What is a ‘zero-Covid’ strategy?

 A notice, attributed to a high-ranking Chinese Communist Party official, created a flutter among Beijing’s residents as it claimed that China’s straining and unpopular zero-Covid curbs — mass testing, targeted lockdowns, and travel restrictions — might extend for another five years.

According to The Guardian, the original text of the notice, attributed to Communist Party’s Beijing secretary, said: “In the next five years, Beijing will unremittingly grasp the normalisation of epidemic prevention and control.”

The notice was first put out by Beijing Daily and later by several state media outlets. After some time, the “five year” reference was taken off by most publications. But by then, it had triggered a wave of anger and confusion online among residents of Beijing, with a hashtag linked to the five-year notice getting 1 million hits before being removed.

What is the ‘zero-Covid’ strategy?

It is a strategy that aims to drive down the number of Covid-19 cases by imposing strict lockdowns, closing borders and imposing travel bans. Initially, when the pandemic started, Western countries adopted a mitigation approach that involved trying to flatten the curve while strengthening healthcare capacity to deal with possible flare ups.

But soon another strategy — the elimination approach — started to find acceptance. This strategy eventually evolved into a Covid-elimination or zero-Covid plan. As part of the plan, governments tried to stamp out outbreaks down to the last case, at any cost.

Australia, New Zealand, China, Hong Kong and several other Asia Pacific countries applied the approach, involving highly restrictive measures, for different lengths of time, with varying degrees of severity in their Covid curbs.

Why did countries move away from zero-Covid?

By the middle of 2021, healthcare authorities started questioning the zero-Covid approach to fight the disease.

When vaccines started being rolled out worldwide, some countries also simultaneously started a gradual shift towards fewer lockdowns and more freedoms for citizens.

As the UK lifted restrictions putting its faith in the vaccination drive, France started issuing health passes to the vaccinated to enter public spaces. Around the same time, Australia, after battling the record Delta wave surge, too started talking about “living with the virus” with focus shifting from number of cases to total hospitalisations.

However, New Zealand and China were among the countries that stuck to the elimination response. New Zealand ultimately transitioned away from a hard elimination approach in October 2021, but China has refused to pivot.

Why has China’s approach been criticised?

While the virus has evolved, China’s response to tackling it has been rooted in zero-tolerance for Covid cases. While this has helped the country stamp out every flare-up, a hard-to-lock-out Omicron variant has made the outbreaks frequent.

Beijing’s harsh countermeasures to tackle Covid have imposed immense hardships on the lifestyle and livelihoods of citizens, making the curbs unpopular. But the country has refused to budge on most elements of its policy, despite the WHO saying that its Covid response was “unsustainable”. It continues to be the last big economic power still wedded to the zero-Covid policy.

Only recently, Shanghai faced a months-long lockdown amid the Omicron spread, while Beijing closed schools and offices for weeks over a separate surge. On Sunday, Shanghai recorded zero Covid cases for the first time since March.

Source: Indian Express, 28/06/22

India needs a new social contract

 

Harsh Mander writes: The pandemic exposed the horrors of the existing economic and social arrangements that privilege some but treat others as expendable

The pandemic has dramatically laid bare the catastrophic public costs of inequality. Thousands of lives could have been saved if much greater investments had been made in public health provisioning. The explosion of mass hunger and joblessness and the dislocation of millions of working poor people could have been averted had labour protection, social security, and wage levels of workers been secured.

“Inequality Kills” is the apt title of a devastating report by Oxfam India released at the time of the World Economic Forum in Davos. For India’s super-rich, the pandemic became a time to swell their wealth dizzyingly. The worst year of the pandemic for India was 2021. In this year, the net wealth of just one Indian billionaire, Gautam Adani, multiplied eight times, from $8.9 billion in 2020 to $50.5 billion in 2021. The net worth of Mukesh Ambani doubled to $85.5 billion in 2021, rocketing him from India’s to Asia’s richest man. In fact, Ambani added Rs 90 crore to his wealth every hour right from March 2020, the start of the pandemic. In 2021, the number of dollar billionaires in India expanded by 39 per cent. India is home today to the largest number of dollar billionaires, after the US and China, with more billionaires than France, Sweden and Switzerland combined. In 2020, 98 families held more wealth than 555 million Indians. India’s top 10 per cent owned 45 per cent of the country’s wealth. Three-fifths of India’s top 100 added $1 billion or more to their wealth in 2021 over the previous year.

In this same period, as many as 84 per cent Indian households suffered a fall of income, for many into deep and stubborn poverty. The RBI estimated a GDP contraction of minus 8.7 to 7 per cent. 120 million jobs were lost, of which 92 million were in the informal sector. In 2021, FAO reported there were 200 million undernourished people in India and India was home to a quarter of all undernourished people around the world. Pew estimated that the number of poor people in India doubled from 55 million in 2020 to 120 million in 2021. Oxfam reports that daily-wage workers topped the numbers of people who committed suicide in 2020, followed by self-employed and unemployed individuals.

Evaluations in the media do not adequately recognise that the greater part of the grim economic devastation that surrounds us in India today — deaths, joblessness, hunger — is not caused primarily by the Covid-19 virus. They are the consequence of market-led public policies that have fostered unequal life chances. This got exposed more in these times of global calamity.

Imagine a vastly different India. Imagine, for instance, a country that has secured free and quality healthcare for every citizen, a guarantee of food for all, workers’ rights to social security and wage payments to all during lockdowns, and decent housing and clean water. The deaths and unemployment that engulfed a large section of Indians could have been eschewed. If millions of working people had more money in their hands, the greatest contraction of the economy since Independence could have been forestalled. If decent social housing and clean water supply had been secured by governments for all residents, it would have enabled the millions forced into overcrowded shanties to protect themselves by keeping distance in well-ventilated tenements and washing their hands regularly. Millennials might then argue: All of this is unattainable; what, then, is the point of painting scenarios of utopias?

