Burning Pyres, Mass Graves, Harsh Mander.
Engaging with Harsh Mander is always a deeply cathartic experience. Listening to him or reading his prose invariably evokes a wave of emotions that pluck you out of your comfort zone. The titles and content of each of his earlier works bear testimony to this. Partitions of the Heart, Ash in the Belly, and Fatal Accidents of Birth, in particular, are as hard-hitting as they are gut-wrenching. The book under review is no exception.
Covid-19 was easily the greatest humanitarian disaster in recent history. Those of us who have managed to survive would rather write it off as a nightmare that deserves to be forgotten. But should we? Mander lists a few reasons why it is our highest public duty to not forget: We must remember that the suffering it unleashed was not caused by the coronavirus alone. It was instead the inexorable consequence of bad public policy choices. We must remember so that we do not allow such a disaster to overwhelm us again.
The first part of the book, ‘Locking Down the Poor’ describes in heart-wrenching detail the grave humanitarian crisis of 2020 which pushed the urban poor to the brink of starvation. From the highways and overcrowded quarantine centres, Mander brings us stories of the estimated 30 million migrant workers whose livelihoods were destroyed — with just four hours' notice!
The second part of the book, ‘Burning Pyres, Mass Graves’ records the horrors of the following year, when everything from hospital beds to medical oxygen and essential medicines fell disastrously short. Mander traces the causes of these shortages to the criminal neglect of public health in India.
Reasons for hope
One of Mander’s pet peeves is what he calls “the spectacular failure of public solidarity”. He refers to this, both in his earlier book on ‘Inequality, Prejudice and Indifference in New India’, and in this work too. He makes no bones in castigating the “bulk of India’s rich and middle classes as being among the most uncaring people in the world, mired still in the cruelties of caste and class, with a singular capacity to look at injustice and suffering and simply turn away unmoved”. The pandemic has shown how brutal this exile of the poor from our conscience and consciousness can be.
But despite all of this, Mander sees reasons for hope. He recounts exceptional stories of selflessness by ordinary people across the land, rallying around to form “circles of kindness”. He refers to the langar as “the proudest civilisational legacy of the Sikhs” which not only organized millions of meals for the poor but also went on to provide “oxygen langars”. He refers to the work done by the Red Crescent Society of India. And much more.
At the end of the book, Mander asks several questions:
1. Can we learn from the pandemic to rebuild our broken country into one that is more compassionate, just and equal?
2. Can we engage in civilisational introspection to recognise the collapse of our moral centre, as a nation and people?
3. Can we negotiate a whole new social contract — of the people with their governments and with each other?
The starting point of his reimagination of a new, kinder India is for the State to assume responsibility for quality healthcare, education, food, pensions, etc., which are all eminently feasible. Quoting Prabhat Patnaik, he states: Sufficient to fund all of the above are two taxes levied only on the top one per cent of the population — a Wealth Tax of 2 per cent and an Inheritance Tax of 33 per cent. He even builds up a good justification for levying taxes, particularly on them, because the humanitarian crisis of the pandemic became a time for them to multiply their wealth at a dizzying rate.
Savour this statistic: The surge in the numbers and wealth of dollar billionaires in India during the pandemic extended well beyond Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani. India became home to the largest population of dollar billionaires, after the US and China. In the pandemic year 2021, the number of dollar billionaires in India expanded by 39 per cent. It is telling that apart from the manufacturing sector, the largest number of Indian billionaires are in health and pharma.
While it is not the central purpose of the book, Mander makes a strong case for taxing the super-rich so as to ensure a decent level of sustainable human development for everyone in the country. It is not that this cannot be done. The Scandinavian countries have very high and steeply progressive income taxes, where the rich are so heavily taxed that it is difficult to become extremely rich. Nor can one be very poor. Extreme poverty has been eliminated by Scandinavian social safety nets. This is the kind of socialism that is inscribed into our Constitution, not crony capitalism of the kind being encouraged by the ruling class.
(The author taught Political Science at Bangalore University. He is currently an Honorary Professor at the Karnataka State Rural Development and Panchayat Raj University, Gadag. Views are his own and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the publication.)