Reckless behaviour is caused by a mind virus

Viruses are costly to those infected with them. They demand large amounts of money and time. They impose health risks and make people believe and do things that are demonstrably false or contradictory or even harmful. Viruses contain instructions to "copy me," and they succeed by using the human fallacy of attitudes like “it can’t happen to me” or “I am indestructible” or “why worry when it is God’s will.”

Diseases caused by natural viruses like CONVID-19 spread only because some people do not care. It is for the rest of the people to decide if they would continue to be apologetic about the irresponsible behaviour of few slipshod people or take them on in the interest of human lives. Such infection is not just highly communicable but also self-replicating, according to the laws of cultural evolution.

Today it seems as if humanity is being driven to the brink of extinction by an illness? We don’t know if such destruction is likely to be caused by an organic virus or a mind virus?

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‘Being in Mourning’ has an expiration date, Mourning doesn’t

People continue to die, of a variety of causes, even during a time of mandated social distancing and not every death is due to COVID-19. It's an uncomfortable but necessary topic to address amid the expanding novel coronavirus pandemic: How to handle, and commemorate, the dead.

Burial grounds, Crematoriums and Cremation Grounds face multiple issues: Deceased individuals who may have been sick with the COVID-19 virus; memorial attendees at the funeral who may be infected, and how to even hold the funeral services at a time when group gatherings have been prohibited.

Hindus do not avoid the subjects of death, dying, and grief. Seeing a funeral procession, most of them either halt or at least bow their head in conveying their respect to the unknown dead. Seeing a dead body heading for its funeral is actually considered to be auspicious in the Hindu culture. Hindus do not shy away from the truth in their daily lives, that, people die and it is normal.

But death does not just come alone; it comes with grief and the intensity of emotion that comes with loss, which, somewhat boldly, doesn’t fade away easily. Society’s tolerance for grief is finite, though this does not reflect the reality of how people respond to death.  Grieving takes time, something a busy society does not offer, despite the fact that each death is different, each mourner is unique, and everyone processes trauma differently.

“Everyone has to go (die) one day” or “the departed soul is seeing you from above and would feel unhappy seeing you in so much grief” are two common Hindu platitudes delivered to grieving loved ones; in part because the alternatives are too upsetting, and also because the Hindus read and hear these phrases throughout their lives. They are ubiquitous, even in inappropriate or downright ludicrous contexts involving unjust death.

Hindu rituals after death are endowed with a deep spiritual symbolism. The entire portfolio of these rituals is cantered around the directives which come from the Hindu mythology surrounding the immortality of soul and cycles of birth and rebirth. When in mourning, Hindus know where to turn, how to perform the rituals associated with death, and, critically, how to move on. Mourners in India are not let to feel abandoned in the aftermath of a loved one’s death, because the family and friends hover around to interact with them.

While no culture grieves perfectly, the Hindu culture and its religious traditions provide more room for people to grieve, offering opportunities to mark twelve days of mourning, then "pratimaas anushthaan" for next ten months, followed by the first anniversary “Barasee” and thereafter a collective commemoration of the days of deaths of all the family members “shraddha” during the “Pitru Paksh” and encouraging more open conversation.

Be it cemetery or the crematory, Government orders have already limited the number of people at any funeral to be limited to twenty. That will mean families having to limit attendees at the funeral to the most immediate of family members, and friends of the family. We are stepping into a time where funerals will be intimate family affairs while the “Chautha” or “Tehravin” or the public memorial service by whatever name called to be deferred until some better time when this pandemic gets behind us, or at least under control.

Every mourner mourns differently; grief is not an illness, mourners are not broken, and each passing day after the bereavement offers a way forward. Grief should not make us sick, nor should we be sick of grief.

I lost my mother some twenty months back.  Being in mourning for her has expired nine months back. But my father, my wife and my children continued to mourn her absence even after.

Going by the Hindu Vedic calendar, today, 24 May 2020 marks the fourth monthiversary of the departure of my father and we will ‘be in mourning’ for him for another seven months.