But just as the humanitarian crisis today could have been prevented, the alternative is eminently feasible if people and government commit themselves to the goals of the Constitution. India spends only 3.54 per cent of its budgetary resources on healthcare, much less, as noted by Oxfam, than other middle-income countries like Brazil (9.51), South Africa (8.25) and China (5.35). Income inequalities reduce life chances in India even more for those disadvantaged by caste, gender and religious identities. A Dalit woman, for instance, has 15 years lower life expectancy than an upper-caste woman. Confronted by a broken and starved public health system, even the poor have to rely on private health providers, and 60 per cent of health spending in India is out-of-pocket, among the highest in the world, and a major cause of poverty. In the pandemic, the exclusions were even more spectacular. Oxfam found middle-class families spending Rs 4 lakh a day in private hospitals during the second wave — sometThe starting point of our vision of a new India is for the state to assume responsibility to provision quality healthcare, education, food, pension, clean water and housing, free or in affordable ways for all citizens. Economist Prabhat Patnaik, in his contribution to the India Exclusion Report brought out by the Centre for Equity Studies, says that to resource all of this would demand a public resolve to expand taxation of the super-rich. Sufficient to fund all of this, he calculates, is two taxes levied only on the top 1 per cent of the population — a wealth tax of 2 per cent and an inheritance tax of 33 per cent. Our government is doing the opposite; it withdrew the wealth tax in 2015 and reduced the already low levels of corporate tax. The result is regressive taxation burdening the poor and abysmally low public spending.

Those who care for a kinder world must not miss this moment when the pandemic has revealed to us the horror of our moral collapse; of economic and social arrangements that privilege some lives, but treat the rest as expendable. The struggle of our times must be for a new social contract based on solidarity and inclusion.hing a casual worker earns in 1,000 days.

Written by Harsh Mander

Source: Indian Express, 29/01/22

A prison diary from Tihar, by Natasha Narwal and Devangana Kalita

 

In these times of suffering brought on by the pandemic, it is imperative for the Indian judiciary and the state to ensure the right to life of the people it continues to hold in its custody and not let prisons become graveyards of human rights and dignity.

“Aisa lagta hai kabr mein aa gaye hain, na koi awaaz bahar ja sakti hai, na koi awaaz andar aa sakti hai” (It feels like we have entered a grave, no one can hear us and we cannot hear anyone) — a piercing observation made by one of our co-inmates last year, as we lived the deadly second wave of the pandemic inside Tihar’s women’s prison, Jail No.6. With the third wave currently unfolding, urgent attention must be paid to the terrible conditions under which one of the most neglected groups of this country is surviving — India’s prison population. The latest NCRB data tells us that 76 per cent of prisoners are undertrials with a stark overrepresentation of Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims and other minority communities amongst both undertrials and convicts.

The days of incarceration when the second wave was devastating lives outside and inside, its pain and horror, continue to haunt us. Tihar’s women’s prison witnessed a massive spread of the virus. We watched helplessly as cases emerged from one overcrowded ward after another. We mourned the deaths of our co-inmates far away from their homes. We waited in restless dread for the next day’s five-minute phone call for what news it may bear of our loved ones outside. We began to confront the fear of our own deaths inside that wretched place. On contracting the virus, a prisoner would be shifted to the “Corona ward”, while the barrack where the case was detected would become a “quarantine” barrack for the next 14 days where the inmates inside were locked up 24/7. Since cases kept emerging from every barrack, most of us lived in a state of permanent quarantine. We spent many heart-breaking days and nights listening to the shattering cries of little children when their barrack came to be quarantined.

Our barrack mate and co-accused, Gulfisha, suffered high fever, severe head and body ache, sleeplessness and loss of appetite. Identified as “symptomatic”, she was put in a tiny suffocating cell with two other inmates. Her Covid was never detected because no RTPCR tests were available — only a limited number of antigen tests were being conducted. Testing kits were in short supply, along with all other equipment such as sanitisers, masks, gloves, PPE suits. Barracks full of symptomatic patients were given a liberal supply of paracetamols, cetirizine, cough syrups and various other drugs through untrained inmates who had to work as paramedics in the absence of a requisite number of trained medical staff.

During the initial days of the outbreak, access to mulaqaats/phone calls/letters/newspapers was terminated. Imagine contracting the virus, being shoved into an overcrowded diseased barrack or a lonely cell all alone, provided negligible medical attention and allowed no contact with your family or friends at a time when you most desperately need it. It was only after the intervention of the Delhi High Court that some of these facilities were resumed inside prison and vaccination of inmates was undertaken. Family and legal mulaqaats in prison have remained suspended through most of the last two years. Even as the facility of e-mulaqaats came to be instituted in August 2020, families of most inmates do not possess smartphones or the digital literacy for accessing the same. Additionally, as a result of courts becoming online and visits by judges or government bodies being discontinued during the pandemic, the impunity that rests in the hands of the jail administration has come to be strengthened. The minimal mechanisms of redressal available to prisoners with regard to discrimination and abuse by prison staff have thus ceased to exist.

Indian prisons have always been overcrowded. In Delhi for example, against a sanctioned prison population of 10,024, the three jails — Tihar, Mandoli and Rohini — have around 19,000-20,000 prisoners. The infrastructure and facilities simply do not exist inside prisons to be able to handle and mitigate a pandemic of this scale. The Supreme Court of India took suo motu cognisance of this issue and on March 23, 2020, issued guidelines for state/UT-wise formation of High Powered Committees (HPC) for the decongestion of prisons. However, the criteria decided by the HPCs of different states for interim release of prisoners, instead of being based on the fundamental principle of equality of all human life, create an arbitrary categorisation of prisoners that deserve to live, based on nature/severity of offence, number of years of sentence but not factors like age, health, comorbidities and other vulnerabilities. So, despite being at “high risk” of mortality, because an undertrial/convict may be charged under certain laws like UAPA, sedition, NDPS or is a foreigner, they are not entitled to interim bail/parole. The online functioning of courts meant that trials couldn’t commence or remained suspended, further prolonging the incarceration for undertrials charged under these sections.

