A year. And counting

There are historic days, and histrionic ones. Almost exactly a year back, we had one that was a bit of both. We were introduced to a concept called 'Janata Curfew', which turned to be but a practice session for the grind that followed—the toughest and longest lockdown in living global memory. But we are yet to learn our lesson, it seems (more on that later).

So a year back, as a deadly pandemic bared its fangs and began notching up increasing and frightening numbers, the world revisited its way of working, living and loving. What followed was 365 days of learning and imbibing, on all possible fronts. I wrote on many of the issues that the country and the rest of the world faced through this forgettable year. As we learnt to sanitize and wash and don masks, we also resorted to ringing bells and banging thalis, lighting candles and chanting slogans against an unseen scourge.

Over the year, and into 2021, I talked in these pages of what all was transpiring and the impact the pandemic was having on our economy, our people, our industries and our polity. Today, I hope to synthesize and provide a synopsis of my writings, a compilation if you will, of columns shared over a very testing year. Let me tell you why. Well, because the year is gone, but the pandemic has not. Yet, somehow, we seem to have decided it has. Let's recap…

The first lockdown week

Teeming thousands working in Greater Noida, Gurgaon, Faridabad, Rohtak, Pune, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Nashik, the Chakan-Ranjangaon-Talegaon belt, Aurangabad, Hospet… It is a long list. All huddle together and try to figure out their next move. For daily-wagers, no earnings for the next at least 21 days means no money for food, no money to pay rent and no money for travel. As many of these people reach their rented accommodation, most landlords shut their doors. Out of options, scores of these workers decide to head back to their homes and villages in Uttar Pradesh. Bihar. Madhya Pradesh. Maharashtra. Tamil Nadu. Kerala. Karnataka. West Bengal. Another long list…

When thousands upon thousands of these workers reach railway stations and bus terminals to get back to their homes, they find that these services have also been suspended, abruptly and without warning or buffer. With nowhere else to go, they head for state borders on foot, or take any local conveyance they can clamber on to. At the borders, they find themselves facing police blockades and barricades. Depending on the disposition and mood of the security persons manning these borders, they are reasoned with and asked to go back, threatened and abused, physically beaten up with sticks and pushed back.

This was the general scenario at most state borders in the evening of 24 March 2020 and till the wee hours of 25 March 2020. A few did find 'lucky' borders, where they were surreptitiously helped by across-the-border state governments, packed like cattle into buses and sent home on highways which were by then officially closed.

Two months later

Let's talk liquor, or the lack of it after the Janata Curfew and the subsequent 21-day lockdown. Let's also talk about what this forced prohibition of sorts meant for India as a whole—for the economy, for people used to their daily dose of tipple but not getting it anymore, and for the over 110 crore other teetotaler Indians huddled at home with their 'deprived drinker' family members. There were some dark stories played out inside homes, ones which in their own way were as crippling and frightening as the dreaded COVID-19 pandemic stalking our lives without stealth or apology.

Let's look at some numbers. The impact of the national lockdown on India's GDP was US $8 billion per day. The paradox was that the flipside to the acceleration in India's economy since the introduction of reforms in the 1990s also meant that any deceleration due to events such as COVID-19 was equally profound and debilitating. GST collections in March outlined a numbing impact; they fell by around Rs 7,000 crore due to the few lockdown days in March. April was worse. And reverting to the topic at hand, the halting of liquor sales in the country for 21 days resulted in excise losses of nearly Rs 10,000 crore.

With the 22 March 2020 announcement of the 21-day national lockdown, some states like New Delhi and Maharashtra quickly downed liquor vend shutters the next day itself. Others such as Haryana, Kerala and Punjab, to name but a few, remained open a few days into the lockdown. But India's electronic media got fierce with the state governments over this "shameless support" for sharabis (drunkards). Sure, some leaders like Haryana Deputy Chief Minister Dushyant Chautala calmly explained that liquor, to an extent, was an essential commodity for habitual drinkers, who would otherwise end up in hospitals with withdrawal symptoms and burden an already stressed healthcare system. A few days later, even as Punjab and Kerala mulled over the option of including liquor in the list of essential commodities, India went dry.