But I miss my parents and I miss their presence. I miss the ethos of my parents who wanted their children and grand children, me, my siblings and our children, to be always looking out for each other. I recall and rejoice the wonderful moments which my parents filled my life with. I grieve their absence and I will mourn their deaths for a very long time. This grieving inside my heart has no expiry date.

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My father left this world on Magha Shukla Paksha, Dwitiya, Vikrama Samvata 2076 during the auspicious time for ‘Pratah Sandhya’ and I repost this from the last monthiversary to commemorate the fourth monthiversary (monthaversary) of his departure. If there was no lockdown, there would have been other ways of commemoration as per out traditions and culture.

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Unclamping of Lockdown

Across the nation, sounds of protests and objections to the COVID-19 shutdown are beginning to get audible. As the rules drag on, they are causing job losses, bankruptcies and a feeling that people have no rights. Possibly the largest migration in the human history, where rural folks are returning from urban areas and Indians abroad are returning to their homeland is a deluge which no one saw coming. Let us not be so liberal as to call these protesters as fool-hardy or selfish, for they have science and the Constitution on their side.

It is neither common sense nor a sustainable situation to close down everything, close down the economy, and lock everyone in their houses. India has not shared demographic data of the dead or the infected or even those tested, but the international data show almost all the COVID-19 fatalities are among the elderly and those with serious health problems. Shutting stores and restaurants did not save them.

Unfortunately, social media companies are censoring any science that challenges the shutdown saying the platform’s policy is to ban content that “disputes the efficacy of local health authority recommended guidance.” YouTube also censors views at odds with the World Health Organization.

Shutting down schools and businesses was justified to “flatten the curve,” meaning buying time for hospitals to add beds and gather enough ventilators, masks and other medical equipment. The goal of the shutdown was not eradicating the virus. That is not possible. The virus will possibly last another 18 to 24 months, fading once most Indians have been exposed and have developed immunity.

When the shutdown was temporary and tied directly to hospital preparedness, and enforcing behaviour of responsibility and care, government had the right to protect itself against an epidemic using reasonable regulations using an archaic law - the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897 – which no government bothered to review for the last 120 years. But shutdowns lose their reasonableness when they have no deadline or benchmark to meet and continue to get extended without any official rationale and justification in terms of the objectives of the state. Their vagueness tramples upon people’s rights and shows the government as being tentative in its approach and guided by myopic considerations on a day-by-day basis.

Uncertainty about reopening could convert the cities to wastelands of lifeless stores and shopping malls, abandoned commercial buildings, landlords defaulting on municipal taxes and soaring tax rates for the people still in the city. Consider this urban landscape - the upper class is into hiding in their cocoons, the lower class is on the reverse run, going back to their rural and semi-urban abodes from where they had migrated, but the middle class has nowhere to hide or nowhere to run back to?

It is time for India to lift its shutdown and strike a balance between keeping the virus at a level that will not overwhelm our hospital systems and allowing people to still try and earn a living. The word of caution however is that the clamping of lockdown was for a real objective, the unclamping too has to be for real objectives and not just to support any lobby or an ideology. Slow easing of restrictions since 20^th April has shown little spikes in the ‘new cases’ and the relaxations should not let these small spikes turn into outbreaks.

Let us be very sure that the virus cannot be eradicated. The idea of having treatments or a vaccine available, to facilitate return to the ‘normal’ life before the pandemic would be something of distant possibility. Even at the top speed at which the researchers are going, no vaccine is likely to be administered to individuals in next few months. Testing is no panacea in mitigating the disease. When will everyone have a yes/no infection test?  The answer depends on layers of uncertainty, decisions made by individual state governments, national and international businesses, small producers of test parts like swabs and chemical reagents, availability of personnel and facilities that ensure prevention of cross infection, congestion within processing labs, and legal chain of custody issues. A negative test result is only good until the moment of taking of sample. Such result does not show that the person could not get infected after the test.