Such unfair criteria in the grant of interim bail are the reason why Father Stan Swamy was not granted bail last year and died in custody, and G N Saibaba, a 90 per cent disabled former Delhi University professor continues to be incarcerated after having contracted Covid once again in Nagpur Jail. These are the names we know but our prisons are filled with hundreds of such undertrials and convicts who are most at risk from the virus but have been denied access to any form of interim relief. Like Elsie, who was from Bolivia and lived in our ward. Despite her co-morbidities, as a foreigner and an NDPS undertrial, she was not eligible for the HPC’s interim bail criteria and died inside prison, thousands of miles away from her two little children whose faces she longed to see. She was put to rest inside prison premises as her family did not have the resources to reclaim her body. Even in death, there was no freedom.

In these times of suffering and despair brought on by the pandemic, it is imperative for the Indian judiciary and the state to ensure the right to life of the people it continues to hold in its custody and not let prisons become graveyards of human rights and dignity.

Written by Natasha Narwal , Devangana Kalita

Source: Indian Express, 24/01/22

How the pandemic has worsened inequality in India

 

Ishan Bakshi writes: It has adversely affected chances of social mobility. This could combine with already high levels of inequality of opportunities and precipitate greater demands for income redistribution.

That India is a highly unequal economy is beyond contestation. And that was so before the pandemic struck. While precise estimates of the level of inequality in India are hard to come by — household surveys tend to massively underreport consumption, income and wealth — it’s hard to dispute the notion that Covid has deepened existing faultlines, exacerbating entrenched inequalities. The rise in the fortunes of the very rich during this period, when juxtaposed against the misery of the millions of migrant workers who had to walk back to their villages, is a stark reminder of the extent of economic disparities. To that extent, the latest edition of the World Inequality Report serves as a useful reminder of the concentration of income at the very top of the pyramid. The top 10 per cent earns 57 per cent of the national income. Within the top 10 per cent, the very elite top 1 per cent earns 22 per cent. In comparison, the share of the bottom 50 per cent in national income has declined to 13 per cent. And this is only one estimate of inequality. In the case of inequalities based on wealth, the numbers are even more skewed.

By and large, the discourse on inequality in India tends to centre around disparities in consumption, income, and wealth. But countries like India are also marked by high levels of inequalities in “opportunities”. In such societies, an individual’s class of origin, his household of birth, who his parents are, tend to have a significant bearing on his educational attainment, his employment and income prospects, and as a consequence, his class of destination. In such countries, characterised by low levels of social mobility across generations, children born in disadvantaged households have a lower chance of moving up the income ladder. While these bonds may well have weakened over time in India, the question is to what degree has the pandemic, which has widened economic disparities, also impacted social mobility?

To the extent that Covid has led to a worsening of education inequalities, induced labour market scarring, and exacerbated income inequality, it is likely to depress social mobility. While some effects will be evident in the immediate, others will take shape over time. Take education. The extended closure of schools and the shift to online modes of education has widened the learning gaps between children from poor and affluent households. With early education being critical to creating a semblance of a level-playing field, that younger children from low-income households were more deprived of mediums of learning, smartphones, will reflect in lower learning outcomes. The ASER 2021 report attests to this.

Children born to parents with lower levels of education were less likely to have access to a smartphone, although even the availability of a smartphone in the household may not have necessarily led to greater access for children. Over a fourth of children in households with a smartphone could not access it (for those in the lower grades the numbers are significantly higher). This has already begun to impact learning outcomes — children are unable to catch up with their curriculum.

To what extent these learning gaps will rise or fall over time is difficult to estimate. Needless to say, the larger the gap, the greater will be the effort required to bridge it. But, a drop in foundational skills, an inability to catch up, “educational scarring” as some have called it, is bound to impact their life chances. Education, after all, provides pathways to upward mobility.

Then there is the issue of jobs. From the labour market data during this period, three broad trends emerge, all of which have worrying implications for social mobility.

First, since the onset of the pandemic, there has been a decline in labour force participation. According to CMIE data, the labour force participation rate has fallen from 42.7 per cent during September-December 2019 to 40.2 per cent during May-August 2021. This means that despite a “young” population, the number of individuals looking for jobs has actually fallen, perhaps dismayed by the lack of employment opportunities.

Second, over the same period, the unemployment rate has risen from 7.5 per cent to 8.6 per cent. This implies that among those looking for jobs, those unable to find jobs, perhaps even at lower wages, have risen. Third, among those with jobs, more are increasingly being employed as casual wage labour. This growing “casualisation” or “contractualisation” of the workforce implies an absence of well-paying, productive jobs. This labour market scarring has implications for social mobility. Being unemployed for a long period or shifting to less paying, less productive jobs will have a bearing on an individual’s lifetime earnings. This will weaken avenues for upward mobility for entire households.

A swift return to a higher growth trajectory will heal some of the scars. Periods of rapid growth lower obstacles to mobility, create opportunities to move up the income ladder. But if growth is subdued and uneven, if the benefits flow disproportionately to those at the top end of the income distribution, to the owners of capital, and among those employed, to the more educated, skilled sections, as seems to be the case now, then this will only hinder social mobility. Paradoxically though, as high mobility perhaps blunts concerns over high inequality, it is of greater consequence in highly unequal economies.

