris VanHollen to travel to Kashmir.

Nitasha Kaul, London-basednovelist and academic specialsing ininternational relations, who testifiedin the hearing, said that “for the mil-lions of people in Kashmir who havebeen affected for decades by this pro-tracted political problem and its hu-man rights dimensions, it [thehearing] was a time of hope that theinternational community can dothings better.” Nitasha, a KashmiriPandit, speaking to Frontline abouther experience at the hearing, said:“It was a rare opportunity to speaktruth to power, put forward ideasthat bring together the voices ofpeace and justice from differentsides, and have an impact on thepractice of critical international rela-tions.” She is upbeat about the dia-spora’s efforts to engage with andinvolve more and more internationalplayers in the Kashmir discourse.

Wajahat Dedmari, the JFK’steam leader in Washington, D.C.,said they had to bank on a friendlyU.S. NGO to send out invites toguests. “It was at that point we feltthe need to create our own platform.”The JFK plans to highlight that aresolution of the Kashmir conflict isintegral to sustaining peace in SouthEast Asia. “Unless Kashmiris aregiven a right to decide their future asper the United Nations SecurityCouncil Resolution 47, there will notbe any peace in South East Asia. Theon-going stand-off between Indiaand China in Ladakh which is a partof Jammu and Kashmir has made it

AT A PROTEST on Hollywood Boulevard on August 31, 2019.

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BOOKS in review

DURING the recent or-ganised violence in

North East Delhi, mobschanting “Jai Shri Ram”slogans planted saffronflags atop many mosques.At one mosque, a saffronflag was hoisted over thenational flag. Although itwas not declared in asmany words, the violentcrowd’s message was clear:There was only one way ofbeing an Indian, only onereligion that an Indiancould follow. Amazingly afew months before thehateful incidents in Delhi,the noted academic-authorNeera Chandhoke hadwritten about almost thesame thing with a hint ofprognostication and resig-nation in her superbly ar-ticulated and persuasivelyargued book RethinkingPluralism, Secularism andTolerance: Anxieties of Co-existence published bySage.

In the preface to herbook, the distinguishedacademic writes: “Toler-ance has disappeared fromthe political scene as lynchmobs, self-appointed cen-sors, repression of dissent,vigilantism and murder-ous crowds try to hammera plural nation into con-formity with slogans of onelanguage, one religion, onepeople and one cuisine.The language of secularismhas practically vanishedfrom the political horizon

daily diet of the alleged at-rocities of Muslim kings inmedieval India, fromAlauddin Khalji to Aurang-zeb, equates in his mindthis stereotype of the medi-eval Muslim with present-day Indian Muslims.Hence the attacks onmosques in Delhi as a retri-bution for alleged instancesof temple desecration inthe past.

Indeed, this is the timewhen a large part of society,driven by hate and em-boldened by statements ofpolitical leaders, seeks tolabel a community in abus-ive terms, as proven by thevituperative-laden cam-paign of Bharatiya JanataParty (BJP) leaders, ran-ging from Union MinistersAmit Shah and AnuragThakur to a relative upstartlike Kapil Mishra duringthe recent Delhi election.Even an entirely peacefulprotest like the one at

Shaheen Bagh, repletewith displays of nationalicons, was dubbed a gath-ering of traitors deservingto be shot merely becausethe women at the forefrontof the protest were largelyMuslim. These are bleaktimes for the pluralistethos of the nation.

Chandhoke writes,“This is, perhaps, not thebest moment to resurrect adefence of secularism.Since 2014, India has anextreme right-wing partyin power at the Centre—the Bharatiya Janata Party.The party’s ideologicalbackbone, the RashtriyaSwayamsewak Sangh(RSS), and other assortedfringe outfits belonging tothe larger Hindutva bri-gade have been granted anopportunity to carry outtheir a little-less-than-a-century-old project of cre-ating and sustaining a na-tion exclusively of and forthe Hindu community al-most by divine right. Al-though the geographicalboundaries of India con-tain a multiplicity of beliefsystems, and the Hinducommunity is decentredand plural in nature, thecadres of the extreme rightconcentrate on drummingup old bigotries and un-earthing new ancient anti-pathies to unify anotherwise plural and de-centred Hindu com-munity, and pit it once

of Indian politics.Whatever remains of secu-larism is subjected to con-temptuous remarks, someribaldry and offensive dis-missal by cadres and sup-porters of the religiousright.”

Tolerance has as goodas disappeared from thepolitical scene, as wit-nessed during the 2019general election when eventhe leading oppositionparty, the Congress, was atpains to tell voters that itwas in favour of the major-ity community with con-stant visits by RahulGandhi to numeroustemples. This was accom-panied by the decreasingdemand for a Muslimleader like Ghulam NabiAzad to address electionrallies. Yet, Hindutva haspermeated beyond thepolitical layer to everydayissues of coexistence. Thecommon man, fed on a

Dystopian realities The threat to India’s pluralist tradition and ethos under the current

regime is insightfully discussed in this new book. BY Z I Y A U S S A L A M

RethinkingPluralism,Secularism andTolerance

Anxieties ofCoexistence

Neera Chandhoke

Sage

Pages: 224

Rs.895

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again against the Muslimcommunity.”

In this hate-filled rhet-oric, elements of cohesionare either wilfully ignored,or deliberately under-played. For instance, theMughal emperor Aurang-zeb is dubbed an idolbreaker who felled templesat will, but the fact that hisregime had the empire’shighest number of Hindumansabdars until then isignored, as is his grant tothe Gauri Shankar templeright in front of his fort inDelhi. Not just at the levelof emperors and kings, theglue always percolateddown to the commonman’s level. Hence, wehave innumerable dargahsfrequented by people ofvarious faiths. It is in re-counting such instancesthat Chandhoke gives usconcrete examples of toler-ance and coexistence, andthus raises the book abovethe level of a mere aca-demic discourse.

