Covid-19: Where a new India is born
home isn’t celebrated as a potential Olympic medal winner, but seen as a grim reminder of the desperate poverty that breeds grit and endurance. Where social distancing is not an elite privilege, but an option available to all citizens. Where 50 people do not have to share a single toilet and a dozen people sleep in a single room even as single families can live in multi-storeyed skyscraper splendour. Where the stark inequities are reduced by a welfarist State that places a premium on providing lowcost housing for all with basic sanitation facilities. Where the slum of Dharavi is not seen as Asia’s largest, but as a reflection of the degradation of urban life that forces millions to live in squalour.
Where members of a specific community aren’t ostracised and spurious links drawn between religion and a virus only to further narrow political agendas. Where vegetable vendors aren’t boycotted because of their religious identity. Where the media doesn’t seek to sensationalise the news in the race for Television Rating Points with provocative hashtags that only spread disaffection and enmity among communities.
Where a pandemic breaks through all caste and class barriers. Where a co-operative society or resident welfare associations do not become private fiefdoms. Where domestic help aren’t stigmatised as coronavirus carriers or denied their wages and barred from the forbidding gates of a housing complex. Where the realisation dawns that this was not a virus spawned in the slums but imported by the flying class of the country. Where we remember that the affluent can Netflix and Zoom their way through a lockdown, but the poor still need to work for a daily income.
Where companies who donate generously to the PM Cares Fund don’t forget to care for those around them. Where all government relief funds are subject to higher standards of public scrutiny. Where job cuts are the exception, not the rule, and compassion overrides commerce. Where governments provide mega-stimulus packages that ensure above all else direct cash support to the most vulnerable. Where we see reform opportunity in a crisis but don’t allow the reformist zeal to descend into cronyism once again. Where reforms are designed to protect the interests of labour and not just of well-networked industry. Where we look to build a “self-reliant” India but not as an attractive slogan but as a living reality. Where our law-makers abandon the foreign accessories –— the branded watches, designer glasses, luxury cars –— that are such an intrinsic part of their lifestyle.
Into that heaven of true freedom, let my country awake!