Left unaddressed, this toxic combination of high inequality and low social mobility will lead to greater demands for redistribution. The clamour for levying a wealth/inheritance tax will only get louder, as will demands for equal taxation of income from labour and capital considering that those at the very top of the income pyramid get a larger share of their income from capital. Political expediency will demand bowing to such demands, more so when every action is viewed through the prism of politics. Arresting this slide is not going to be easy. The world of Horatio Alger seems distant.

Written by Ishan Bakshi

Source: Indian Express, 13/12/21

Why it has been named Omicron and not Nu or Xi

 

The WHO has been using Greek letters to refer to the most widely prevalent coronavirus variants, which otherwise carry long scientific names.

In picking a name for the newest variant of SARS-CoV-2, Omicron, the World Health Organization (WHO) has skipped two letters of the Greek alphabet, one of which also happens to be a popular surname in China, shared even by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The WHO has been using Greek letters to refer to the most widely prevalent coronavirus variants, which otherwise carry long scientific names. It had already used 12 letters of the Greek alphabet before the newest variant emerged in South Africa this week. After Mu, the 12th named after a Greek letter, WHO selected the name Omicron, instead of Nu or Xi, the two letters between Mu and Omicron.

The WHO said Nu could have been confused with the word ‘new’ while Xi was not picked up following a convention.

“Two letters were skipped —Nu and Xi — because Nu is too easily confounded with ‘new’ and XI was not used because it is a common surname and WHO best practices for naming new diseases (developed in conjunction with FAO and OIE back in 2015) suggest avoiding ‘causing offence to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups’,” the WHO said in a statement.

All variants are given scientific names that represent their parentage and the chain of evolution. Omicron, for example, is also known by its more scientific designation B.1.1.529, which shows that it has evolved from the B.1 lineage.

Since the scientific names are not easy to remember, the more prevalent variants started to be named after the country from where they were first reported: ‘UK variant’, ‘Indian variant’, ‘South African variant’, or ‘Brazilian variant’. To remove the connection with specific countries, which was triggering name-calling and blame game, the WHO decided on a new naming system using Greek letters. The variant that earlier used to be referred as the ‘Indian’ thus got the name Delta, while the one being associated with the UK was named Alpha.

Over the course of the pandemic, many variants of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus have arisen, the latest being Omicron in South Africa.

WHAT IT MEANS

As an infected cell builds new coronaviruses, it occasionally makes tiny copying errors. These called mutations. Mutations are passed down through a lineage, a branch of the viral family tree. A group of coronaviruses that share the same inherited set of distinctive mutations is called a variant.

VARIANTS OF CONCERN

The WHO currently lists 5 variants of concern:

• Omicron (B.1.1.529), identified in southern Africa in November 2021
• Delta (B.1.617.2), which emerged in India in late 2020 and spread around the world
• Gamma (P.1), which emerged in Brazil in late 2020
• Beta (B.1.351), which emerged in South Africa in early 2020
• Alpha (B.1.1.7), which merged in Britain in late 2020
• VARIANTS OF INTEREST

There are currently two:

• Mu (B.1.621), which emerged in Colombia in early 2021
• Lambda (C.37), which emerged in Peru in late 2020

Source: Indian Express, 29/11/21

Prolonged closure of schools due to Covid poses threat to gender equality: UNSECO

 

Drawing on evidence from about 90 countries and in-depth data collected in local communities, the report shows that gender norms and expectations can affect the ability to participate in and benefit from remote learning.

Educational disruption due to prolonged closure of schools across the globe will not only have alarming effects on learning loss but also poses threat to gender equality, a new study by UNESCO has pointed out.

The global study titled “When schools shut: Gendered impacts of COVID-19 school closures” brings to the fore that girls and boys, young women and men were affected differently by school closures, depending on the context.

“At the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, 1.6 billion students in 190 countries were affected by school closures. Not only did they lose access to education, but also to the myriad benefits of attending school, at an unparalleled scale,” said Stefania Giannini, UNESCO, Assistant Director-General for Education.

“Educational disruption of this extent has alarming effects on learning loss and school dropout. Beyond this, it poses threats to gender equality, including effects on health, wellbeing and protection that are gender-specific,” Giannini said.

Drawing on evidence from about 90 countries and in-depth data collected in local communities, the report shows that gender norms and expectations can affect the ability to participate in and benefit from remote learning.

“In poorer contexts, girls’ time to learn was constrained by increased household chores. Boys’ participation in learning was limited by income-generating activities. Girls faced difficulties in engaging in digital remote learning modalities in many contexts because of limited access to internet-enabled devices, a lack of digital skills and cultural norms restricting their use of technological devices,” the report said.

The study pointed out that the digital gender divide was already a concern before the COVID-19 crisis.

“The in-depth studies on Bangladesh and Pakistan in the global report revealed its gendered effects on remote learning during school closures. In the study on Pakistan, only 44 per cent of girls in participating districts reported owning mobile phones for their personal use, whereas 93 per cent of boys did so. Girls who did not own mobile phones reported that they relied on their relatives’ devices, typically those belonging to their fathers,” it said. “While some of the girls were able to use family members’ phones, they were not always able to do so. Their access was restricted since some parents were concerned that providing girls with access to smartphones would lead to misuse and could result into romantic relationships.”

“The longer girls were out of school, the higher was the risk of learning loss. From April to September 2020, the share of girls reporting that they did not study at all increased from 1 to 10 per cent,” it added.

Noting that the pandemic is a timely reminder that schools are sites not only for learning but also lifelines for girls and boys, an essential space for their health, well-being and protection, the report has several recommendations on how to challenge gender-based barriers for participation in remote learning.

“To advance equal access to gender-responsive and inclusive remote learning, it is recommended to provide a range of remote learning options including low-tech and no-tech solutions spearhead and support efforts to reach the most at-risk learners design, develop gender-responsive educational resources and tools besides providing appropriate teacher support and training use formative assessments to track learning outcomes,” it said.