In the chapter “ThePrinciples of Tolerance”,the author writes about aMuslim shrine in Punjabwhere Hindus and Sikhsfrequent a mazaar. Hail-ing the mazaar as a throw-back to the times whenpeople lived in a pluralistsociety, she writes, “As ourvehicle drove away fromthe fair, the thoughtcrossed my mind: Undi-vided Punjab must havelooked like this, Hindus,Muslims and Sikhs wor-shipping together at themazaar of a fakir, at thedera of a Guru and at thefeet of a living saint in ac-cordance with the strongtradition of Sufism, whichbrought to the region asofter and less doctrinaireform of Islam. Saints ofwidespread renown oc-cupy a very important

place in the worship of thepeasantry, stated Ibbet-son’s Report on the PunjabCensus of 1881. ‘They aregenerally Mahammedan,but are worshipped byHindoos and Musalmansalike with the mostimpartiality’.”

Incidentally, the TarnTaran mazaar, whichChandhoke refers to, hasan interesting story aboutits origin. It is said once

is in danger in India today.In the recent Delhipogrom, the first place tobe torched was a mazaarin Bhajanpura wherepeople from all faithsgathered. It was to guardagainst such miscreantsthat the founding fathersof the nation provided forRight to Equality. Therights of the minoritieswere enshrined in the Con-stitution and the firstPrime Minister, Jawa-harlal Nehru, conceptual-ized it as an integral part ofthe democratic state. Yeteven the freedom to followany religion, or even no re-ligion, equal right to vote,failed to translate into aliving example of secular-ism in the absence of thewill of the state. Theminorities, despite pos-

Guru Nanak came across agoatherd, named Lakhan,and asked him for food.Lakhan offered him asweet made from goatmilk. The Guru blessedhim, saying nobody wouldreturn empty-handedfrom his doorstep. The be-lief percolated down cen-turies and today manyfrequent his mazaar withspecial prayers.

This pluralist tradition

AT THE ENTRANCE of a building attacked during riots, in New Delhi on March 1.

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Neera Chandhoke gives us

concrete examples of

tolerance and coexistence,

and thus raises the book

above the level of a mere

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sessing the same right tovote, stood in danger of be-ing outvoted all the time byothers if faith alone de-termined choices. Worse,they could be demonisedfor their choice, be it polit-ical or religious, or evenbanal matters of food, lan-guage and attire.

Chandhoke hits a sens-itive nerve in the chapterEquality and the Rights ofMinorities. She writes,“People are, in this case,treated unequally becausethey belong to a religiouscommunity that has beendemonised through vi-cious rhetoric or hatefulactions. The demonisationof the entire communityimpacts the life of its mem-bers adversely. Individualmembers may not be ableto get the jobs they want,rent or buy a house in theneighbourhood they wantto live in, send their chil-dren to schools they thinkare desirable, and formwarm and social relation-ships with others who theywish they could be friends

with. Inequality of life con-ditions has shaped theirlives, they are consideredlesser than the members ofthe majority communityfor purely arbitrary reas-ons. They are not seen asindividuals; they are re-duced to the community ofwhich they are members.They might possess theright to cast a vote, but theexercise of this right maynot be enough to enable tolive better lives.”

Chandhoke’s words area reflection of the livedreality of our times whereoften to be a Muslim is tobe taken as a doubtful cit-izen, one who has to provehis patriotism to goons onthe road. What is the wayout? The Right to Equalitybetween citizens is a goodbeginning, but it has totranslate to equalitybetween communities.Otherwise, a majoritarianagenda can be furtheredunder the garb of national-ism, and a minority’s bid toretain its identity dubbedas an anti-national move.

The author wants the stateto take a fresh look at itsprinciple of secularism asfollowed through a policyof equidistance from all re-ligions. She concludes witha question, “Do we reallywant to live in a bare andstark society marked by in-formal apartheid? Or dowe earnestly desire to in-habit a social order thatfoster warm relationshipsbased on civility and mu-tual respect? The first kindwill drastically constrainour minds and hearts, oursensibilities and our per-spectives. The second partwill enable the unleashingof creative imaginationsand allow us to becomefuller human beings, atease with others in a plur-alist society.”

Despite the somewhatUtopian end, Chandhoke’swork is timely and reflectsthe stark realities of every-day existence for theminorities of contempor-ary India.

She argues that our un-ending wish to settle scores

of an imagined/real pastruns the risk of not onlymarring our today but also,practically, ruining our to-morrow. We are living inan age when the state isseen colluding with non-state actors on the onehand, and using the arm ofthe state itself on the other,to marginalise the minor-ities.

At this crucial junc-ture, secularism, toleranceand coexistence as livedrealities need to be high-lighted in contrast to thedivisive agenda of sundrypoliticians. Chandhoke’sbook outlines the hurdlesand the pitfalls and offers ablueprint for the way for-ward.

The question is: WillIndian society and politytake heed her pertinentand timely warning? If theexample of the Delhi mobchanting “Jai Shri Ram”slogans even as it setmosques on fire is any-thing to go by, not manyare ready to abide by hervalues. More is the pity.Greater is the need for themessage. m

A MOSQUE SET on fire by rioters in Mustafabad, Delhi on February 27.

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BOOKS in review

WE live in a dark phasefilled with adversity.

As dark and unpredictableas it gets. At this momentin the world, whateverflows, ruptures. Be it theflow (spread) ofcoronavirus, the flow ofmigration, the flow ofmoney or the egregiousflow of dis/information.Capturing the flow of dis/information campaigns inthe digital ecosystem andthe crisis of democracy isthe nut graph of MartinMoore’s succinctly writtenbook Democracy Hacked:Political Turmoil and In-formation Warfare in theDigital Age. The book is aprimer on understandingthe intersections betweendemocracy, politics, decep-tion and technological de-velopments.

