REDEFINING PATRIOTISM IN A POST COVID-19 INDIA

  In a world increasingly being taken over by a totalitarian right wing ideology ( and India is very much there, along with the USA, UK, Turkey, Brazil, Hungary, the Phillipines, Poland ) the idea of patriotism has been distorted to serve the authoritarian tendencies of their rulers. Autocracy does best when it has an enemy, real or imagined, to frighten its citizens with; this enemy can come in various forms: a neighboring nation, terrorism, drugs, traitors from within, economic collapse, a different religion or ethnic community. Its alleged purveyors are equally varied - contrary ideologues, intellectuals, artists, journalists, academicians- and they have to be countered with the force of "sovereign violence" and public denunciation in order to "save" the nation from their conspiracies.

  But before this can be done it is necessary to acquire legitimacy for the state's actions. This is done by aggressively promoting an ersatz and aggressive form of Nationalism in which the autocrat's ideology IS the national interest and any opposition to it is anti- national, if not seditionist. This nationalism is enshrined in a new concept of patriotism, a form of jingoism, where loyalty is sought for the ruling establishment and not for the country. And to extract this loyalty from its citizens, this redefined patriotism has to be necessarily militarized- equated with hysterical support for the state's coercive apparatus- the military, para military, police, even state sponsored vigilante mobs. These forces are brought into play on every occasion- Parliamentary debates, election speeches, television programmes- to divert the attention of the populace from other unresolved problems, and any questioning of their actions is branded as unpatriotic. In the Indian context we see examples of this everyday, whether it is the " unpatriotic" demand for withdrawal of AFSPA, reported excesses in Kashmir, questioning of the Rafale deal, the brutal conduct of the UP police against the anti-CAA protesters, recent actions and inactions of the police in Delhi, mob lynchings. By militarising patriotism every coercive action of the state becomes legitimate, the agents of this coercion become holy cows, and every other agency of the state becomes secondary. This is also a calculated effort by the rulers to coopt the armed forces to their cause. Support for this militarisation becomes the only standard for judging one's patriotism because the "enemies" of the nation ( as defined earlier) can only be countered by these armed forces and de-facto militias.

   This has worked well for Mr. Modi so far, ensuring that the bread and butter issues are put on the back burner, and garnering massive popular support for him and his party. But the events around the Covid 19 pandemic may be about to change all this. An invisible virus has locked down the whole country and generated an unprecedented fear and panic not seen since Partition. It is an existential dread about a deadly present and a  precarious future. And suddenly, the jingoistic bogies created by the government to stir up nationalism appear inconsequential, hollow and petty in the face of threats to our very ways of life. A realisation has also set in that the real threat to the country today is not on its borders or in the jungles of Dantewada, but right here, in the air we breathe and the hand we touch. It is not the govt's militarised apparatus which will save the country but a new set of heroes and warriors.

   The front lines today are not on our external borders but in every village and town, and those engaging in battle there are not  soldiers but people who have been completely neglected so far by this militaristic government- doctors, nurses, para medicals, scientists, researchers, sanitation staff, pharmacists ( they are there in our uniformed forces too, though equally neglected there too). It is these warriors who are the real patriots today, risking their own and their families' lives in order to keep us safe; their sacrifice is the patriotism we need to realise and recognise now, and in the future too.

  There are others too, those who are fighting the parallel war to prevent our economy from collapsing, to ensure that the supply chain of the goods and services on which our daily living depends does not collapse. Humble entities we take for granted: store clerks, truck drivers, the grocer and the vegetable vendor, the milk man, the delivery boy, the bus conductor, the journalist, the private security guard- they too put their lives at risk every time they venture out. And let us not forget those backroom, invisible boys and girls who are keeping our telecom and digital systems going at this difficult time, keeping us connected even as the government is compelled to snap these connections. This eco-system of social media platforms, digital information and services fills the physical void, Sanjay Kapoor, former CEO of Bharti Airtel reminds us in an article, allowing us to remain productive even while avoiding the risk of contagion. It enables families to stay in touch, access vital information, maintain everyday commerce. These techies may not be risking their lives, but they ensure that our digital civilisation does not collapse. It is these people who are the real patriots of today.

   If there's one important lesson that COVID 19 has taught us, apart from exposing our fragility and stupidity as a race, it is that these hitherto unsung, unacknowledged professionals are the soldiers of the future. It has, hopefully, taught us that whereas boots on the ground will always be needed, the next millenium  belongs to biological, economic and cyber warfare; while protecting our borders may still be required, the real challenge will be in protecting our ways of life, our natural environment, the health of communities; while Pakistan may continue to be enemy no. 1, the real enemy will be our inability to accept that the world will have changed irrevocably after this virus, and that we too need to change our politically expedient definition of patriotism. One doesn't have to wear a uniform, or march to the rhythms of jackboots, or chant Jai Shri Ram to be a patriot. Of course, our armed forces will always occupy pride of place, but they now have to share this space with others on the new front lines of the new dangers.

