Fight against Corona shows the need for Socialism: CPI leader D Raja

The lockdown has completed a week and there are two more weeks to go. By the time one hopes the Lakshman Rekha will be wiped off by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who gloomily declared the lockdown on March 24 and before on March 19 about the janata curfew and thali bajao campaign to extend moral support to the medical community involved in combating Corona on the afternoon of March 22.

The Communist party of India supported the measures of the government to keep people safe from the Corona pandemic despite being apprehensive of the measures causing more misery to workers, migrants or otherwise, poor farmers, and homeless and other down-trodden people. Unfortunately, all our apprehensions came to be true.

Corona started as a viral epidemic and WHO started noticing it almost by the end of December, 2019. But even till February first week, no thermal testing was introduced at airports in most of the places in our country. No proper assessment was made about how many hospital beds, masks, diagnostic equipment, ventilators, trained medical personnel, etc., are required in case Corona reaches India through Air travellers, knowing fully well that both domestic and international Air travel has immensely increased during the last ten or twenty years.

Modi and his Union Home Minister were busy happily first with abrogation of article 370, imposing heavy restrictions on Kashmiri people and leaders, then with constitutional amendments to polarise people along communal lines, then creating a scare through NPR and NRC, and finally indulging in the vicious, communalised election campaign in Delhi.

So, when Corona ultimately reached India as a pandemic, the government is desperate, with no public funded hospitals in good numbers, no public funded medical colleges in sufficient numbers (CPI opposed the act governing the medical education passed by Modi government that further privatised medical education). Added to all this, public distribution, public transport, everything public was ruthlessly killed by the Modi government.

Even while fighting corona Pandemic, communal fascists are not keeping communalism out. The latest example is communalizing the Nizamuddin incident. Yes, around 2,100 devotees remained there including hundreds of foreign devotees. Some of them are already infected and with ten people dying, the enormous nature of problem is in front of us. But by using dangerous words like intelligence failures, foreigners, an accusation of deliberately neglecting instructions to spread Corona has been levelled.

Coronavirus does not infect people looking at their community or caste. All those who are suspected should voluntarily come forward for testing. There is a possibility of increase of infected cases in the coming days. Do we have enough medical manpower ready? All of us are aware of the unscientific atmosphere intentionally created by communal fascists during the last 6 years, particularly led by Modi himself. We remember his great statements in front of gathering of scientists like Indian science Congress and on other occasions. We know how the urine of cow was paraded as the remedy against Corona even in first two weeks of March.

The Prime Minister’s video conferencing with state chief ministers shows the lack of preparedness and the lack of prior consultations and coordination between Centre and the States. The Centre should be held responsible for this.

The Kerala LDF government has taken several measures well in advance. Humanity is confronting a health disaster of gigantic proportions. The Corona pandemic has been infecting and affecting people of every nation from Asia to the Americas and from Europe to Africa.

The worst hit are the poor and working people in every country. This pandemic has exposed the inherent character and cruelty of the capitalist social order.

Neo-liberal capitalism has led to unprecedented inequality and injustice. Housing, health care, education and employment are not guaranteed as fundamental rights of the people. Neo-liberalism has been promoting consumerism and individualism ruthlessly. It has been destroying the social consciousness of human beings to have concern for the fellow human beings. Private property and profit cannot uphold the ideal values such as ‘we’ and ‘ours’.

The Corona pandemic has raised many fundamental long-term questions about the alternatives before the humanity and immediate issues to tackle the current crisis. Socialisation of health care, housing, education and means of production has become a fundamental question in the present context.

If some ideologues argue whether it is socialism, yes it is. The present situation has shown that capitalism is unjust and irrational. Not to quote Marx and Engels but one has to take note what Winston Churchill said way back in 1954, “the inherent vice of Capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”

It is becoming more and more evident that Socialism is the alternative. It is the future and hope.

(The writer is general secretary of the Communist Party of India. Views expressed are his own)