Digital media have re-shaped contemporarypolitics in unprecedentedways. Moore argues thatthe old form of politicalcommunication has beensupplanted by digital tech-nologies, which have be-come a new force to reckonwith. What Moore revealsin the book is downrightdesperation of politicalparties the world over to

electronic online forum,and later the formation of4chan, an imageboardwebsite where users parti-cipated anonymously byposting images or posts.These online forums al-lowed users to go on a he-donistic pursuit, claimingthey could escape from realsocial world scenarios.Little did anyone realisethat 4chan, predominantlyused by the youth then,would bring together usersto hack websites of com-panies for a lark or could beused to spew vitriol, inde-cency and obscenity mostlyfrom a white supremacistposition. Thus, women,Jews, the LGBT com-munity, migrants and non-

whites and so on were sub-jected to textualdesecration. The authorsays that 4chan’s cultureand language turned toxicover time.

Cut to 21st century, so-cial media and other plat-forms are being used tochurn out deception andvenom. Hatred and preju-dice are in the networks aswell as in the air. Mooredetails how social media,which had an idealisticagenda to begin with, havebecome indispensable tothe political tumult intoday’s democracy. The au-thor’s narrations reveal theseedy and sinister motiveswith which memes, textsand videos were produced,for instance, in the presid-ential elections in theUnited States in 2014.Donald Trump was heldaloft while Hillary Clintonwas downgraded on falsegrounds using mimeticwarfare and trolling.

Images are used to ri-dicule, trivialise and fero-ciously malign people inthe big league as much asordinary people. High-lighting the key proposi-tion of some businessmen,the author says that the ob-ject of using digital mediain politics is to crush themainstream media, whichare presumably considered“left”. The savage efforts topromote social media as areliable source to seek in-formation have causedtruth to lose its ground andlegitimacy in the publicsphere. Instead, falsehoodruns amok in the wildestmanner possible.

T H E N E W P L U T O C R A C Y

The book underlines thattechnology is not inher-

drub their opponents inuncanny ways by lever-aging social media. In thefirst part of the book,Moore presents the badand ugly, the mean and di-visive, the savage and devi-ous means by which somecountries perform andpractise politics and theirconsequences for demo-cracy. It is better to ap-proach the book with arider. It is not just thatdemocracy is hacked;democracy hacks too.

The book paints a grimpicture of the pre-socialmedia era by focussing onkey developments such asthe evolution of the hack-ers’ community in the1970s, the rise of WELL, an

Social media and democracy The book is a primer on understanding the

intersections between democracy, politics,

deception and technological developments.

BY M . S H U A I B M O H A M E D H A N E E F

Democracy Hacked

Political Turmoil andInformation Warfarein the Digital Age

By Martin Moore

OneworldPublications, 2018

Pages: 320

Price: Rs.699


ently biased. It is thecriminality of humanminds that make it un-leash nefarious activities.Moore sheds light on someof the digital dynasts whomake plutocracy possible.One such plutocrat isRobert Mercer, who isanti-establishment,against climate changepolicies and oriented to-wards rupturing the publicsphere and subvertingdemocratic accountability.He is neither a politiciannor a public servant. Hehunkered down for a whileand, at the right moment,invested in digital mediaand big data. He led thefrontal attack on demo-cracy by scouring datafrom social media to targetvoters and manipulatetheir perceptions to hisown ends, which is, say, tosee that Trump won.

The author presentsanother plutocrat, AndrewBreitbart, who sees a plotin the arrival of the Frank-furt School scholars in theU.S. and alleges that theyturned the country into ahotbed of Left ideologies.To jettison Left or “Demo-crat Media Complex” fromthe U.S. and the world isBreitbard’s arch mission.

The nexus betweenMercer and Breitbarthappened with the formerinvesting in all digitalschemes Breitbart ex-ecuted. The author writesthat Mercer continued toinvest in several organisa-tions building on thepremise that all media arebiased. This led to Face-book, Twitter and othersocial media gaining trac-tion and attracting people.Mercer next turned toCambridge Analytica(CA), which is an offshootof Strategic Communica-tions Laboratory. No one

knew the gamut of decep-tion until the exposehappened of mass-har-vesting of Facebook users’data that CA used tochange the voting beha-viours of people, be it in theU.S. or Brexit. In brutalways, CA used the harves-ted personal data to sellpolitical ideas and ideolo-gies to users, especiallyduring Trump’s elections.All these point to the factthat Mercer and his ilk hadonly one goal to achieve—turn democracy on itshead.

A N E W W A R

Subsequently, the authorbegins to scope out thewidespread use of digitalmedia to launch disin-formation campaigns atgeopolitical levels. It is thebeginning of a new war,where there is no trench,no soldiers and no ration-

ality. It is a digital warfarewith bots, algorithms,drones and the like on thefrontline. It is not waged toconquer territories butminds. Moore argues thatVladimir Putin needed aframework to set up disin-formation factories to es-tablish Russia as asuperpower. So, he spreadthe news that Russia wasunder attack from othercountries and was beingspied upon; its datahacked. It is in the shad-ows of a lie that Putin con-structed his digital empire,the author reveals. Russia,as part of its geopoliticalguerilla warfare, identifiesthe weak spots in a coun-try/person and inflamessocial media with divisivecampaigns.

The task of controllingsocial media was not aseasy as Putin might havethought. Internet is a vast

architecture and he couldnot restrain the eruption ofpluralistic views. Not theway he had TV and othermedia on a tight leash.This prompted him to es-tablish battalions of con-tent creators who neededto be nationalists and loyalto the Kremlin. The digitalarmy of parties in India, asit is elsewhere, also com-missions several people towrite posts, create memes,produce disinformationcampaigns, fill the spacewith fake news and spreaddisharmony and hatred.