India is by constitutional design and operational reality, not a big monolith, not the Soviet Union, not China, but a federal structure of 28 states, plus eight union territories.  No central stockpile of perishable tests would have fit the virus or lasted long just as no central stockpile of hospital or quarantine beds can ensure most efficient service delivery. Each new case of infection comes a unique problem set, each problem set is different, which is why the right answer is allowing independent management of each problem case – with 24/7 central guidance and support, though interstate and intrastate coordination.

Some ministers, government officials and legislators, who get paid show no respect for working people who don’t get assured salaries but need to earn. Government officials should heed the concerns of the millions who want to get back to work. Shutting down won’t stop the virus, but it will destroy our rights and the nation we call our own. Let us not permit the feeble sounds of protests and objections to the COVID-19 shutdown escalate to deafening levels. Let us not look so tentative while unclamping the lockdown when we had looked so confident in clamping it.

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This article was first published on 13 May 2020 on Facebook.

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Paying For Corona-War: Takhat Singh Taught Me, Not Keynes

John Maynard Keynes drafted a radical plan for the Chancellor of the British Exchequer on “How to Pay for the War” in which he provided a road-map for an inadequately armed country of 40 million people, with an economy which had been performing poorly in the inter war years, could at least start to function well enough to take on a much better performing country, at least economically, of twice its population.

We shouldn’t say that Keynes showed us how to pay for everything, not in the least for the CORONA-WAR. Clearly that is not possible, but if we understand what he was saying, we can also understand that we can afford to pay for much more than we do.

What explains the variation in how countries pay for the war or would be paying for their wars against Coronavirus? Just as Keynes suggested, nations must choose between four primary means of war finance: taxation, domestic debt, external extraction, and printing. Each alternative has different political and economic costs and benefits. Borrowing compounds the cost of war through high interest rates; printing can result in disastrous inflation; taxation combats high inflation and minimizes cost yet can be politically damaging; while garnering money from abroad invites outside influence and fosters dependency.

From my school, I am reminded of Mr Takhat Singh, supposedly a former prince, who was a hostel superintendent (let me recall the other 3 – Ms S Ghosh, Mr JK Agrawal and Mr SP Malhotra) responsible for proper grooming and turn-out of the cadets. My contemporaries from the school would recall our nick-name for him – ‘Ke naam saab’ – his ‘takia kalaam’ (catch phrase) which translates as ‘what is your name?’

Whenever he hauled us up for anything missing in our uniform or dress kit, our standard excuse used to be, “I have lost it sir,” and his unflinching suggestion used to be, “Beg, Borrow, Steal.”

Doesn’t these four choices – out of what one owns, what one could beg, what one could borrow or what one could steal as ways of fulfilments for the required item in dress-kit – larger set of alternatives than the Keynesians’ choices, for Keynes did not recommend the choice of ‘Beg.’

‘Beg’ has somewhat derogatory and selfish-personal connotations therefore better expressions like ‘solicit alms,’ ‘seek donation,’ ‘ask for charity,’ ‘petition for contribution,’ ‘plead for assistance’ and so on, can be used instead.

Conventional wisdom suggests that the type of the regime in the country dictates any strategy for financing a war. The fact of the matter however is that type of regime plays at best only a small role in a war finance story. Primary influences shaping any war-finance strategy are: public’s support for the war effort, fear of inflation, bureaucratic capacity, and the ability to cope with a balance of payments problem.

India is fighting a war against coronavirus. Prime Minister has actively pursued the Keynesian prescription of ‘borrow’ but has shot down his other prescription which came his way as an unsolicited suggestion of increased taxation. So far, we don’t know if he is going to exercise the option of printing currency (planned inflation of stealing from the future) to finance the corona-war. But surely, the Prime Minister has already used Takhat Singh’s alternative of ‘beg’ which Keynes did not envisage. PM has established a public charitable trust under the name of ‘Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund’ (PM CARES Fund).

The fund consists entirely of voluntary contributions from individuals/ organizations and does not get any budgetary support.

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