The Lead: CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury on the collapse of the welfare state

In this episode, DH Radio takes you through CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury's view on the collapse of the welfare state and the coronavirus pandemic.

Excerpts:

Q: CPM general secretary Sitaram is joining us to analyse the world and India during this Covid-19 pandemic. Almost all countries were in a lockdown at some point in time. How this pandemic impacted the lives of common people. Has the state failed them? has the economic situation led to a situation, whether the welfare state has withered away? All these things we hope to analyse during this interaction?
Covid-19 has changed the world, the pandemic has changed the world a lot. The way we interact. More virtual meetings are happening, like what is happening now. How has the world changed? How will you analyse this?

A: Well, first of all, the world has changed in a very very big way. It's no longer the world we know before the pandemic arrived. Whether we will return to that sort of a world again, once we get a vaccine, hopefully, that is also with a lot of question marks. And the reason for these question marks arising is the manner in which this pandemic itself has been handled. In most of the countries in the world, because of the economic reforms and the neo-liberalism that has been raging, globalisation for the last three decades or so, one thing that meant was that complete privatisation of all public utilities and public service. Public health was the biggest casualty. Everything was routed through the insurance route, through the route of big pharmaceuticals... The state expenditure though they may have been high but that was not for creating, in some states they may have been high but that more for the insurance purposes, rather than from creating state-funded health infrastructure. Now, India has also the same and therefore you have a lot of casualties which could have been prevented and which we can Vietnam, Cuba or even China or even South Korea or Singapore or Taiwan. Wherever you have a public health system, there the situation is much better. In India, the situation is much worse than most of the developed capitalist countries. We did huge mismanagement the manner in which we managed the pandemic. The first warning in the world came in December (2019). India had the first positive case on the 30th of Janunary (2020), from 30th of January, in the state of Kerala, from where the first positive case came from somebody who travelled from Wuhan. There you had the entire structure set up to the ability of the state government and that is why the Kerala model became globally famous. And the way scientifically in terms of testing, isolating positive patients, contact tracing and then quarantine. That was not done in India. For three months, the government organised things like Namaste Trump, toppling the governments and public swearing-ins, giving permission for Tablighi Markaz and such events, which acted to actually spread and then came the completely unplanned lockdown. Four-hour notice. Neither the people were prepared nor the state governments were prepared and the consequences were disastrous. You have seen the migrants, lakhs of them, suffering for more than two months; people losing their lives because of exhaustion, because of hunger... All this could have been prevented if a proper warning was given. We had the Janta Curfew, why couldn't the prime minister announce there is a possibility that we have to go into to total lockdown, so be prepared. That may happen in a week, that may happen in 10 days. These migrant workers would have gone back at their own expense, by the trains that were running then. No facilities, no protective equipment for our health workers, no livelihood for the people and no food for the hungry. For cash transfers give the food, it was announced after two months, by the time, the damage had to be done had done...

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