Abstract
This book is a well-timed and detailed documentation of failed system suffering and challenges of common people during the pandemic, particularly when data and information were fragmented, hidden and underrepresented. The book has 12 chapters divided into four sections, pertaining to different challenges and impacts posed by COVID-19 and unfavourable policy responses to the poor and marginalized, while each chapter of the book is stand alone in terms of specific issues raised yet connected by the thread of COVID-19.
Nathan argues that policy response to COVID-19 in India was against Rawlsian fundamentals of justice and greatest benefit to the least advantage. He shows that the elite captured public resources during the pandemic due to political clientelism, social fragmentation among poor, lack of information of public service among the poor, and it resulted in low prioritization of public goods in favour of the most disadvantaged. The policy response to COVID-19 in India was slow and ad-hoc in terms of low testing, contract tracing, poor infrastructure, low preparedness and sudden announcement of lockdown. One agency was given many tasks while many agencies were given the same tasks. It resulted in lack of coordination, unaccountability, incoherence and chaos in the management of the pandemic across all the waves. The nail in the coffin was to hand over the management of the second wave to the resource-deprived states. Moreover, graded approach to vaccination created an economic burden on the household, wastage of vaccines and slower vaccination rate.
The sudden announcement of the lock-down and lack of any planning for migrant workers led to the crisis of millions moving on the road in the first wave, exposing existing faulty lines in India’s political economy and consequent response to COVID-19. The lack of protection and apathy of employers and private sector towards its workers came out in the most horrifying form. Despite government messaging to the employers to provide for the migrant workers and legislative protection for inter-state migrant informal workers and the minimum wages act, workers were fired. Sarkar reveals the severe enforcement issues in this legislative protection, emanating from either design errors or low levels of wages in the market. Almost all the labour laws have been enacted on premise that there exist employer–employee relations, leaving more than 70%–80% of India’s labour force out of any legal protection. Conventionally, these are migrant workers, domestic workers and self-employed home-based workers. But, now many new types of workers fall into such category. COVID-19 worsened the ongoing unemployment problem in all sectors, excluding agriculture and allied sector, unemployment was highest in trade transport and tourism followed by construction, manufacturing and other sectors. The loss of jobs and income squeezed the demand from all classes. The demand was deferred from durable and non-durable goods to critical services such as health treatment and education. The deferring of critical minimum consumption of health and education created its own generational loss in learning and health outcomes as the poor and marginalized did not have the option/means to access e-health/education. As Paik and Samuel have indicated, the widening learning gaps among children came from multiple factors ranging from schools’ inability to venerability of children to afford learning. Schools’ inability to provide remote learning, large-scale migration and uncertain conditions at home or lack of ability of the families to support remote learning led to dropouts and/or learning gaps. Some successful stories worth replicating came from KV schools calling for donations from alumni, fund-raising schemes of social welfare department and private schools reaching to children by providing e-resources. The book provides an account of extent of non-treatment of non-COVID-19 patients due to closure of most private hospitals and public hospitals turned COVID-19 treatment centres. The problem of transportation created an additional obstacle in reaching to health centres. During COVID-19, poor patients are reported to have postponed their treatment and had to travel more than 100 km to get treatment in emergency situations via bike or auto rickshaw. Since public hospitals were exclusively dedicated to COVID-19 patients, the poor, who are mainly dependent on public services, has to resort to heavy borrowing due to more than usual cost of treatment in private and lower earnings.
The loss of income and employment also showed in the squeezing off private consumption. It led to demand-side recession and particularly affected the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). Many schemes were announced by central and state governments and respective ministries to assist the MSMEs. But, it did nothing other than providing another line of credit. This assumption is ignorant of the structure of this sector where almost 98% of enterprises are micro-enterprises. Past experiences suggest that often these are utilized by the medium or small enterprises and therefore it is least likely to benefit micro-enterprises. In the same vein, more than 90% of MSME units do not have access to computers or internet and do not have the required skill to get benefited from these digital services. Further lack of demand in the market, high cost of raw material and lack of labour force that already returned back due to unplanned calling of lockdown in the first wave led to low uptake of the scheme.
The crowded Indian cities, streets and houses are the best recipe to intensify the infection rate. If people do not have the necessary resources for housing, sanitation and toilet facility, the messaging of social distancing, wearing mask, wash hands and quarantine themselves have no meaning. In India where around 3% of the household does not have a fixed place for hand washing, those who have, of them 39% only have limited hand-washing facility. It was not possible to follow public messaging when around 39% does not use soap to wash their hands. And, around 40% household goes for open defecation, and around half of the population has only one room for sleeping with an average family size of 5, it was not possible to follow how effective public messaging was.
Das argues that the government did not increase public expenditure to provide social security and necessary infrastructure despite the comfortable situation of the RBI to lend money to the government. As a result, venerability and poverty kept rising. It probably came from the political fooling of powerless masses.
The NGOs and civil society could provide only marginal protection to small business by arranging marketing facilities and/or placing their orders to them. However, their effectiveness was also curtailed due to the diversion of resources by their donors. As argued by Sinha, the corporate social responsibility proved to be dysfunctional, ineffective and used for their own interest of the business. Excluding TATAs, no one raised their corporate social responsibility budget, and they diverted their funds to the PM Cares account that affected their ongoing programs and funding to NGOs.
The violation of Rawlsian ‘difference principle’ is substantiated by other authors throughout the book in their analysis of the impact of COVID-19 and its policy response by public or private sector. While the chapters in the book are analytically strong in documenting the crises and gap in the system, they fall short of a satisfactory and in-depth analysis of any particular topic. Yet, this book is going to be very important resource for the futures not only in the study of COVID-19 but also about any future pandemic. This is very useful reading for anyone who is interested in India, public policy, infectious diseases, or just COVID-19. Policy makers will get insights about the loopholes in the public policy and a field-level understanding of the challenges faced by people, particularly labour, enterprises, social sector and social securities.