Covid-19 hinterland digest: Stonepelting in Kanpur; domestic violence rises

The coronavirus (Covid-19) has claimed more than 1,000 lives in India. The country is conducting more tests to detect people who have the virus as a lockdown ends on May 4.
Business Standard takes a look at regional editions of Hindi newspapers to provide you with a picture of the Covid-19 situation in the hinterland.
Special care for patients during Ramzan
National Cancer Institute at Badsa, Jhajhar is doing a little more than just treating the patients. As it is the holy month of Ramzan, the 120 Tablighi Jamat patients in the institute are getting due care and attention while fasting, reported Dainik Bhaskar. The 35-member staff at the institute is providing all the comforts and facilities to these patients to help them fast smoothly. Each day, the staff gets up at 3:30 am and serves the patients with food, which is called Sehri, so that they can be ready for the whole day. After Iftar in the evening, they are served well at dinner. To arrange for all of this, the hospital staff is working at odd hours. According to the hospital, management says that they are doing everything to provide special dishes on a daily basis.
Domestic violence on the rise; police steps up vigil
Several domestic violence cases are being reported in Raipur. In the 36 days of lockdown, over 60 cases have reported, according to a report in Dainik Bhaskar. Many women have confessed that they could not reach out to the police despite being a victim. Seeing all this, the SP Arif Sheikh used Facebook live to inform about Chuppi Todo Abhiyaan (Break the silence). He said that in the time of crisis women can call or drop a message on the numbers and police will be at their doors within 10 minutes. If the complaint is found to be too serious, then the police would arrest the accused on the spot.
Stone pelting on medical team, police at Bajaria
A medical team was subjected to stone pelting in Bajariya, Kanpur when it went to quarantine a family.
Police too took some blows but then it lathi-charged the crowd., reports Amar Ujala The crowd showed some resistance and the officer-in-charge had to brandish his gun to scare off the crowd. The Uttar Pradesh government has been very vocal about the security of coronavirus warriors. Police arrested several culprits and will charge them under the Gangster Act act NSA. The scuffle lasted for over an hour.
Govt offices to commence operations in Bhopal

The government offices in Bhopal will start running once again after 36 days. 30 per cent of the strength would be present in the office and the rest would work from home, reports Dainik Bhaskar. Only officers working in the essential services department will attend the office. While doing this, the officials will have to maintain social distancing. They will not be allowed to chew tobacco. They will be thermal scanned before entering and while leaving the office. Further relaxations are expected in Bhopal but not in Ujjain and Indore.

Covid-19: Reducing migrant labour to biological body with no human value

On March 24, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a 21-day national lockdown to try and control the spread of the deadly coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic in the country. The lockdown entailed shutting down of all but essential services, with people not venturing outside their homes. This also meant the shutting down of all economic activity in the country, including manufacturing or building activity. What the country saw after this announcement was nothing short of a crisis, however. Instead of leading to a complete shutting down of movement across the country, it led to hundreds of thousands of migrant workers deciding to pick up their stuff and start a long march back to their villages. The story was repeated across all of India.

The scene of thousands of migrants marching on deserted highways with their luggage on their backs towards their villages was reported not just in India but all over the world. It makes one ask if our poor and migrant workers have been reduced to mere physical bodies in this coronavirus infected world. Are they just phsyical bodies devoid of any humanity in their existence? This perception was further solidified when we saw scenes of these poor migrant workers being sprayed with chemicals in Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh. Hundreds of them - including women and kids - had managed to escape starvation in Delhi and reached their homes in Bareilly but were forced to take this chemical bath to disinfect them. According to sources, the chemical used in this spray was a combination of sodium hypochlorite (bleach) and water, but district authorities explained that it was only a plain solution of chlorine and water. It is reported that this disinfectant is used by municipal corporation personnel to clean buses, floors, metallic surfaces such as door knobs and frames. A similar scene was seen in Wayanad, Kerala. After facing allegations that they had also used bleach to spray on people at a public crossing, the authorities asserted that it was only a soap solution.