  So it's not enough to clap or bang pots and pans for two minutes to express our theoretical gratefulness to the many who are preventing our health and economy from collapsing. What is needed is to discard this deviant concept of a militarised patriotism, recognise the new warriors and realign national resources so that the real patriots are better equipped to defend our ancient civilisation and modern economy. As Mark Lawrence Schrad, the American author and Professor of Sociology hopes, in an insightful article in the POLITICO magazine: " Perhaps, too, we will finally start to understand that patriotism is cultivating the health and life of your community, rather than blowing up someone else's community."

  

SERMONS IN STONES, LESSONS FROM PATHOGENS.

   It took a microscopic, invisible virus to expose the wasteful, predatory and unsustainable life style we have evolved- exposing the arrogance of a species which has been around for just about 80000 years, but has already undone most of what nature and a systematic evolution process had achieved in the millions of years which preceded it. Man is the only living thing which has the power to alter its external environment, and we have been at it, with a vengeance, ever since the Industrial Revolution-ravaging our forests, our oceans and rivers, pushing species into extinction, poisoning the air, even cluttering space with more than 5000 objects. All this in the never-ending pursuit of pleasure, convenience, gluttony and greed. Homo sapiens has been behaving as if there was no tomorrow. But the Corona virus has now shown us that ugly tomorrow- one which will be the last if we do not change our lifestyles and frenzy of consumption. Those who die of the virus may well turn out to be the lucky ones.

  The virus has so far spread to 100 countries, infected 145,000 people and killed about 4500, far less than do malaria, heart attacks, cancer, road accidents. But it has already altered our life styles and caused economic losses like no other affliction has in the past, and generated a fear not experienced before. In the coming months aviation expects to lose a hundred billion dollars, tourism eighty billion ( estimates for India are about two billion dollars if the outbreak continues till the end of the year), the cruise line industry has already lost forty billion. Global GDP growth may be halved in this fiscal. Country after country is walling itself off from the outside world, tens of millions of people have been forcibly quarantined, health infrastructures collapsing, factories at a standstill, markets and roads deserted. Tribalism is taking over. If the panic continues civil strife may not be too far off.

  Under the widening onslaught of the coronavirus the brittle layers of our "civilisation" are peeling off , one by one. This is because this was never the way nature intended us to live, nor can the planet sustain this insane consumption of natural resources- eating and drinking stuff brought from thousands of miles away, burning fuel to travel all over the world just to fill our leisure time, emitting green house gases to watch Netflix interminably instead of going out for a walk, stripping the planet's green cover just so we can build more towns, resorts, airports and golf courses. It takes a while to grasp the horrific extent of our cruelty to the planet and the demands made on it, but some figures of our depredations might help us to understand:

* Rampant non-vegetarianism. Global meat consumption is about 400 million tonnes, the per capita annual meat intake being 43 kgs. Why is this bad? Because live stock rearing accounts for 17% of total green-house gas emissions and millions of hectares of forests are being cleared to provide ranges for this livestock.

* We harvest 100 million tonnes of fish every year and 75% of fishing grounds have been exhausted. By 2025 there will be more plastic than fish in the oceans.

*  More than 6.80 billion persons travel every year for pleasure on 150,000 commercial flights every day, spewing 1.2 billion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere.

* Every year 793 million TEUs ( Twenty feet x Twenty feet containers equivalent units) are transported across the world, carrying goods from one country to another, because of a production/ consumption mismatch.

*  The insatiable demand for energy results in the burning of 8000 million tonnes of coal every year. This figure was 4500 million in 1990.

  All of this has come at a great cost to the planet's health. 13.7 million hectares of forests are lost every year. Of the 2 million species of animal life, about 2000 are driven to extinction every year, which is about 10000 times the natural extinction rate: it is estimated that by 2070 on third of all life forms will become extinct. Recent studies have revealed 33 new microbes/ pathogens that had been locked up/ frozen in the glaciers and permafrost in the poles but could now be released because of the melting of the ice. We have no resistance to them and scientists have no idea what effect they could have on us if they become active. Water wars are just around the corner.