Source: Indian Express, 22/11/21

Research contradicts earlier findings on smoking and Covid-19. Smokers, everywhere, lose a silver lining

 

A section of scientists has questioned the earlier studies, claiming that some of the researchers had ties to the tobacco industry.

Spare a thought for the smokers. Last year, at the height of the first wave of the pandemic, researchers — first in France, later in China and India — published studies that seemed to indicate smokers were at less risk of contracting Covid, and when they did, experienced less severe symptoms. In France, there was reportedly a rush on tobacconists by non-smokers hoping to get a little extra protection. For smokers everywhere, here, at last, was a justification — as much for themselves as for those they have been shunned by for the smell and cloud of carcinogens they spread — to take another drag. Now, unfortunately, they have been robbed of the only silver lining that pierced the haze and the tar all too briefly.

A recent study in England has collated observational and genetic data on Covid-19 and tobacco use and found that compared to those who had never smoked, smokers were about 80 per cent more likely to be hospitalised after contracting the virus. A section of scientists has questioned the earlier studies, claiming that some of the researchers had ties to the tobacco industry.

Not surprisingly, the disappointment among tobacco addicts is palpable. Unlike other substances — alcohol, marijuana and more notorious narcotics — smoking doesn’t really get you high. The social cost for the addiction is hardly commensurate to the pleasure — train and plane journeys have you jonesing, you’re shunned to dark corners outside bars and sometimes, even from your own homes to service the need without bothering others. All this, while it burns a huge hole in your pocket and you slowly but surely watch your health deteriorate. From France, the birthplace of existentialism, there was hope that smoking had a purpose. From England, the birthplace of utilitarianism, that hope has been taken away.

Source:29/09/21

Are we listening to the lessons taught in the first year of Covid-19?

 

The pandemic revealed the precarious state of India’s informal sector. Localised production, trade and markets offer a better alternative to existing paradigm of development.

Another wave of COVID, another round of lockdowns, another long journey back home for migrant workers. If there is one lesson we are learning after a year of COVID-19, it is that we have not learnt any lessons, at least not the crucial ones.

2020 exposed the abysmal flaws of an economic system that drives tens of millions of people into insecure jobs that they can lose overnight, with no alternative or safety net. This is the fate of a majority of the 90 per cent of India’s workforce that is in the unorganised sector. Over the last few decades of “development”, economic policies have created a massive pool of cheap labour for the state-dominated or capitalist industrial class, adding to the already large numbers of landless agricultural labourers caught in traditional caste, class and gender discrimination. Since 1991, about 15 million farmers have moved out of agriculture, many because the economic system simply does not make farming (including pastoralism, fisheries and forestry) remunerative enough. And 60 million people have been physically displaced by dams, mining, expressways, ports, statues, industries, with mostly poor or no rehabilitation. Meanwhile, exploiting such people desperate for any kind of job, and also nature, a minority becomes wealthier by the second. The richest 5 per cent of Indians now earn as much as the remaining 95 per cent.

As Aseem Shrivastava and I showed in Churning the Earth, the Indian government’s capitulation to global financial forces in 1991 significantly increased the vulnerability of hundreds of millions of people and caused irreversible damage to our environment. Of course, not all of India’s unorganised or informal workforce is necessarily insecure; farmers, fishers, pastoralists, forest-dwellers, craftspersons, entertainers, are relatively secure if their resource base (land, nature, tools, knowledge, clientele) is intact, or if they have guaranteed access to a security net like the MNREGA. But then they are not available as cheap labour, so they or their livelihoods must be displaced in the name of “development”. The three farm laws introduced by the government last year will further hand agricultural control to corporates, creating an even bigger pool of exploitable labour. Farmers realise this, which explains the intensity and resolve of their prolonged agitation.

It is true that agriculture alone cannot provide full employment in villages. And that the youth do not necessarily want to remain in traditional occupations, especially if they are also associated with caste and gender discrimination. But these realities result from our collective failure to tackle these issues at their roots. In any case, since 1991 there has been, for the most, “jobless growth” in the formal sector, meaning those leaving villages end up in some other informal work, mostly very insecure.

But there are alternatives to such a trajectory, and they provide clear lessons. Since mid-2020, we have compiled dozens of examples of what we call the Extraordinary Work of “Ordinary” People — Beyond Pandemics and Lockdowns. In the midst of COVID-19, several communities have had enough to eat, dignified livelihoods to sustain themselves, community solidarity systems to help the most vulnerable, collective health systems to ensure the virus does not run rampant, and alternative methods of learning their children could enjoy.

In Telangana and Nagaland, respectively, Dalit women of Deccan Development Society (DDS) and tribal women of North-East Network ensured complete food security for dozens of villages throughout 2020. Community health systems in Sittilingi panchayat, Tamil Nadu and in Kunariya panchayat, Kutch, denied COVID any chance of gaining a foothold. In Assam, Farm2Food worked with several thousand students to continue local food growing in schools and communities. In Kolkata, the youth group Pranthakatha created a local neighbourhood safety net for 32 widows who had been forced to beg for a living. In the western Himalaya, Titli Trust, Birds of Kashmir, CEDAR, and Snow Leopard Conservancy India Trust continued nature guided activities with local communities, to build capacity for when tourism returns. Beejotsav Nagpur, the Gurgaon Organic Farmers’ Market, village self-help groups facilitated by Navadarshanam in Tamil Nadu, Samaj Pragati Sahayog in MP, and Mahila Umang Samiti in Uttarakhand were able to ensure that farm produce reached a (mostly local) consumer base, averting economic collapse for thousands of farmers.

