Locking Down the Poor: Book Review

‘I won’t die of corona, before that I will die of Hunger’. From the past three years this covid-19 has taken huge toll on each and every aspect of human life. It doesn’t let live us the way we live our lives before. The harsh restrictions put on the movement of people and their activities especially in India has made the lives of common people difficult and worse. The government seems in no mood in finding out the ways to deal with this disease. Whenever the cases surge they came with the only option of lockdowns. As the book talks about the first lockdown, its impact on poor, migrant labours and economy. The measures which should have been taken to avoid looses and the governments behavior and dealing with this health emergency. This book under review is written by Harsh Mander, human rights activist and author of several books who served on many prestigious positions. The covid-19 first emerges from the Wuhan city of China and takes the whole world into its grip. India saw the cases in hundreds when the Prime Minister of the country on the night of 24th March announced the country wide lockdown of 1.3 billion populations in a notice of just 4 hours. This was the harshest and stringent lockdown which proved fatal for the whole of country as it make everything stand still and people start feeling panic especially who were out of their homes in other parts of the vast country claimed by Harsh Mander. The sudden lockdown imposed by PM made hit most those who work on daily wages and those who even doesn’t have roof on their heads, who sleep under the flyovers or footpaths. The people who has nowhere to go. As the book is the first hand experience of the author where he served the food and other essentials and worked on the ground to help those who doesn’t have means to survive. The people who live without their own shelter, the people who live in crowded shanties, slums and even in pipes in Delhi, the migrant workers who were abandoned by their employers and the society when they most needed them most. They need their sympathy, love, affection and help but unfortunately they were thrown on their own even by the government. The author wrote as when one day he was serving food during the lockdown a young man appeared and told us that he hasn’t have seen a roti from last four days and today to get it I waited for hours in queue to get my turn for this piece of food. As the lockdown continues so the number of people with their hungry bellies increased with each passing day. Children cry for milk as the whole country was under strict lockdown. There was helplessness everywhere. A beggar was beaten to pulp by the police. He cries they are killing the poor like dogs. The book claimed that a woman was cooking chicken feet to feed his family felt ashamed when the author found her cooking chicken feet in one of the slums. She felt ashamed and covers it with her sari. The author told her don’t feel ashamed, you are feeding your family and little children it is rather the government who should feel ashamed which has driven the whole country into such a big disaster and biggest humanitarian crisis since independence.
As the book sheds light on the 21st days of lockdown wrote that many experts are of the view that while announcing the lockdown the concern of people was not taken into consideration. To quote from the book “but it should been obvious from the start that a total lockdown could even in theory, ensure safety only to those who with assured incomes or savings, homes with spaces for distancing , in-house toilets, and the resources to buy and store essentials in bulk. Thus would have been possible only for 40 crore Indians. For the remaining 90 crore, there would be no protection from the virus, only the unbearable burden of costs of the lockdown. Then how could any administration or state justify this strategy”. The time when Prime Minister sagely advised his fellow citizens to practice social distancing, and treat the homes as ‘Lakshman rekha’ a line not to be crossed, but he was manifestly indifferent to the living reality of hundreds of thousands of children, women and men in every city of the country who have no homes to stay back in, for them the only place to stay was a pavement, a dirty patch or a flyover or bridge. The citizens of the country received messages on their cell phones, where they were asked to wash their hands regularly and frequently is a cruel joke to those country men who even didn’t have money to buy soaps and doesn’t have water. According to an estimate, a person needs about two liters of water for a single hand wash with soap. So is it possible for slum dwellers who completely relay on tankers which too stopped their services as a result of harsh measures put up by the government on the movement of people. To quote the book “it is instructive that in the year 2020, a democratically elected government of free India invoked the Epidemic Diseases Act of 1897, passed by the British Colonial administration during the plague epidemic, to impose its draconian lockdown restrictions. This time, too, the poor and migrant workers were specifically targeted”. The union governments micro small and medium enterprises department till July predicted that almost ten crore jobs in this sector of economy in India were lost due to contraction of the economy. The book is full of chilling events and happenings where migrant survivors told their chilling stories which make any sensible and responsible human being down his head in shame. Sukhder Singh, with his pregnant wife and a six year old daughter walked for nine days on foot where police beat them and villagers shoed them away. Similarly 17 years old migrant Baliram walked up to Uttar Pradeshs Gorakhpur district from Bengalura for 25 days. The book also talks about the hate campaign being carried out to target the minority communities Tableegi Jamat as the carriers of covid-19. The targeting of Muslims were carried out blatantly and even by those at the helm of affairs. This was the time when people need each other the most irrespective of caste, color, creed, region or religion but unfortunately the ruling government polarize the society and distract the citizens from the ways the governments handling the pandemic so evade the responsibility. Even people were treated as criminals who got infected because of the virus. The book ‘locking down the poor’ is a good read as the covid-19 pandemic was a health emergency, but the dispensation have made it law and order problem.
(The author is a freelancer. Views are exclusively his own)
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