Gujarati jewellers can offer a lesson or two from riots that racked Mumbai in 1992-93

The Coronavirus crisis, like I have said before, is bringing out the best and the worst in people. But it is also bringing into sharp focus the attitudes of and the differences between us and them – and by that, I mean a poor India versus a privileged India.

Of course, businesses are compulsorily shutting down because of the nationwide lockdown but I agree with Rajiv Bajaj, of Bajaj Auto, that our lockdown should have been more nuanced and better calibrated. I do not think anyone in the central government has bothered to apply their mind to the consequences of a complete halt to all economic activity in the country – it is not a simple task to reopen and set up shop again after a complete break in supply chains or migration of your labour force.

I saw this happen during the riots of 1992-93 in Mumbai. The city had a peculiar situation when businesses like garment sellers or jewellers were by and large Hindu and predominantly Gujarati who almost took pleasure in how the Muslims were being singled out by the Shiv Sena. But they forgot that 90 percent of their workers– like embroiderers or gem cutters - were Muslim. The trains, unlike during this lockdown, had been working and they boarded them en masse for their villages in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, rather than stay in the slums and be targeted by the rioters.

But when things quietened down, their rich employers found themselves on the brink of penury as their workers refused to return to Mumbai and they had no new products to sell to consumers. I knew a few of them who actually boarded trains themselves to go to the villages of their workers and brought them back with the assurance that they would never be targeted again for their religion. These were the rich merchants who had amply funded Bal Thackeray for his diabolical activities but although the Shiv Sena came to power a couple of years later in Maharashtra, his sources dried up because his donors were damned if they would fund his party to drive them, however indirectly, out of business. The Shiv Sena was reduced to a shell of itself and had to change tack to survive. No wonder it is a completely different entity today.

It is not a riotous situation this time round but the kind of exodus of migrants visible across the country is similar, except that it is now universal and they are being driven to hunger not by blood or violence but simple lack of empathy or compassion on the part of both governments and people.

Apart from the communalisation of the Coronavirus over the stupidity of one group of Tablighi Jamaatis, who are disregarded by even Muslims of their own sect, I have been shocked by images of people being surreptitiously herded in trucks like cattle or other migrant labourersforaging in cremation grounds for rotten bananas to feed their hungry children. They will either die of suffocation and hunger before they even contract the virus or if they survive and do manage to reach their villages, they are unlikely to forget how poorly they were treated by their employers, neighbours or even neighbourhood middle classes and will not return to turn the wheels of the economy for the benefit of these cruel people who did not stand by them in their hour of need.

I agree with Rahul Gandhi that the lockdown is no solution and at best it can be a stop gap arrangement.Something more needs to be done but I wonder if our union government is at all capable of taking the right steps.

Right. The word ‘right’ brings to mind the left and the inevitable comparisons between how right-wing governments across the world, including India, are handling the crisis and how the left-of-centre ideologues are managing.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom at first dismissed the threat of the virus as did President Donald Trump of the US. So did various of our union ministers, mocking Rahul Gandhi for warning that we were faced with a health emergency as early as on February 12. While Johnson believed ignoring it will help his country develop a herd immunity, he contracted the virus himself and swiftly changed his mind about the National Health Service which he had earlier dismissed as a left obsession.

Trump was luckier remaining negative despite having been in close proximity to a Brazilian official who had tested positive but even he dismissed the early warnings as a Democratic Party conspiracy against himself and the Republicans. His handling of the crisis still leaves much to be desired and already the Democratic Governor of California has declared independence from Trump’s methods of tackling the virus. He has said he will raise his own resources, draw up his own plan and beat the virus without having to put up with Trump's nonsensical measures every day. The Illinois governor, also a Democrat, fed up with Trump's handling of the crisis is planning to do the same.

The countries which have handled the crisis well are those like Germany, Canada, the Scandinavian and Slavic nations et al where left-of-centre governments are dealing with the disease systematically and scientifically.

I would suggest that our states too stop relying on the largesse and faulty strategies of the Centre to fight the virus and do not depend on funds from New Delhi. While a mean-minded Centre has notified that corporate donations to the states would not be deemed as part of spending under CSR ( Corporate Social Responsibility) and thus qualify for tax rebates, it is the duty of companies being sustained by the states they have set up business in to contribute generously to the relief funds of various chief ministers who are doing a far better job of fighting the virus than the Centre.

It is also noteworthy that the states fighting the virus are all ruled by non-right-wing parties. Kerala might be on the way to flattening the curve, the Bhilwara example in Rajasthan is very uplifting, Chhattisgarh has virtually no fatalities, Maharashtra is testing more than many states and already reported a 30 percent fall in infections, Tamil Nadu has dealt better with possible community transmissions and the West Bengal chief minister is herself teaching the people the benefits of social distancing.

The only states doing poorly are those governed by the BJP and I am appalled that Madhya Pradesh has no health minister and that all its health department officials are infected and hospitalised – how did they let it get that far and that bad?

It may be a long time but when things have returned to normal, it will be apparent that a virus does not spare anybody, rich or poor, Hindu or Muslim, right or left wing, bigot or liberal. It is only informed intelligence, educated strategy and scientific combat that could bring us out of the crisis

At this point in time, I seriously doubt that our ruling dispensation has any one of these qualities. There is a serious - and dangerous – dearth of all three.