These and over a thousand other stories of alternatives (www.vikalpsangam.org), provide crucial lessons. The biggest is that local self-reliance for basic needs, and localised exchanges of products and services, are far more effective in securing people’s livelihoods than are long-distance markets and jobs. Rather than incentivise big industry to take over most production, virtually all household needs — soaps, footwear, furniture, utensils, clothes, energy, even housing, food, drinks — can be produced in a decentralised manner by thousands of communities. The shortage of purely agriculture-based livelihoods can be made up by crafts, small-scale manufacturing, and services needed by their own or surrounding populations. As Suresh Chhanga, sarpanch of Kunariya in Kutch told me when I visited in January, “if we can produce most of our household items locally, we not only save the Rs 40 lakh we spend every month buying these from outside companies, but we also create full local livelihood security.” The women’s collective Maati in Uttarakhand showed how farming and crafts must also continue along with community-led ecotourism so that there is a buffer, should one of these fail.

Unfortunately, the government’s most recent packages, ironically labelled “Atmanirbhar Bharat” (self-reliant India), are actually increasing the control of distant markets and companies over people’s lives, and increasing ecological damage (for example, coal mining in areas of central India where communities are still relatively self-reliant on land and forests). Where some government initiatives have learnt the lessons, as in the case of Kerala’s Kudumbashree programme that enables dignified livelihoods to several million women, we saw a visible difference in how COVID was dealt with. Many of these examples of rural revitalisation also display significant reduction in outmigration, and even the return of people from cities to villages.

Local self-reliance has to go along with worker control over the means of production, more direct forms of democracy (swaraj), and struggles to eliminate casteism and gender discrimination. Again, there are many examples of this. In central India, communities that have successfully claimed collective legal control over surrounding forests, and mobilised towards adivasi swasashan (self-rule), survived the COVID lockdown much better than those who did not have such control. In Spiti, as soon as COVID hit, a Committee for Preventive Measures and Sustainable Development was set up by local communities to ensure full health safety and encourage greater self-reliance in food and livelihoods. Dalit women farmers of DDS have shown how to resist gender and caste discrimination.

But governments have been most reluctant to enable such political and economic empowerment. It threatens their power, and their ability to hand over lands and resources to corporations as they please. Both the 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments, meant to empower village and city assemblies, or laws like the Forest Rights Act, have been only half-heartedly implemented. The current government has even tried weakening them or programmes like MGNREGA, which has been a life-saver for millions during the lockdown.

An economy that promotes mass vulnerability only increases social strife, creating an atmosphere ripe for communal, class and caste violence. This will eventually engulf all of us, other than the super-rich who will escape to some safer part of the world.

Many millions would not have to go back to insecure, undignified jobs in cities and industrial zones if they could have economic security in their own villages and towns. Alternative pathways that provide this are available, and have been demonstrated to work in the COVID crisis. But are we listening to their lessons?

Written by Ashish Kothari

This article first appeared in the print edition on April 23, 2021 under the title ‘Lessons Covid taught’. The writer is with Kalpavriksh, an environment research and advocacy group in Pune.

Source: Indian Express, 23/04/21

From Smallpox to Covid-19: The history of vaccine passports and how it impacts international relations

 As the global administration of Covid-19 vaccines escalate, several countries, non-governmental organisations and private corporations have announced plans to introduce a system of Covid immunisation certificates to facilitate travel.

Called vaccine passports, these documents will essentially serve as digital or paper-based certificates enabling anyone vaccinated against Covid to move across international borders.
They are designed to provide a private and secure way of checking who has been vaccinated, allowing them to present proof of the same.

The verification process typically involves two steps. First, a vaccination site provides a digital record or certificate with details of a person’s vaccination. That person would then either scan the certificate or manually upload a verification number onto an app or a website. They could then present that app or code to airlines, restaurants or other establishments to prove their vaccination status.

Currently vaccine passports gaining traction include the European Union’s Digital Green Certificate, New York’s state-backed platform Excelsior Pass, Common Pass, an initiative from the non-profit Commons Project Foundation, and IBM’s yet-to-be-released blockchain enabled certificate. Along with several vaccine passports introduced by individual airlines, the international Air Travel Association (IATA) has also called on the 290 airlines that it represents to sign up for its IATA Travel Pass. Similar to choosing between several credit cards for payments, customers will be able to shop around for vaccine passes, using different ones to avail of various services.

Countries, trading blocs and airlines have stipulated their own parameters for these certificates, and a few will continue to require them in conjunction with a negative Covid-PCR test. However, despite those variances, the common consensus is that people in possession of a vaccine passport will enjoy greater access to freedom of movement across international borders than their non-vaccinated counterparts.

Earlier this year, an article published by the World Health Organisation (WHO) raised concerns surrounding the operational, ethical and diplomatic consequences of allowing certain individuals to avail of privileges that others face hurdles to access. Each country has its own definition of individual liberties and how they apply the use of these passports internally will vary in accordance with their laws and constitutions. As per a March 2021 research paper in the Lancet, failure to create a uniform system of vaccine passports to regulate cross-border movement could escalate diplomatic conflicts and widen the gulf between richer and poorer nations.

History of immunisation passports

The concept of requiring proof of immunisation to occupy certain spaces dates back to Edward Jenner’s development of the first known vaccine in 1796. Designed to inoculate people against smallpox, confirmation of having taken this vaccine was a prerequisite for travellers at the time, mostly pilgrims, entering towns such as Pandharpur in British India or going to Mecca for the Hajj. Continuing into the 19th century, this policy was widely implemented across the globe with the El Paso newspaper reporting that travellers entering the United States had to show either a vaccination certificate, a scar on the arm or a “pitted face” indicating that they had survived smallpox.