  Scientists have unequivocally established that the rise in zoontic diseases like Corona, Sars, Ebola, Mers, Zica, Nipah etc. are linked to the loss of biodiversity, natural habitats, and forests and climate change. Animals are coming in contact with human habitations and their bacteria and viruses are now infecting humans.The Corona virus has shown that we need  to reinvent our exploitative and inter dependent models of trade and commerce, to REDUCE and DEGLOBALISE consumption, especially of non-essential goods and products. If India had manufactured its own APIs, automobile components and smart phones, if the western world had produced its own computer chips and lithium batteries, if we ate local beef instead of importing Wagyu beef from Japan, got drunk on our own liquor instead of fixating on Scotch from Scotland or Champagne from France, vivisected our own fish instead of carting in caviar from the Caspian sea- in short, if countries had relied on local products instead of becoming over dependent on goods from China, Japan, South Korea and each other, this kind of global economic panic may not have assumed such alarming proportions. Products should be manufactured where the raw materials, essential inputs and markets are available and not where taxes are lower: the planet is more important than corporate profits. Supply chains should be local. Travel locally for pleasure and tourism, not to far away exotic destinations just because you can afford it; this has already begun to happen- a recent BBC report has revealed that in the last one month domestic tourism in Europe has gone up by 20%, even as international tourism has all but collapsed.

  Some of the beneficial effects of this Corona induced imperatives are already becoming evident: China( the world's biggest polluter) has never seen bluer skies this century, with a 25% drop in CO2 and nitrogen oxide emissions, fossil fuel consumption across the world has reduced significantly with  oil demand expected to come DOWN this year, the first time in ten years: industry sources predict that the expected demand for 2020 will be reduced by as much as 365 kilo barrels per day, back to 2011 levels. China has imposed a complete ban on all trade in wild life, and since it is the main driver of this trade, this will have a huge effect on saving many endangered species. Non-essential travel has been heavily truncated: one estimate states that between January and April this year global airline capacity fell by 40.8 million seats. As the virus continues to spread around the globe more quarantines will occur, more work outages, more flight cancellations, more production losses. Millions will face hardships, but these will have been caused as much by our unsustainable life styles and economic models as by the virus. The planet will, however, become a better place to live in, albeit temporarily.

  The corona virus crisis is where the concerns about global warming and sustainable use of natural resources converge. To overcome this virus- and others that will inevitably follow- homo sapiens will have to make fundamental changes to the way we work, eat, recreate, travel, socialise. Advances in technology can help us to make these changes: work from home instead of commuting, use skype and tele conferencing instead of jetting around the world for meetings, avoid exotic foods from far away places, eat and travel locally, do not succumb to the retail therapy of non-essential spending promoted by mindless shopping frenzies such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday or End of Reason sales. Governments should also do their bit by incentivising such behavioural changes and disincentivising practices to the contrary.

  Nature is striking back and may kill many more than the bubonic plague and the Spanish flu, primarily because of our burgeoning population and changed life styles. It is not as yet cruel, however, compared to our standards: we kill 1300 of our fellow citizens every day. So let us not blame the virus but learn to live with Nature, as our ancestors did. If we were to consider the whole thing dispassionately and clinically the corona virus is the best piece of news for planet Earth in a long time. It is not a disaster, it's a wake-up call. We can either wake up now, or hit the snooze button and go back to the neolithic age. 

WORRY ABOUT THE TRUST DEFICIT, NOT THE FISCAL DEFICIT.

   The country is now firmly caught in a vicious,  stagflationary downward spiral. And the reason is not the fiscal deficit, that bugbear of economists, or a delusional stock exchange, but the complete decimation of trust and belief in the government and its various agencies. The tangible framework of a nation- Parliament, laws, courts, institutions, agencies, media- these are but the hardware of governance and democracy. What drives them is the trust and faith that the citizens have in them- the software without which they cannot function in the manner they were intended to. And today this software has been taken over by a malevolent virus and the entire machinery of state has turned rogue, it is destroying that which it was supposed to protect, promote and guard. Vast sections of citizenry no longer trust the government, and those that do, do so for the wrong reasons.

  The grandiloquent promises which brought the BJP to power in 2014- Rs. 15 lakhs in bank accounts, 20 million jobs a year, strengthening of federalism, safety of women, social harmony, respect for the constitution, eradication of corruption, transparency- were embraced by the people but started unraveling very soon, more so after May 2019. The union govt. is in constant conflict with non-BJP state governments and is continuously encroaching on their jurisdiction through the NIA, CBI, changes to the Finance Commission TORs, partisan use of Governors. Even the pretense of federalism has been given up and the deep mistrust is reflected in the refusal of at least ten states to conduct the NPR, and the resolutions against NRC.

   Betraying the people's trust and its own promises, deals like the Rafale purchase, allotment of airport, mining, port, power projects to a restricted list of companies are not only opaque but raise other fiduciary questions too. Crimes against women have gone up exponentially, with some of the BJP's own leaders being involved and, worse, being protected. Social harmony is in tatters, the riots in Delhi being only the most recent examples. Jobs are being LOST by the millions every year, not created. If an honest assessment were to be done it would probably reveal that the number of families below the poverty line has increased during the last three years, owing to maverick economic policies. The envelope of the Constitution is being pushed to its limit by dubious legislations. 