F I X I N G E L E C T I O N S

The second part of thebook discusses how Face-book, Google and Twitterwere used to fix and nixelections and how theyhelped many world leaderscome to power. The authordocuments success storiesof Rodrigo Duterte of thePhilippines who used in-fluencers on Facebook toreach audiences. BarackObama and Trump madethe best use of social mediafor their election cam-paigns. In India, NarendraModi pioneered the socialmedia blitz in 2014.

The ambivalence in theideological functions of so-cial media occurred whenan unholy truce was struckbetween politics, advert-ising/marketing and bigdata. Subsequently, Face-book said that its strategy“helps people to connectwith each other” to allowunverified news streaminginto its space. Recently,Facebook announced itwould not remove falseclaims made in Trump’sre-election campaign ad-vertisements even if theyhappened to be flagrantlies.

Facebook wants toconnect people but for a

THE TWITTER LOGO displayed on a mobile phone withTrump's picture shown in the background on May 27.

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much different purposethan what its punchlinewould indicate. The morethe merrier—the moredata it could get aboutmore users, the more ex-change value it would getby profiling them andselling them to the newcrop of political evangel-ists who are also thebiggest spenders. In addi-tion, Facebook ramped upits affordances by addingNews Feed, Instant Art-icles, Facebook Connectand dark posts to its kitty.Moore explains the role oftechnological innovationsin helping Facebookachieve its twin goals, in-tertwined though, of eco-nomic growth and politicaldisruption.

C R A D L E O F A N A R C H Y

The book describes Googleas the cradle of anarchy.Google is a search enginewithout parallel and lessfierce competition. It isalso known for overturn-ing its initial pledge that itwould not be consumed byany greed to attract ads.When Google was exposedto the possibility of datamining and got the taste ofalgorithm gold rush, it hadless concern for users or forits ethical degeneration.The search engine turnedinto a relentless surveil-lance engine, trackingwhat people search and itsrelated activities. Itbundles our preferencesand sells us to advertisers.In the process, its imperi-alism grew to an extentthat it swallowed as manydigital companies as itcould, thereby having astranglehold on digital ser-vices in the market.

To add to that, wear-able technologies syncedwith Google has contrib-uted to what is known as

cognitive capitalism.Moore, in a masked pro-vocation, details that ourdigital footprints allowGoogle to deepen its pock-ets. Advertising is notabout buying media space,but buying people, he re-marks. To its credit,Google has its own regimeof advertising bludgeonedthrough keywords, click-bait and several other adfeatures.

The author begins hisdiscussion of Twitter in avery positive way, high-lighting its potential as anemerging news source. Heargues that gatekeeping byjournalists has shifted tothe public, who have be-come alternative sources.Twitter is an alarm systemfor journalists to under-stand what people per-ceive, the author writes.

He also discusses thedownside of the growinguse of Twitter for journal-ism. Local journalism hastaken a back seat as journ-alists now depend on Twit-

ter for news updates and asfield reporting has alsocome down. On a largescale, this has resulted inthe sacking of many journ-alists in legacy mediafirms.

Later, the author putsin perspective how Twitteris also used to spread ag-gression-filled and offens-ive comments. If Trump’stweets are anything to goby, or some of the tweets bypoliticians in any part ofthe world are any indica-tion, Twitter distorts news.Craving for fast-foodjournalism through Twit-ter kills trust and accuracy.The author also points outthat there are many whosevoices are not heard as so-cial media are too remotefor them to access econom-ically and otherwise.

Q U E S T I O N O F P R I V A C Y

The third part of the bookfocusses on platformsgaining momentum in thedigital sphere and theworld’s pressing question

of privacy, surveillanceand the irredeemable lossof the democratic zeitgeist.The efforts of Amazon,Warren Buffet’s BerkshireHathaway and JPMorganChase to set up a remotedigital health-care facilityto address health issues in2018 did give rise to newhopes. It led to Amazonpartnering with the Amer-ican Heart Associationand much later even host-ing the Cancer GenomeAtlas that housed hugeamount of molecularstructures. Amazon ac-complished this using itscloud computing facility.But its biggest asset wasthe data of patients.

Likewise, the authorexplains how Google alongwith Deepmind, a datacompany, partnered withRoyal Free Hospital in theUnited Kingdom thatshared all its patients’ med-ical records. Digital plat-forms realised that therewas wealth in health.Moore says that platforms

ONLINE LEARNING amid the spread of COVID-19, in Bangkok on May 20. The authorsays most of us are attracted to the ways in which educational content is conceived anddesigned, ignoring the amount of data the platforms will mine to make profit.

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It is the beginning of a new

war, with bots, algorithms,

drones and the like. It is not

waged to conquer territories

but minds.


ENVIRONMENTPTI

THE SWARM

BEFORE THE STORMAs the threat of a locust attack looms, and as climate change

threatens to increase the frequency of such attacks, Indian

agriculture needs a more durable and long-term strategy to fight

the menace. B Y K . D . P R A T H A P A N

Swarms of locust in the walled cityof Jaipur on May 25. More thanhalf of Rajasthan’s 33 districtshave been invaded by these crop-munching insects.

are like online bazaars. Un-like traditional bazaars,platforms track consumersand keep collecting data onend even after they leave.Educational platforms arealso on the rise, more sonow as the lockdown (be-cause of COVID-19) man-dates that classes be heldusing online platforms.Most of us are attracted tothe innovative ways educa-tional content is conceivedand designed (interactiv-ity, animation, self-paced,etc.), ignoring the amountof data that these plat-forms will mine to makeprofit. Public transportplatforms such as Uber,Ola and Lyft and over-the-top entertainment plat-forms services such as Net-flix and Amazon Prime runon data that users put inand which are then pro-cessed by algorithms in en-igmatic ways.

