generalspeaking

Triaging India for the Novel Coronavirus

"We absolutely do not have any money to take the precautions."
"If death has to come, it will come wherever I am. I can't afford to run away."
Muhammad Asif, 21, cycle-rickshaw driver

"You have millions of poor, marginalized, displaced on the march and the government has left them to their own fate."
"You have millions of people carrying their meagre belongings and having to march hundreds of kilometres to find safety."
Manish Tewari, MP, Congress party

"I apologize for taking these harsh steps that have caused difficulties in your lives, especially the poor people."
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi

"India is probably the first large developing country and democracy into which this pandemic will arrive."
"Many of the advantages of the Chinese [state] control and of having the health systems of Europe or the U.S. are not available to India."
"There will have to be a uniquely Indian response to COVID-19."
Ramanan Laxminarayan, founder, director, Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy

Migrant workers have been marching in great hordes out of India's major cities, their workplaces shuttered, their employment lost. They have no savings, they have no hope that they will survive if they remain, and no guarantees as they trek out of the cities into rural areas in the countryside in a return home. There, they hope to find food available to them at the very least, even while health authorities warn that they will be spreading COVID-19 to India's vast countryside, taking it with them out of the city slums they vacate.

But there are others among India's 1.3 billion population, millions upon millions of the poor and the uneducated, who will remain. Where street vendors go on hawking fresh fruit and vegetables, where markets remain open, where residents of these poor areas hosting the indigent, drink tea in the shade, and play cards to pass the time. These are the back streets of Delhi and elsewhere and despite the lockdown ordered by Narendra Modi, life goes on as usual.

And as it does the police do nothing, no enforcement of the law, no restricting of movement, though it is enforced on major thoroughfares. It is necessity that compels people to continue living as they always have, for where are they to find the necessities of life to sustain them during this time, if not right where they are, not enclosed within four walls, but out in public where the business of living continues unabated.

Cycle-rickshaw driver Muhammad Asif is eager for customers. As far as he and others like him are concerned the social distancing precautions Mr. Modi ordered are a luxury that tens of millions of labourers paid by the day cannot afford. They have no savings, and nor does he, so he cannot afford to remain at home. Without the $8.80 he can earn daily to pay for food, rent and medical bills for his family, there is nothing whatever to sustain them.

Even with that daily wage he cannot access sanitizer, masks, soap and even water beyond more immediate needs to wash his hands. Forced to make a choice between poverty and defying restrictions millions make their choice, prepared to risk the odds, because there are no other options for them. For Mr. Modi they have become a tragedy in motion and location, risking their lives, turning into a public health headache.

Muhammad Asif's situation is reflected by an estimated 120 million labourers. And their plight rests heavily on Mr. Modi's conscience. He has been accused of a humanitarian disaster, locking down cities, unleashing a vast wave of poor migrant workers trekking away from unstable employment now completely shuttered to them, with no resources left of their own and no assistance forthcoming to allay their fears and insecurities.

Forced out of work, they stream out of the city, and back to their home states and villages. Destitute workers trekking long distances, following lost employment. The future potential of ongoing disaster as the novel coronavirus sweeps its way through the second largest population in the world, is beyond difficult to contemplate in the number of victims that may succumb. These are early days, the largest Democracy in the world has reported 1,500 cases and less than 50 deaths thus far. Hope for a miracle.