Specter of deniability

Kick the legless mist of deniability out. The all-powerful and consummate United States, with all its known and unknown intelligence agencies and paraphernalia, failed to recognize the gravity of COVID-19. Worse still, it saw all the signs but refused to accept that this could have any impact on its own land. Be that as it may, the flaccid excuse in the US and around the world was feeble. Perhaps an after-the-disaster debased attempt to seek exoneration by claiming that the world has not had a comparable prior experience. That shield wilted fast, with damning facts emerging each sleepless night and each following killing morning.

We shall not deliberate extensively on China's role in this pandemic. Let's leave the larger debate for the purists and pundits to decipher. A $20-trillion lawsuit has been filed against China for economic losses allegedly incurred. Sometime soon, someone will put a finger on the cost of human emotions, lives and suffering. We will then perhaps double, triple or even quadruple that $20-trillion rap-sheet. So, that's set aside for another day—obeisance to be paid and penance to be performed. Today, a year into the pandemic, the world needs to get right-side up as far as human lives and economies are concerned.

Increasingly self-employed

On social media, an increasing number of people quietly change their professional status to 'Self-Employed'. In the new world, suddenly being 'Self-Employed' doesn't mean that scores of India's educated achievers have all turned entrepreneurial in one go—they have lost their jobs. The tragedy is worsened as most of these are above 45 years of age, many over 50 years. In the peak of their professional lives, these are mostly engineering graduates from the various chapters of IITs and/or MBAs from the prestigious IIMs. At a time that they should be nearing the pinnacle of their professional success, they are suddenly thrust into the twilight zone.

One can't blame Corporate India or companies large and small for this turn of events. This was a working man's disaster waiting to happen, cutting across designations and classes, as India's economy moved southward quarter after quarter for the last few years. We first tacitly called it a slowdown, just a temporary blip in the country's skyrocketing Corporate fortunes. But a Goldman Sachs report early in 2020 labeled the 18 months from January 2018 to July 2019 "the longest slowdown in the history of the Indian economy".

A year later, we are beyond that 'longest slowdown'. And the last 12 months have seen depressive forces take an iron-grip on the country's economic and investments outlook, squeezing some very sensitive body parts. The global standard for a 'recession' is two consecutive quarters of negative growth. We are well past that number now—nearly 10 times that.

Pigeon syndrome cometh

I could go on and recap the year some more, but Sundays shouldn't begin with depressing tales. The problem is that there is little to share in terms of good news. If a different lockdown had been imposed a month earlier than that on March 25, 2020, wherein we just sealed our international borders and put an order of quarantine of all entering the country, India today would have been hailed globally as the one nation that never faced the COVID-19 outbreak. Somehow, we didn't, despite all the signs being there and verbal warnings issued.

I guess we are human, after all. And we have run out of patience and / or have given up. I see no other reason for a congregation of men hugging each other in cities nationwide even as newly-infected numbers are again ratcheting up and scaling historic highs. Shaking hands should be a strict no-no and body contact even more so. But people are not sporting masks en masse, for some reason. Scratch that, people, especially men are lining up to hug one another, even cuddling and cooing.

Look at Maharashtra, where new-case numbers are skyrocketing. Chalk Kerala, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh in the same color. Even Delhi has seen COVID-19-infected numbers slowly but surely rising each day over the last fortnight. Why are we taking things so lightly? Why haven't we learnt our lesson? Perhaps the answer is simple—we just want to go the way of the pigeon, with our eyes closed and our bodies bracing for the strike.

The writer is a communications consultant and clinical analyst. narayanrajeev2006@gmail.com

Views expressed are personal