The author points outthat ceding basic servicessuch as health and educa-tion to platform compan-ies reflects thegovernment’s apathetic

commitment to its cit-izens. As many have writ-ten in the wake ofCOVID-19, nations areforced to rethink theirstrategies on health andeducation expenditure, es-pecially not to cave in tothe neoliberal agenda.

A A D H A A R &

S U R V E I L L A N C E

The chapter on surveil-lance begins with how In-dian governments havelinked Aadhaar number toour life—be it getting ascholarship, passport, orfood rations. While theprevious governmenttouted that it was intro-duced to ensure propertransfer of benefits topeople, the current gov-ernment adds to the exist-ing list saying it is a digitalidentity that could be usedto prevent bank frauds andterror attacks.

With Aadhaar, it hasnow become easier for thegovernment to track an in-dividual. In other words,there is nothing that an in-dividual can claim to be

his/her private informa-tion that the state does notknow about. When it waspresented before the Su-preme Court that Aadhaartakes away the funda-mental rights of citizens,the court ruled thatAadhaar cannot be mademandatory. However, thegovernment has not com-promised on its intent andconsiders Aadhaar as itspanoptic weaponry.

Singapore’s Smart Na-tion is similar wherein di-gital infrastructures areused to control the popula-tion. China is leading thecharge with its social creditsystem that tracks its cit-izens, awards points tothem on the basis of theirpurchase behaviour. Forinstance, someone buyinga pack of cigars may losepoints as opposed to onebuying napkins. In addi-tion, Moore highlights thatincreasing surveillance hasled to a data and al-gorithmic bias whereby itcould be used to target onegroup of people.

Moore has offered an

unvarnished account ofplutocrats, social mediacompanies, states andtheir policies and agendasin grand detail. On the onehand, he has capturedtheir economic growthand, on the other, their rolein political disruption. Thebook has some interestingand thought-provokingpointers one cannot dis-pense with. The author’scritical remark that socialmedia have depoliticisedthe youth by alienatingthem from rationality isgoing to be foundationalfor understanding society,people and their percep-tions. It is also dishearten-ing to note that manyamong the youth have be-come mercenaries in di-gital armies of politicalparties, engaged in labour,producing a product calledhatred, whose exchangevalue is disharmony andviolence. In this regard,the author appeals to sens-itise ourselves to the waydemocracy is muted andmutilated.

The crisis of demo-cracy can be perceived butis as invisible ascoronavirus. As the virus ofdisinformation spreads,religions are not spared onsocial media. It is crucial tounderstand where hateand lie originate beforethey are circulatedthrough networks. Hateoriginates in the hatingbody and not in the hatedbody. Much as coronavirusdemands a new economicworld order, it is time forthe economies of love, andnot hate, to endure. m

M. Shuaib MohamedHaneef is assistantprofessor and head incharge, Department ofElectronic Media andMass Communication,Pondicherry University.

A DEMONSTRATION against Breitbart News and its propaganda for the Trumpadministration, in Los Angeles, a file photo.

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LIFE in the desert is defined byscarcity of water. The harsh, pro-longed dry spells further restrict theavailability of food resources formuch of the year. Plants and animalsin the desert have evolved variousstrategies to cope with the extremeenvironment. Migration over longdistances, in search of greener pas-tures, is one of the commonstrategies of large desert animalssuch as the wildebeest in Africa. Thedesert locust, which has integratedbehavioural, functional and struc-tural adaptations to migrate overgreat distances across continents,has evolved as one of the most suc-cessful life forms in the desert. Thelocusts are among the most dreadedmigratory pests in the world; hugeswarms of desert locust appear sud-denly in the sky and devour all kindsof vegetation within hours, threaten-ing the food supply of millions ofpeople in some of the poorest coun-tries. India, after more than two dec-ades, is experiencing a massive locustattack, which is likely to intensify inthe months ahead.

Locust invasions are probably asancient as settled agriculture. TheRussian-British entomologist BorisPetrovitch Uvarov (1886-1950) pi-oneered studies on locusts. He isconsidered the Father of Acridology(study of locusts and their relatives).In 1921, Uvarov identified the solit-arious and migratory phases of lo-custs, which had been considered adistinct species for centuries. Hisstudies on the biology and ecology oflocusts helped put locust control on asound scientific basis. E.C. Cotesbegan formal studies on crop pests,including locusts, in India. In 1891,he published accounts of locust inva-sions in the provinces of Bengal,Madras, Assam and Bombay. TheImperial Council of Agricultural Re-search started funding a Locust Re-search Scheme in 1930, and theLocust Warning Organisation(LWO) was established in 1936 inKarachi, following a major locustplague that lasted for about four

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CHILDREN attempting to drive awaylocusts in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, on June 11.

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years between 1926 and1930. AfterIndependence, the field headquar-ters of the LWO was shifted to Jodh-pur, Rajasthan, with the centralheadquarters in Faridabad, Hary-ana. Yelseti Ramachandra Rao(1885-1972) studied the desert locustin undivided India and neighbouringcountries. His The Desert Locust inIndia, published in 1960, is regardedas the most authentic work on thesubject in the subcontinent.

W H A T A R E L O C U S T S ?

Locusts are large short-hornedgrasshoppers, belonging to the insectfamily Acrididae, capable of formingswarms. They exist in two distinctphases, solitarious and gregarious,with intermediate forms. In the solit-arious phase, they merge with theenvironment, live as individualsavoiding each other, lead an incon-spicuous life in the desert and hardlytrouble agriculture. When condi-tions are favourable, the solitariousones multiply rapidly and eat upmost of the vegetation, which leadsto the formation of groups. Conver-ging winds and dwindling food re-sources lead to concentration ofadults. As they come into frequentcontact with each other, changes setin in their behaviour, function andstructure, and thus begin the trans-ition to the gregarious phase. Popu-lations switch over from thesolitarious phase to the gregariousphase over more than a generation.Once they become gregarious, theymay continue in the same phase forthree or four generations. Thus, alocust plague may continue for morethan a year.

