[WSMDiscuss] COVID-19 and India: The Impacts and Prospects [1 Attachment]

Tue Jun 23 13:05:00 CEST 2020

*COVID-19 and India*

*The Impacts and Prospects*

*Sukla Sen*

*Intro*

*A spectre is, right now, haunting the world.The spectre of a pandemic -
COVID-19.*

*...*

*The Shape of Things to Come*

Worldwide, the pandemic has come as a big boon to the authoritarian
regimes.140,
141

During a crisis, people, by and large, tend to look up to the "authority"
as the only possible saviour, more readily submit to its diktats and
consider the dissenting voices as unnecessary and even harmful
noises/distractions.38

That makes things all that easier for autocratic regimes to turn even more
autocratic.

For the Modi regime, being committed to dismantle the "secular"
"democratic" Indian state142, 143 - informed with the ideals wrought out in
the crucible of the epic Indian freedom struggle, and supplant it with a
"Hindu Rashtra" - denuded of all vestiges of substantive democracy and
pluralism, the pandemic has come as a godsend.

As the account above clearly underlines, it is set upon to leverage it to
the fullest in order to push its agenda.
As of now, has faced only very limited resistance.

But, its gross mishandling of the crisis144 - especially its inept and
eventually failed attempt to keep the migrant workers locked-in at their
work-places, without any state support worth the name, so as to make them
available to their potential employers at cheap rates when the lockdown
lifts, triggering the Long Marches by millions over hundreds of kilometres,
has already introduced a strong jarring note.

Its glaring inability to bend the curves down, despite strict lockdown for
more than two months145, cannot but attract, at least some, adverse
attention - regardless of its massive propaganda machinery including much
of the mainstream media.

On the flip side are the significantly lower infection and fatality rates
all across South Asia.13
These are being tom-tommed as a unique achievement of the regime.146, 147
In any case, the economy is already in severe trouble and things are only
going to turn worse - more so, given the mishandling.

The pandemic, however, demands, and enforces, maintaining physical
distances from the fellow beings and thereby inhibits street mobilisation.
That is how the large momentum of protests, against the NPR/NRC/CAA, that
was getting built up got disrupted and dissipated.

But, *in the coming days, if the scare of the disease recedes while the
economy tanks, that will, again, open up spaces for even larger resistance
movements than earlier*.

While the differences between situations in the US and India, as they
actually obtain, can hardly be casually dismissed. 148,149, the largely
spontaneous, protest movements in the US, under the banner of 'Black Lives
Matter', could nevertheless turn out to be a source of inspiration.150

A lot would, of course, depend on the skills and determinations of those
who are meant to oppose the regime's sinister agenda.

*Epilogue*

In the midst of all these, the Indian regime, finds itself embroiled in a
rather sudden violent eruption of an old border dispute with its (only)
larger and stronger neighbour, China, which has led to utterly unfortunate
loss of twenty lives on the Indian side.151, 152
That the Chinese side has visibly hardened its posture, going to the extent
of issuing of virtually an open threat153 asking India to fall in line may
very well damage the macho image that Modi had so carefully cultivated154,
with abundant help from a largely compliant mainstream media.
This may very seriously undermine the Modi magic – his Hindu supremacist
appeal to broad sections of the Indian masses.
May very well turn out to be the eventual game-changer.

<https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/greenyouth/QUZ_LgW2d_0>
-- 
Peace Is Doable

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Posted by: Sukla Sen <sukla.sen at gmail.com>
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Peace Is Doable
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