Through the Highways of Globalization
Blessed Easter! Festivals are now a days images ingested from Instagram feeds and digital greetings. Festivals rupture the indefinite nature of extended time during the lockdown, reminding us of what normal used to be, and if we regain that again, how precious would that be. A good plum cake is missed.
We need the resurrection of our lives more than ever.
I have been rather hesitant about commenting about the migrant worker impact of the circuit breaker in Singapore. The Gulf is also under a lockdown as is India. These are all sub geography’s in Asia where I have worked with/on migrant workers and health. Migrant workers are vulnerable, and medical care is on the margins of their everyday life. The focus is on feeding mouths back home. Many of these brothers are incredibly young, and mismanage finds they work so hard for. They are us, and have all kinds of aspirations as well.
When migrants fall ill they depend on panadol treatment. They have no insurance, no medical leave and often are fired for being ill. It’s a crime to be poor. Poverty is only glorified in Satyajit Ray films. There is no romance in sickness and poverty.
Even middle class professionals such as me have had salaries not paid for 8 months, medical insurance which was cancelled and precarity faced every single day while working in the Gulf.
Having worked with community mentors and leaders such as Mohsin Da, I have seen the desperation. I get angry as I write this. Many good willed souls will offer piecemeal solutions. As an engineer, I am predisposed towards solutions. Blending ethnographic work and an engineering bent, we can make health for temporary guest workers if-
Migrant workers are not sources of infection. They are human beings. They get sick like you and me.
They come because you can get cheaper real estate and project executions. They are tolerated because the injury for the 3D work is done by them.
If you don’t like them, please do the work yourself. Please create the correct incentive structures so that your citizens can take up these jobs. For civil society actors, migrant workers are not your subaltern for a grant pitch deck. All your migrant literature festivals cannot save a life.
The focus should be on making a business case from an unit economics standpoint as governments understand the language of cost benefit analysis a lot more.
Day 16/21 #LockdownCoronavirus stringent measures finally to be seen. My apartment block security staff taking a log people entering and exiting the building. Roads to the Devachi Uruli Chowk are blocked by the local community. Hardly any crowd today. Good stuff.
Spoke with the chap running the poultry shop who is from Mushirdabad in West Bengal. He says that the business is moderate, up on asking the state of his business.
He said in Bangla-
‘Kharap o noye, bhalo o noye. Sobai ke khete toh hobe’
People have to eat to survive.
Cannot be truer words.
Day 14/21 lockdown log in Devachi Uruli, Pune Rural. Some Masks but where is the Social Distancing?
Pandemics do not matter here?
Pathetic case of entitlement. Are the IITs above the rest in a crisis? I did a masters in engineering (surprise!) at a top ten global school. We did not have placements and hustled it out in the job market. Please teach some grit to your kids, Prof!
In the neoliberal language of stakeholder engagement, Modi ji was renewing the ‘social licence to operate’ in a crisis. In a crisis these events are a way to engage but also gauge the levels of buy in from the ground. This can also be a good thermometer check on the sentiment, as trust is often the glue to implement wide scale policy interventions. No other leader would have been able to call this lockdown. DeMo was the trailer. Liberal arts needs an upgrade to comprehend Modiji’s grassroots linked politics.
The migrant worker cases are an impending disaster. Every researcher, case worker, community leader, journalist who works with the migrant worker brothers knows the sheer density and pathetic sanitary conditions in dorms. The density makes the difference, sometimes 10 to a room.
The other concern is the stigma, and the loss of work. I hope MOM has a plan.
Day 13/21 #21nationallockdownIndia Devachi Uruli, Pune Rural. The chowk is buzzing with activity. All Kirana shops are open, a full array of vegetable vendors are plying their fare. Milk powder is out of stock as was the bakery shut. People buying candles for 9pm show.
Change Thinker 