The science of phase transforma-tion in locusts still remains un-settled. A group of Japanesescientists led by K. Maeno in 2004showed that phase-related changeswere induced by the neurohormonecorazonin. Michael Anstey andStephen Rogers, in a paper pub-lished in 2009 in Science, argued thatthe initial switch over from solitari-ous to gregarious locusts is triggeredby serotonin, the brain hormone as-sociated with depression in humans.However, a group of Belgian scient-ists, led by Bart Boerjan, in 2011,

rejected the role of neurohormones,such as corazonin and serotonin, andshowed that the phase transforma-tion was controlled by genes thatwere switched on or off, in responseto stimuli induced by crowding.

An extensive theoretical study byDarron Cullen in 2017 further cor-roborated the findings of the Boerjanteam. Accordingly, the locust phasechange is due to differential gene ex-pression in response to non-geneticstimuli, termed epigenetic change,mainly through a process calledDNA methylation. The size and com-plexity of the locust genome is themajor hurdle in understanding themolecular basis of phase change inits entirety. However, modern se-quencing techniques and powerfulgene editing tools such as CRISPR-Cas9 are expected to accelerate our

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understanding of locust phasechange and migration, which is oneof the most interesting scientificquestions in biology.

Being touched by one anotherduring crowding, especially on theouter surface of hind thighs, locustsget attracted, instead of avoidingeach other. The change over frommutual repulsion to attraction takesbarely an hour and the completetransformation from the solitariousto the gregarious phase takes over afew generations. The gregariousmother induces gregarisation in herprogeny by adding a chemical to thecovering of the eggs.

The young of the locust in the

When Martha, the last of thepassenger pigeons (Ectop-istes migratorius) died inCincinnati Zoo (UnitedStates) on September 1,1914, the species became ex-tinct. The passenger pigeonwas the most abundant birdin North America, number-ing three to five billion. Itwas driven to extinction byextensive hunting byEuropean settlers.

The lesser known RockyMountain locust(Melanoplus spretus), aunique insect, succumbed toEuropean colonisation ofNorth America. The greatestcongregation of animals everrecorded is a swarm of thislocust species, spread over5,10,000 sq km, in 1875.Less than 30 years later, thespecies became extinct, thelast live specimens being re-corded in 1902 in Canada.

Swarms of the RockyMountain locust periodic-ally devastated crops inNorth America throughoutthe 19th century. The locustate not only plants but evenpeople’s clothes and sheeps’wool. Thousands of farmfamilies gave up cultivation.However, unfortunately forthe locusts, farmers pre-ferred fertile river valleys,which were their breedinggrounds. It has been sugges-ted that ploughing andflooding by settler farmersdestroyed the eggs in theirbreeding grounds. Probably,this is the only example of apest insect driven to extinc-tion, perhaps inadvertently,by farmers.

K.D. Prathapan

The locustthat becameextinct

A FARMER in Ajmer, Rajasthan, holding dead locusts. The AgricultureDepartment sprayed pesticides on locust swarms on the outskirts of the city onJune 10.

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DESERT LOCUSTS at a ranch nearthe town of Nanyuki in Laikipia county,Kenya, on February 21.

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solitarious phase adjust their colourto that of the surroundings and lead acamouflaged life, avoiding eachother. They are rather sluggish andnever move in bands. The young onesin the gregarious phase also developa conspicuous warning colorationwith fixed pattern of black and yellowor orange, and are hyperactive. Thewingless young ones form bands,which is a mass of hoppers thatmoves as a unit. Adults in the solitaryphase are larger with shorter wings,longer legs and a narrower mid-bodythan the gregarious ones. As locustsbecome gregarious, their maturationbecomes synchronous and each indi-vidual insect behaves as a part of agroup, marching and flying in thesame direction. The most importantdifferences between the locustphases are behavioural-– hyperactiv-ity and gregarious nature in thegregarious phase, due to change infunctions and the resultant higherbody temperature. Solitary adultsmigrate at night, while the gregari-ous ones fly during the day and spendthe night roosting on trees and othervegetation.

The swarms take off and landinto wind during warm days and flyup to nine or 10 hours, moving down-wind. The average swarm density isabout 50 million locusts per squarekilometre. Swarms reach up to aheight of 2,000 metres and fly con-tinuously when over sea. They usu-

ally cover 100-150 km a day,although there are records of swarmscrossing the Atlantic. In October1988, swarms from West Africareached the Caribbean, covering adistance of 5,000 km in 10 days.Swarms from West Africa migratedto the British Isles in 1955. In Africa,in 1958 and 1959, swarms measuringup to 800 square km were reported.The estimated weight of a swarm isone to two lakh tonnes, and it canconsume food equivalent to itsweight in a day. A square kilometreswarm can eat the equivalent of foodconsumed by 35,000 people in a day.In Kenya, in 1954, a total populationof 50 swarms together covering anarea of 1,000 sq km, was estimated tocontain 500 trillion locusts. Manyswarms perish in the sea and alienlands. Some return to their breedinggrounds in the desert and revert backto the solitarious phase to continuethe locust cycle.

T Y P E S O F L O C U S T S

About 18 species of large grasshop-pers, those that form swarms, areconsidered as locusts. In India, threespecies of locusts occur—the desertlocust (Schistocerca gregaria), mi-gratory locust (Locusta migratoria)

and the Bombay locust (Nomadacrissuccincta). The tree locust (Anacar-dium rubrispinum) and the coffeelocust (Aularches miliaris) are nottrue locusts, as they do not formswarms.

The desert locust, occurring inabout 57 countries, is the mostwidely distributed and most de-structive among the locust species. Itis distributed from Mauritania in thewest to India, encompassing thedeserts of north Africa, near east andsouth-west Asia. This area includesdesert basins, arid and semi-aridplateaus, low lands and mountains.There are mainly two breeding areasin south-west Asiasouth-east Iranand the adjoining areas of Pakistanin spring; and the India-Pakistanborder during the summer. Almostone-fifth of the earth’s land area isaffected by the desert locust.