In an interview given to NPR, Sanjoy Bhattacharya, professor of history at the University of York, says the need to provide proof of vaccination intensified after the introduction of air travel in the 20th century. Till then, people infected with smallpox could easily travel to other countries and risk outbreaks in local populations. Thus, vaccination certification checks were enforced before travel “with forcible isolation at airports of any passengers considered to have dubious documentation.”

Vaccine certification checks are even codified under international law with the first protocols defined under the International Sanitary Regulations Act, adopted by WHO member countries in 1951. Since renamed the International Health Regulations (IHR) in 1969, this Act allowed member states to demand proof of vaccination as a condition of entry. While now yellow fever is the only disease specified in the IHR, the WHO has recommended that certain high-risk countries require travellers to provide vaccination certificates for diseases from which their population has not been sufficiently inoculated. For example, visitors to Pakistan and Afghanistan are recommended by the WHO to take adult doses of the polio vaccine before travelling due to the prevalence of the disease in those regions.

As of now, the WHO has maintained a stance against Covid vaccine passports citing the risk they pose in perpetuating global inequality, a lack of evidence on vaccine efficacy in terms of herd immunity and the su

Operational and Ethical Considerations

A number of scientific unknowns remain concerning for governments when evaluating the impact of Covid vaccines in stopping the spread of the disease. These include their efficacy in limiting transmission, especially for variants of the virus, the duration of protection offered by vaccination, the distinctions between different vaccines, whether or not booster doses are required, whether vaccines protect against asymptomatic infections and whether people who have antibodies should be exempt from vaccination. Simply put, no one knows how or if vaccines will prevent transmission and therefore organisations like the WHO and other human rights groups warn against the introduction of vaccine passports, lest people view them as an excuse for complacency. These uncertainties have the potential to cause serious diplomatic incidents especially if tourists from certain countries cause wide-spread outbreaks in visiting regions after being vaccinated via their national rollout programmes.

Furthermore, with several competing vaccination passes, the possibility of fraud is high. Researchers at cyber-security company Check Point have monitored hacking forums and other marketplaces since January 2021, when vaccine adverts first appeared. Everything from a vaccination certificate to a negative PCR test to a dose of the vaccine can be bought illegally online (it is unclear whether the doses offered are effective or not.)

Without a central database of vaccination records, a system that would be highly concerning to data-privacy advocates and national security hawks, not to mention a logistically herculean task, forgeries are inevitable. According to Check Point, countries can limit the number of forgeries by adopting a QR code system across all vaccine documentation. Even with those measures, however, barriers to implementation will exist for governing agencies and aviation bodies.

According to data published by IATA, international passenger traffic in 2021 is roughly 15% that of pre-covid levels yet one airline reports having as many agents on the ground as during peak summer levels because they have to check all the verification documents surrounding vaccination. However, despite these limitations, Professor Chris Dye, a leading epidemiologist at Oxford University stated on the Oxford University website that “an effective vaccine passport system that would allow the return of pre-Covid-19 activities, including travel, without compromising personal or public health, must meet a set of demanding criteria – but it is feasible.”

In addition to the practical limitations of a vaccination passport, there are ethical considerations in play as well. Currently, there is restricted access to vaccines worldwide, particularly in low-income and lower-middle-income countries. The WHO has warned that the inequitable distribution of the vaccine would deepen existing inequalities and introduce new ones as well. A WHO working paper outlining these considerations goes on to mention that “in the context of unequal vaccine distribution, individuals who do not have access to an authorised COVID-19 vaccine would be unfairly impeded in their freedom of movement if proof of vaccination status became a condition for entry to or exit from a country.”

Even within countries, certain groups are prioritised over others. In particular, low-income communities, rural populations, marginalised groups and younger people are less likely to be vaccinated than the general subset. “Beyond being a distraction from the task of vaccination, the pass could end up creating a two-tier society,” Israel Butler of the Civil Liberties Union for Europe, a human rights watchdog, told the Washington Post in response to the proposed system, noting that the passport had the potential of denying certain individuals’ access to public services.

However, legally, the precedent for vaccine requirements has existed in certain countries for over a century. In 1903, the government of Maine declared that no person without proof of smallpox vaccination was allowed to work at a lumber camp, a decision that was reinforced by the US Supreme Court in 1905, when it ruled that government entities could require vaccines for entry, service and travel, and that states could impose a fine on unvaccinated people. As historian Michal Willrich notes in his book Pox, this occurred around the time when Americans began to conceive of liberty not only as freedom from regulation, but also as freedom to meaningfully and actively participate in public life.

Similarly, public health professionals like Dr. Maya Peled Raz, an expert in health law and ethics at the University of Haifa, argue that with vaccine passports, certain trade-offs are necessary. “That may involve some damage to individual rights, but not all damage is prohibited if it is well-balanced and legitimate in order to achieve a worthy goal,” she told the New York Times. “It’s your choice,” she added of leisure activities. “If you are vaccinated, you can enter. As long as you aren’t, we can’t let you endanger others.”

Tit for Tat

In 2012, upon arrival in South Africa, 125 Nigerians were denied entry for lacking the required yellow fever vaccination documentation, of which 75 were sent home. The next day, Nigeria barred 28 South Africans from entering the country, and deported another 56 illegal immigrants. When searching through the annals of diplomatic history, examples like these are prevalent. According to a column by Max Fisher in the New York Times, countries tend to act in their own diplomatic interests, even when doing so would contradict logic or compromise morality.

The EU has long maintained a policy of visa reciprocity, an objective that the Union pursues in a proactive manner in its relations with non-EU countries. This means that when the EU is considering lifting visa requirements for citizens of a non-EU country, it takes into consideration the visa requirements imposed by that country on EU citizens. And while OECD countries are commonly known to have high entry requirements for citizens from Asia and Africa, those latter regions have the highest levels of entry restrictions themselves. A 2017 analysis of global dynamics in visa reciprocity show that only 21% of countries have asymmetrical visa requirements, with levels of reciprocity increasing exponentially since the 1990s. If a global system of vaccine passports is introduced, countries may determine which passports they accept on the basis of which countries accept theirs.

