The Dark Hour - India Under Lockdowns by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Roli Books
Published: 2021-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

In the Mirror, the Beast: Lockdown Tales

  SABA NAQVI

In all my three decades as a journalist, I have never lived through years as terrible as 2020 and April/May 2021. It was in 2020 that my suspicion grew to certainty that we had failed in achieving any of the grand objectives of the Indian Constitution. I came to three different conclusions, all interlinked: there is no moral core left in Indian politics, those in power do not care about the less fortunate and finally, that people thrive on hate when nothing else is on offer.

And in April/May 2021, when the second wave of COVID hit, as a citizen of India, I simply had no choice but to conclude that Indians should not really expect anything from their governments. As hospital beds got filled up and we all went running around on a desperate search for oxygen cylinders (there were hospitalisations of close family members and friends), we were adrift in our collective misery and fear. The dead were disposed off in the River Ganga or buried on the banks without last rites. India, town to village, was staring at death.

It seemed worse than the great collective miseries I had covered exactly a year ago. And they were bad enough. Some of the stories that I covered during the first lockdown were the reverse migration of India’s working classes back to the villages, the awful conditions of humans in the communal riot-affected parts of northeast Delhi and the media feasting like vultures on the story of the Tablighi Jamaat, described as ‘superspreaders’ of Covid-19. In the course of these journeys, I found India revealing itself with all its cruelties, inequalities and injustices during the lockdown announced with a mere four-hour notice on 24 March 2020.

The make-up was washed off, the naked face exposed as the months of the lockdown dragged on. When it ended and a semblance of the old life resumed, it revealed a nation poorer than it already was, the rich wealthier than they were. We saw hatred still being nourished in the petri dish of political calculation, revealing quite clearly, a backsliding democracy.

The story began at 8 pm on 24 March 2020. The prime minister of India announced that all outdoor activity must cease after four hours. At the stroke of midnight, many Indians, therefore, awoke (or stayed sleepless through that night) to a disaster. They were also told to bang their pots and pans, presumably to drive evil spirits away. The prime minister suggested Indians do so from their balconies. So what would happen to those without homes and therefore minus balconies? No matter, the naysayers were told he was a popular leader and knew what he was doing (the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP] by itself got 32 per cent of the vote in the 2014 national election and 38 per cent in 2019; great in the first-past-the-post system but less than half the votes cast).

Either way, the prevailing media ecosystem had anointed a Supreme Leader and the broadcast media in particular was crawling when being asked to bend.

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