The life cycle of a locust is in threestages—the egg, pronymph followedby five (five or six in the solitariousphase) wingless hopper stages and

LOCUST SWARMS attackedhundreds of acres of vegetable cropsat Narkhed village, around 45 kmfrom Nagpur in Maharashtra. S

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the winged adult. Breeding occursduring the wet season as moist soil isideal for egg laying and hatching.Egg clusters are laid in moist sandysoil at a depth of about 5-10 centi-metres, in special packs called eggpods. Each pod contains 60-160 eggsin the solitarious phase, while thegregarious females lay fewer than 80eggs. The female bores a hole ofabout 10 cm depth with the end ofher abdomen and deposits the eggpod of 3 to 4 cm length at the bottom,and fills the hole with a foam thathardens to plug the hole. A singlefemale lays two egg pods at an inter-val of about 10 days, or rarely up tofour. Up to one-third of the eggs per-ish due to natural causes. Scores offemales lay egg pods in groups at themost favourable sites, creating massnurseries. The eggs hatch in 10-14days in summer, which could be ex-tended beyond two months inwinter. The pronymph–forerunnerof the hopper stage–hatches out ofthe egg and is an ephemeral, non-

feeding stage. It soon sheds the skinand forms the first instar hopper.Newly emerged hoppers soon startfeeding on vegetation. Up to 70-80per cent of the newly born hoppersperish due to inadequate moisture,predation by ants and cannibalism.After at least five or six days, thetiny hopper sheds its skin and be-comes a larger hopper. Thus, itchanges its skin five times (five orsix in the solitarious phase) to be-come the winged adult. The newlyemerged pinkish adult, calledfledgling, has a soft body anddrooping wings. It takes nearly 10days for the wings to hardenenough for sustained flight. Thehopper stage lasts for 24-95 days(average 36 days), and is longer inwinter. A life cycle is completed intwo to six months and two to fivegenerations occur in a year. Adultsprobably live for 2.5-five months. Asingle female produces 16-20 viablelocusts in a single generation. Thepopulation of locusts can increase

400-fold in six months after twogenerations of breeding.

L O C U S T P L A G U E S

Swarms land about 30 minutes totwo hours before sunset and feed in-discriminately on all kinds of vegeta-tion. According to R. Swaminathan,a specialist on locusts and grasshop-pers, the solitarious ones do notprefer neem and cluster beans. Lo-custs feed on all portions of the plantabove ground such as leaves, shoots,flowers, fruits, seeds and bark. Anycrop, cereals, pulses, cotton, foddercrops, fruit trees, vegetables, banana,and all kinds of plants are goodenough for the locust. Swarms wipeoff entire fields within a few hours,leaving farmers high and dry. A fieldof cotton in pre-flowering stagecould be eaten away in five-10minutes, according to Swaminathan.There are historic records of locustinvasions enhancing the severity offamines in India. The availability offood in several most backward

THE FIRE brigadesprayingdisinfectant tocontrol locustinvasion in Damohdistrict in Madhya Pradesh.

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African countries is already underthreat due to the ongoing plague.

A desert locust plague does notoccur suddenly. Locusts remain in“recession” for a few years. However,when conditions are congenial, theymultiply. Outbreaks’ and upsurgesoccur before a full-blown locustplague, like the ongoing one in Africaand south-west Asia. An outbreakoccurs when increasing locust num-bers leads to gregarisation, whichhappens over several months. This islocalised and restricted to certainhabitats.

Outbreaks, when left uncon-trolled over two or more genera-tions, develop into upsurges. Manyupsurges finally lead to a locustplague sweeping across countriesand continents. Since 1900, therehave been eight locust plagues insouth-west Asia (1900-1907; 1912-1920; 1926-1932; 1940-1946;1949-1963; 1967-1969; 1988-1989,and the current one). It is estimatedthat about 29 million sq km, ex-tending across 58 countries couldbe vulnerable to locust plagues, in-flicting massive damage and de-

struction to agriculture and alliedactivities.

C L I M A T E C O N N E C T I O N

Climate change and global warmingare visibly altering rainfall patternsglobally. Since every degree increasein temperature results in about 7 percent increase in the water holdingcapacity of air, global warming dir-ectly results in higher levels of watervapour in the atmosphere. Stormsand cyclones, therefore, carry moremoisture and deliver more intenserain. Aaron Putnam and WallaceBroecker in 2017 argued that rainfallin the tropics would increase andthat the subtropics would becomemore arid. The influence of climatechange on the incidence of pests anddiseases of crops is evidenced by theemergence of new pest and diseaseproblems and the increasing severityof existing ones.

The current locust plague islinked to the weather dynamics ofthe Indian Ocean called the IndianOcean Dipole (IOD). The Indiansubcontinent divides the IndianOcean into the eastern and western

parts. When the western part iswarmer than the eastern part, calledpositive IOD, it results in cyclonicstorms that hit east Africa and theArabian Peninsula, bringing heavyrain. An increase in the positive IODproduced hyperactive cyclones inMay and October 2018, which hit theArabian Peninsula where it rainedheavily, resulting in pools of water inthe desert creating congenial condi-tions for locust breeding. Theswarms originating in Oman and Ye-men, aided by wind, entered eastAfrica, where they were again fa-voured by rains. They spread furtherto Iran and Pakistan; since June2019, Pakistan has been plagued bylocusts. Early this year, Somalia andPakistan declared national emergen-cies to fight locusts. A team of re-searchers, led by Wenju Cai, in 2014,estimated that the frequency of pos-itive IOD events had increasedthreefold due to climate warming.With the increase in extreme positiveIOD phases, we should be preparedfor more locust plagues.