Incidents like the one in Bareilly bring forth the inhuman treatment meted out to poor migrant workers. This may be happening for two reasons - one, a section of our administrative bodies have been grabbed by the middle or upper classes with their elite mentality that perceives poor migrant workers who perform low-paying jobs as unclean, dirty and possibly infected bodies. Secondly, we treat them only as inanimate physical entities, not as human beings. While a human being would have some socio-human characteristics, regarding them as mere physical bodies allows us to treat them like doors, knobs and frames.

These incidents also suggest that during these times of the Covid-19 pandemic, we are cultivating and mobilising fears and anxieties that erode human qualities such as sensitivity, concern and care (seva) from our individual and social self. These fears project our own compatriots as our possible enemies and we are trying to save ourselves from any contact with our own people. Eminent post-modernist thinker Giorgio Agamben while investigating coronavirus crisis rightly opined that we are turning into a society which has no value, other than survival. He further said that the coronavirus condition is transforming us into a society, which no longer believes in any thing but 'bare life'. We are losing friendships, affections, religious and political convictions.

Taking a clue from Agamben, we can even say that as human beings we are nowhere, only our machine produced and internet, smartphone circulated messages are everywhere. Our human responsibilities have been reduced to mere messages on social sites and smartphones.

The fear of 'getting sick' makes us more selfish and self-centered. Agamben rightly observed that fear is a poor advisor. Bare life and the fear of losing it is not something that unites people but blinds and separates them. Prime Minister Narendra Modi perhaps hinted at something similar when he appealed people to practice social distancing but emotional closeness. This emotional closeness may save human nature and humanity in our beings in this time of crisis.

The recent incidents with poor migrant workers that we have witnessed during this lockdown shows that we are not according proper human and civilised treatment to them, neither in their homeland nor in their home state. Recently in Siwan district of Bihar, returning migrants who had somehow managed to reach their home district were put in a small space locked by an iron gate in very infectious conditions. They cried and appealed for rescue the entire night. They were taken out and taken to isolation centers in their respective panchayat aboard trucks, packed like cargo.

These incidents only highlight how we don't consider the poor as valuable human beings. They are just possible carriers of a deadly pandemic. Compare this to how the government brought back stranded NRIs from Covid-19 affected countries like China. The Chief Minister of Bihar, Nitish Kumar also opined that the movement of the migrant workers will break the lockdown and disseminate the disease. These very migrants help their home state by sending money back home, money earned through their hard work but now they find that governments have turned their backs on them and treat them as vectors while putting them under constant surveillance.

Theoretically speaking, the situation of migrant labour in India emerging out of the coronavirus crisis is unique. Neither Adam Smith's theory of labour value in capitalism nor Marx's concept of labour power help us in explaining or understanding this situation.

Covid-19 crisis: UBI sets up emergency funding window for corporates, MSMEs

Public sector lender Union Bank of India on Thursday said it has set up an emergency funding window for its MSME and corporate customers impacted by coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak. The bank is offering a maximum 10 per cent of the existing working capital limit to accounts that are standard as on February 1, 2020, a statement said.
The repayment period of these loans will be 36 months, including maximum moratorium of 12 months. The window is open till September 30, 2020.
ALSO READ: Coronavirus: Banks offer fresh lines of credit to SME firms amid lockdown
"This credit facility is available at NIL margin with competitive rate of interest - 8 per cent fixed rate of interest, which is one-year MCLR as on date," the bank said.
ALSO READ: Centre tells states to ensure smooth movement of bank, ATM staff
All MSME/agriculture borrowers are eligible for a loan up to Rs 10 crore and others up to Rs 50 crore.

Public sector banks, including State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda and Indian Bank, have already rolled out similar lines of credit for their customers to meet any liquidity mismatches.