  There are no takers now for the spurious statistics churned out by a govt. which does not accept the figures of its own agencies, and either trashes them or suppresses them, as it did with the National Statistical Commission's employment and consumption/ expenditure surveys. It does not add to the citizens' confidence when ex- Chief Economic Advisors maintain that GDP figures are fraudulently bumped up by 2.00 to 2.50 points, or when heads of statistical organisations resign because of interference. Even the international organisations no longer go by the govt's official figures but generate their own by looking at broad industry markers instead- one reason why they are continually downgrading our economic forecasts.

  Much of the social disruption, bordering on anarchy, on display these days is because of the CAA/NRC/NPR trinity. Hundreds of millions have no faith in the government's "assurances" on the subject; how can they when the Prime Minister says one thing and the Home Minister another, when there is complete dissonance between what is said in Parliament and in TV studios and interviews? It's not just the confusion over their stands that creates doubts, it's also the blatant, easily verifiable untruths- about existence of detention centers, about NPR being the "first stage of NRC", about the revised NPR questionnaire, about the compulsion to produce documentary proof. How does one repose trust in the government when, after after imposing the world's longest ever internet lockdown on Kashmir, the Law Minister pontificates on the 2nd of March at a seminar that for his government "accessibility to the internet is non-negotiable"? Or when the PM says that we should honour wealth creators but his government lets loose the CBI, ED and the Income Tax department on businesses and banks in a manner never seen before? It is this overwhelming dissonance between its statements, and the dichotomy between its claims and its actions that are leading to a collapse in the people's trust. A govt. which lies through its teeth engenders not only distrust but also fear.                                            The result is that even innocuous surveys such as the household census on consumption or of domestic tourism expenditure are now being obstructed by people; in some cases field investigators have been held hostage. People are just not willing to provide any information to govt. agencies, fearing it shall be misused for the NPR/NRC. If this continues the entire statistical base of development data shall be  contaminated, effecting not only the nation's planning but also its image as  a destination for foreign investment.
  This suspicion of the BJP government's true intentions and motives is an important reason for the paralysis in the economy. Consumption has bottomed out, demand is at an all time low, industrialists are not borrowing and banks not lending even though they are flush with funds post demonetisation. According to a report by Shekhar Gupta in The Print banks have total deposits of Rs. 141 lakh crores but have been able to lend only Rs. 95 lakh crore- Rs. 46 lakh crore is lying idle which could have been utilised to create jobs, ramp up production and demand. Instead we are now headed for a period of stagflation.

  This cloud of suspicion has spread over just about every public institution, which are now seen to be suborned instruments of an over arching state, timidly doing its bidding- the RBI, Election Commission of India, CAG, NHRC, the regulatory agencies. Most dangerous of all, people's faith in even the Supreme Court and the higher judiciary appears to be getting eroded at an alarming rate; they cannot be blamed given the tenor and ambivalence of some recent judgments- and adjournments!- on Kashmir, habeas corpus, CAA, Ram mandir, hate speech and the Delhi riots. It doesn't help matters when a senior Supreme Court judge chooses to heap obsequious praise on the Prime Minister at an international conference of jurists. 

  And these misgivings are now no longer limited to our national borders but are spreading like questioning ripples into the international community, notwithstanding choreographed visits of foreign ambassadors and the hugging trysts with Donald Trump. The diplomatic firefighting and the refrain of " this is our internal matter" are losing traction. The ultimate humiliation for us has been the intervention application by the UN High Commissioner of Refugees in the Supreme Court in the challenge to the CAA- the first time in our history, reducing us to the level of some African and South American nations, struggling to become democracies. Can there be a bigger come down for a nation which prides- prided?- itself as a beacon for other countries?

  Nations can withstand political divisions- in fact, in mature democracies this only makes the democracy stronger, resilient and broad based. But if they are divided on the basis of religion and a jaundiced perception of historical wrongs, they can only weaken and descend into social and economic collapse. In our federal system, if the center and the states do not work together then even the best policies will flounder and fail to deliver. Outsiders will not invest and domestic wealth creators will take their money abroad to more stable countries, as 5000 dollar millionaires did last year. Economies are not built in vacuums but on platforms where govts are trusted, policies are progressive, laws are free of biases, courts are objective, institutions are allowed to function according to their mandates, societies are stable and the citizenry are not killing each other over their gods. Our problem today is not the fiscal deficit, it is the trust deficit. In sheer economic terms we were in a much weaker position in the early 1990's, when we even had to pledge our gold reserves. But our social fabric was not torn and our institutions were not compromised, we were able to weather the storm and emerge as a 7%+ GDP growth economy. We were able to do so because the country was united and the government of the day was trusted to do its best. That unity and trust are missing today.