Covid Politics: Stronger States, Weaker Citizens

Some people, I am sure, will react with distaste to the idea of a politics of Coronavirus. I am sure they will say, “Look, these fellows find politics in everything!” But it is not as far-fetched as it sounds. When stripped to the bare-bones of a science of pathology, or masked by clinical statistics, it may not promise much of a political purchase. But if we consider its present and future social impact, its political character hits us between the eyes. For it impinges heavily on lives and livelihoods of millions of people who are bound to respond to this unprecedented crisis in ways necessitating political action.

Much will depend on the kind of political action taken. There are bound to be serious differences of opinion on action to be taken, on assessment of damage to the economy and the society, on sacrifices different social strata will be required and willing to make as well as on compensations to be awarded to people to sustain societies and nations. Strategies to be adopted to meet the challenge, plans to offset and alleviate costs, methods of raising and distributing resources are not merely technical, though it is clear that some quarters would like to palm them off as purely technical solutions to a non-political problem.

Above all, what guarantee is there that people feel responsible for and committed to such plans and measures?

Considering the circumstances it is better we look at the politics fair and square in the face. Or we are likely to be steam-rolled towards a hidden politics of a dubious and damaging nature under the cloak of humanitarian discipline and technical management. We are not living in some kind of political limbo where political activity has been held in abeyance. But there is an assiduous attempt to suggest that we are.

It ought to worry us that while the call ringing out is to devote all our energies and resources to meeting the crisis, we keep on hearing of and witnessing events like lynching, campaigns on Facebook and Twitter to revile and stigmatise communities and raising scares and holding witch-hunts which are the stock-in-trade of a certain type of politics. There cannot be any doubt that while all political parties are asked to suspend activities in the name of fighting the pandemic, there are privileged political groups who are having a field day.

It is high time therefore for us to inquire what kind of politics we accord our consent to as citizens of a democracy, and how we ought to regard the politics going on that are not being called to account. If we keep silent with a decent intention of maintaining the essential discipline and keeping up morale, we may be plagued with consequences beyond our wildest dreams.

Looking abroad, some broad pictures at once strike our attention. The richest country in the world, the United States, is in total disarray because there is no public health service and hospitals and medicines are geared to profit rather than well-being of the people. Nearly 50,000 lives have been lost or just frittered away. On the other hand Vietnam, which for decades had figured in popular American imagination as the enemy of civilisation and humanity thanks to Rambo films, has not only calmly managed to fight off the pandemic without any fatality, but is now supplying the United States with much-needed supplies of testing-kits and masks.

Tiny Cuba has not only coped with remarkable panache but is also rushing supplies and medical staff to hard-hit countries. United States President Donald Trump on the other hand wanted to ride the crest of misplaced confidence to wear out the crisis and now, face to face with disastrous failure, is hysterically blaming China for it.

These reveal the outlook and attitude of the leaderships of these countries to the peril. On the one side the priority is to save lives and on the other keep the business running. Certain hunger and starvation are kept at bay on one side, and greed is whetted on the other while thousands perish. Does this have a political bearing? It undoubtedly has.

Should not these stark facts make us sharply aware of choices in vital state policies? And warn us of the dangers of some kinds of politics that ascribes little value to human life. Time was when our Supreme Court could declare with conviction that the “right to life implies right to life with dignity”.

We have seen death on a large scale with gross indignity in a supposed citadel of democracy in the West. It lays bare before us the consequences of political choice that has turned into some kind of a conditioned reflex and ought shock us into making conscious choices.

Another momentous political issue is how decisions are being taken.

In normal times the government is conferred with power to run the state according to its lights, but within limits. Now the looming catastrophe has enabled the government to cross those limits at will. The consent of the ruled is no longer the implicit condition of the decisions, but it is ominously presumed that their will is already taken care of in such decisions by leaders cheered on by mass rallies.

The ultimate result of such a kind of penumbra politics will be that the people will lose their sovereignty and turn into herds of animals to be driven and disposed of at the will of a leader and his satraps. The first condition for such a state of affairs is to let the ravages of the virus to throw such helpless creatures into panic, and then intervene with brutal efficiency to restore order and dispense essential services. It will increase the potency of the state in inverse proportion to the weakness and helplessness of the subjects.

All the more reason to assert and organise a different kind of politics where the people are participants in decision-making that affects their lives.

The author is a socio-political commentator and cultural critic. The views are personal.