The notion of quid pro quo diplomacy in regard to Covid vaccine passports is perhaps best exemplified by China, who recently announced that it would expedite entry for foreign nationals who had received a China-made vaccine. This move has caused concern amongst several countries that do not offer the Chinese vaccine but have students and workers who were based out of China before the pandemic. Nicholas Thomas, associate professor of health security at the City University of Hong Kong, speaking to Foreign Policy, attributed this policy to China’s desire to bolster the standing of Chinese vaccines internationally. No vaccine from China has yet been approved by the WHO, and according to Thomas, this move would aim to “ensure that Chinese vaccines remain the preferred choice” for governments globally.bstantial operational challenges that such a system would present.

Regional power dynamics

The EU-backed Digital Green Pass would allow vaccinated EU citizens to travel freely within Schengen borders. However, while in theory freedom of movement within the EU is a fundamental priority, the process of establishing a standard for entry has been fraught. Countries such as Greece depend heavily on tourists, with tourism accounting for 20% of the nation’s GDP. Other EU nations such as Germany and France are less dependent on tourism and are therefore reluctant to ease restrictions. How to balance those interests has been a challenge for the trading bloc, which, while announcing the Green Pass, conceded that ultimately the decision of who to allow in or out would remain within the purview of individual nations. These discrepancies could prove challenging for countries such as Hungary which has largely been dependent on China-made vaccines. Under the Digital Green Pass scheme Hungarians travelling within the EU will still likely be reliant on the result of negative PCR tests to enter other countries. On that matter, Minister of the Hungarian Prime Minister’s Office, Gregele Gulyás, stated that “on the basis of reciprocity Hungary will not accept the certificates of countries which do not accept those of Hungary.” Sentiments such as these, while largely to be expected, will compromise the legitimacy of the EU, and undermine the very tenants of its existence.

Within Asia, Singapore and Malaysia attempted to establish reciprocal business travel bubbles in order to facilitate travel between the two countries, but that policy failed to significantly boost the targeted industries. Tourism is a core industry for much of ASEAN, with 51 million interregional visitor arrivals in 2019. Companies such as Air Asia have led the push for regional vaccine passports, citing the need to resume travel in order to enable operations and remain afloat. However, like with the EU, establishing regional standards may prove tricky, with several countries lagging behind on vaccination efforts and possessing different standards for vaccines than those of its neighbours. Singapore-based independent aviation analyst Brendan Sobie recently remarked to Nikkei Asia, that the regional vaccine certificate “will need to be pursued in tandem with other initiatives such as a multilateral pan-ASEAN air travel bubble in order to have a meaningful impact,” while acknowledging it is “a good first step in helping facilitate the resumption of travel between ASEAN countries.”

The haves and the have nots

While rich countries such as Canada have secured the majority of vaccine doses – Canada has 10 doses per citizen – others like Libya and Madagascar have yet to receive a single dose. Hippolyte Fofack, the chief economist at Afreximbank remarked to Rueters, that even if Africa had 100 billion dollars, it would be unable to access enough doses of the vaccine. Because the supply of vaccines is still limited, nations in Africa are reliant on wealthier countries to donate excess vaccines in order to meet domestic needs.

In February 2021, South Africa and India put forth a proposal to the World Trade Organisation to temporarily waive intellectual property rights around products that would contain and treat Covid-19 until herd immunity was achieved. This, they argued, would enable countries in the Global South to manufacture vaccines as soon as possible and confront shortages in supply. The proposal faced criticism from pharmaceutical companies, who argued that it would stifle innovation and restrict future advances in medicine and technology. However, access-to-medicine advocates countered that most of the research behind the Covid-19 vaccines was funded either by charities or national governments. Despite that, and despite the fact that the proposal had the support of more than 100 nations, countries home to major pharmaceutical companies such as the US and the UK, prevented this proposal from moving forward.

Generally, vaccines are produced by private companies that sell them domestically or to foreign governments withthe resources to pay a premium for them. In some cases, producers will make provisions for access in certain markets in exchange for early development funding or for allowing production to occur in a certain country. This system primarily benefits rich nations capable of developing the vaccine themselves or paying for early access. It also bodes well for middle-income countries like India and Argentina that have indispensable domestic manufacturing capacity. However, poor nations that are unable to compete in the open market are dependent on either participating in (often unethical) clinical trials or relying on hand-outs such as the complex vaccine sharing scheme, COVAX. Neither option is preferable. Countries that have enrolled citizens in early vaccine trials will still face long delays in receiving vaccine doses and those reliant on the COVAX scheme are required to pay widely fluctuating prices up-front while also assuming the entirety of the risk if the vaccine fails. With the introduction of vaccine passports, citizens from these countries will be restricted from international travel, especially those who are not digitally integrated.

Creating a passport that would benefit privileged groups will also pose a significant risk to vulnerable populations fleeing war or economic hardship. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, including marginalised groups in vaccination programs is “key to ending the pandemic.” Yet while some refugee host states like Jordan and Lebanon are including refugees in their vaccine rollouts, several others are not. An estimated 9 out the 10 people living in the poorest states in the world may not receive the vaccine until 2022. If vaccine passports become a pre-requisite for travel, those people will be unable to seek asylum unless receiving nations put in place policies that would allow them to be vaccinated at the point of arrival.

Further reading

Interim position paper: considerations regarding proof of COVID-19 vaccination for international travellers by th WHO

The Passport by Sara Dehm

Challenges in ensuring global access to COVID-19 vaccines: production, affordability, allocation, and deployment

 Written by Mira Patel

Source: Indian Express, 15/04/21