Thanks to major irrigation pro-jects such as the Indira Gandhi Canalthat traverses the Thar Desert in Ra-jasthan, sand dunes are being con-

LOCUSTS swarming residential areas of Prayagraj on June 11.

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verted into agricultural fields. Thegreening of deserts through afforest-ation and irrigated agriculture couldprovide conditions congenial for en-hanced locust breeding.

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India had its last full-blown locustplague in 1962, followed by intermit-tent upsurges and outbreaks; the lastupsurge occurring in 1997. Localisedbreeding was observed and con-trolled in 1998, 2002, 2005, 2007and 2010. There are several histor-ical records of desert locust attack insouth Indian States such as TamilNadu and Kerala. E.C. Cotes hasplaced on record that swarms fromnorth-western India penetrated theMadras Presidency in 1878, 1889 and1890. Similarly, the United Nations’Food and Agriculture Organisation(FAO) has recorded swarms reach-ing Kerala in 1954. However, allthese appear to be cases of eitherBombay locust or large, non-swarm-ing grasshoppers being misidentifiedas desert locusts. There is little evid-ence that the current plague will

spread to the south. According to Swaminathan, the

current plague started in India aslocusts entered thrice into the coun-try since 2019 through the India-Pakistan border: In May 2019;November 2019-February 2020;and in May 2020. The border Statesof Gujarat, Rajasthan and Punjaband Uttar Pradesh are experiencinginfestations since last winter. TheLWO reported control operationsagainst gregarious hoppers in thefirst fortnight of April 2020 andswarm movement in early May indeserts in Rajasthan. Swarms inva-sion across India reached as far southas Maharashtra and Bhopal in Mad-hya Pradesh to the east.

The desert locust is devastatingagricultural crops in many States.The FAO has predicted a secondwave of locusts from the Horn ofAfrica into India in June-July. Anadvisory issued on June 10 warns ofan imminent invasion coincidingwith the kharif, the main crop seasonin India. On June 12, FAO put outinformation on the formation of new

swarms in east Africa, indicatingthat a threat is imminent. Normallythe appearance of desert locusts inIndia begins in July-October; how-ever, the current attack appears to berather early. In Baluchistan andPunjab in Pakistan, spring breedingis over and the adults are formingswarms. Rajasthan, where maturingswarms occur, has already receivedpre-monsoon rain in the first week ofJune; active breeding and multiplegenerations can thus be anticipated.

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Locusts do not respect nationalboundaries. International coopera-tion is thus the key to locust control.Monitoring, early warning and pre-ventive control of swarms in eastAfrica, the Arabian Peninsula andPakistan are crucial for India. Thelocust-affected countries all over theworld are coordinated by the FAO.The Desert Locust Information Sys-tem (DLIS) of the FAO issues ad-visories and warnings to countriesplagued by locusts. The DLIS fore-casts the timing, scale and location ofbreeding and swarm movement. TheLWO is tasked with monitoring,tracking and prevention of locust

AGRICULTURE Department personnel spraying pesticides to kill locusts in afield at Pipli Pahar village in Pakistan’s central Punjab province.

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breeding and control in India. According to Swaminathan lo-

custs in the solitarious phase, imma-tures and swarms necessitate differentcontrol strategies. The FAO has re-commended application of spore sus-pension of the pathogenic fungusMetarhizium anisopliae var ac-ridium (strain IMI 330189), whichonly infects locusts and grasshoppers,to destroy the immature stages of thelocust in deserts where the breedingtakes place. Hoppers can be destroyedby mechanical means; diggingtrenches using earthmover machinesand burying marching hopper bandsare a common method.

However, none of these methodsare effective against invading swarms.Swaminathan said farmers should beacting as informers of swarm move-ment rather than taking control meas-ures in their own farms. Since it isfutile for farmers to fight the pest atthe level of individual farms, it is in-cumbent on the government to rewardand protect them so that they act asearly warners of swarm attacks.

Teams equipped with vehicle-mounted sprayers or aerial sprayersare effective against swarms. Directapplication of chemical pesticides onswarms roosting on vegetation, dur-ing morning and evening, is the mosteffective method. The Directorate ofPlant Protection, Quarantine andStorage has approved five syntheticpesticides such as chlorpyriphos,deltamethrin, fipronil, lamdacyhalo-thrin and malathion for the controlof swarms.

The absence of major invasionssince 1997 has resulted in the lower-ing of guard against the desert locust,according to G.M. Patel, entomolo-gist, who has been involved in fight-ing infestations in the past and in thepresent one. According to him, thepersonnel involved in control opera-tions are not experienced in dealingwith such massive infestations.

As the locust attacks are likely tobecome a regular scourge, Indiashould strengthen international, na-tional and regional linkages. Indiahad sent self-contained teams with

vehicles and equipment to the Ara-bian Peninsula every year between1955 and 1962. As the locust plagueis emerging as a transnational threat,India should once again consider ex-panding its expertise and capabilitiesbeyond its borders.

The LWO needs to be upgradedwith adequate field stations, man-power and equipment to meet thechallenge. Over the past two decades,the LWO was weakened, possibly be-cause there were no major infesta-tions. The Indian Council ofAgricultural Research and agricul-tural universities in the affected Statesshould include desert locust amongtheir research priorities as there aregaps in our knowledge of the bioeco-logy and management of the pest.

As the threat of the pest looms, itis time to formulate a long-term anddurable strategy to fight the locustmenace. m

Dr K.D. Prathapan is an entomolo-gist specialising in insect taxonomyat the Kerala Agricultural Univer-sity.

AT SAMBURU county in northern Kenya, on May 21.GETTY IMAGES

Published on alternate Saturdays. Postal Regn. No. HQ/SD/506/2020-22, RNI No. 42591/1984

In a blind alley - Frontline

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