In an Orwellian nightmare, the state is all powerful and omnipresent. It unleashes a barrage of instructions, regimentation orders and helms the affairs of the state in a majestic fashion. In the process, rules by far held sacred are trashed, new ones are fashioned and conventions are undone. Towers of information are created to ensure the reach of the state in every dimly lit corner of the country through massive propaganda machinery. Judicial scrutiny also is pressed down with arguments oriented around ‘overwhelming nature of executive actions‘. All this is done—to what purpose? To reaffirm the dominant narrative of state hegemony. To reassure that nothing is amiss in the superstructure of the state. To reignite dreams of prosperity which have fallen flat.
COVID-19 pandemic has ushered in a new era of dystopian existence of state which eerily draws legitimacy from the ivory towers of democracy even as fear and misconception straddles every corner of the street in India and other parts of the world. What is unfolding on the ground?
Curious Case Scenarios
This fear becomes more pronounced when you start imagining the plight of a migrant labourer who has not eaten a morsel of food for, maybe, days altogether and trudges on a lonely road in the hope of reaching back home. He is not disposed to beg. Dignity is a precious treasure for each human being. So, what does he do? He walks. He walks on and on to preserve his dignity and to feel alive. He has not been put into his position by chance. He is there because state expects him to remain at one place and not move an inch askance, lest the powerful enemy like the coronavirus lurking inside the body of an afflicted person claim him as its next victim.
There may be many more similar scenarios unfolding in this ‘lockdown’ era of the Indian state. Imagine a scene where an elderly person sits nervously on the perch of his home-like dwelling. His only known acquaintance has not visited him for days now as the state-run ‘lockdown’ spills over. He is at a loss to understand the extent of the war effort. War effort? Yes.Well, ‘lockdown’ and accompanying policy measures are nothing short of warlike efforts in popular imagination. This old man has fought many battles of his own in the prime of his life. He surrenders to the narrative of the state and hopes for some leeway where he may go out for a walk with someone’s assistance.
In another part of the country and in another setting, a sanitation worker frantically collects the garbage and hopes to quickly finish work and rush back home. While watching an advisory released by the state information department on television one evening, he becomes aware of the fact that a deadly virus is on the prowl and it rapidly spreads by close contact.
He has always cursed his fate until now for not being truly acknowledged for the terribly ‘unclean’ work done by him. He also always wanted to do something else in life but was bogged down by the turn of fate and circumstances. He is obviously curious in the current scenario to know as to why residents of a posh locality who never bothered to acknowledge his presence in their lives are now interested in showering him with flowers?
He now wonders, whether he should fear the coronavirus, or should he start worshipping it? In case one is wondering why this sanitation worker should worship the coronavirus, ponder over this: he may do so because the scenario which he encounters now is nothing short of a miracle in a country where manual scavengers die lonely and brutal deaths in gutters.
So, why not worship corona? He also surprisingly gets to know that flowers are being showered on hospitals by military planes and helicopters. Suddenly, he now becomes uneasy and afraid. He is not sure of the time period for which the deadly virus wills to scare the public. Will he always receive flower showers and a semblance of respect in his work-life existence? He simply wonders.
In another possible scenario, a middle-aged lady cries bitterly as she is not allowed near the body of her dead husband who lost his life to the coronavirus. Governmental and safety norms bar her from going very near her husband who is now being denied a decent burial space in a graveyard. She is left aghast, but the state assures her that it will take care of the burial. The powerful ‘leviathan’ state after all is omnipresent in even the most private moment of a person. Testimonies like these may just abound in the lockdown phase. No wonder then, dystopia is a real phenomenon.
Emergent Leviathan State
It seems that in the post-lockdown phase, the state shall continue to dominate the narrative of information, and law is going to be a happy ally to ensure that the leviathan keeps breathing and spewing floss and fury at will. What is an easy casualty in this new ‘dystopian’ normal world? To start with, dissent no more exists in the form of ‘dissent’. It has been replaced by a mild and cautious disagreement with a policy measure, and ‘dissent’ is criminal in many instances. No loud and thundering calls can be made now. One cannot possibly blame the state for killing dissent because state itself doesn’t know how and when did this happen as it was engrossed in burying ‘dissent’ through seemingly innocuous policy measures.
In the wake of the widely noticeable trend of muzzling dissent, UN Human Rights Chief was led to observe recently that the governments have arrogated to themselves emergency powers amidst pandemic outbreak, and he expressed concern that these powers should not be weaponized by governments to “quash dissent, control the population, and even perpetuate their time in power“. In her view, “They should be used to cope effectively with the pandemic—nothing more, nothing less.”
Alas! In reality, governments and ruling regimes pursue a vastly different agenda. Nations rely on a tough time-tested formula of feeding the ‘nationalistic’ urge of development and achieving superpowers at the international stage. When blind ‘ambition’ drives the governance, something as ingenuous as a ‘pandemic’ cannot, perhaps, derail the flight of fancy of the ‘leviathan’ state. On the other hand, it rather makes it more authoritative and visible.
Not surprisingly, human rights agenda is a ‘misfit’ and a ‘non issue’ in surcharged atmosphere of pandemic scare. Crisis situations of a mammoth scale present an occasion for the sleeping leviathan-like state apparatus to rise with full strength, and it slowly comes to dominate every aspect of a citizen’s life. This is dystopia. The process of rewiring governance during pandemic era has led governments of the world, including India, to unleash a massive propaganda of fear, insecurity and health concerns. A lot of it is necessitated by the fatal nature of the COVID-19 disease and the failure of science to stem the rising tide of this threatening virus.
Gazing At The Future
The future looks fuzzy at this stage of engagement of the leviathan-like state with the coronavirus. We should not forget that pandemics and human emergencies also offer opportunities to bind the state and break shibboleths of narrow divisions and discrimination in society. It may be worthwhile to note that stray actions of solidarity and sporadic acts of charity are not going a long way to contain the greater threat of societal dissonance and dissension.
An individual who is ‘infected’ with the virus is the new ‘outcaste’, and this cements the preexisting caste and class structures of discrimination in society. Doubts and rumours may have a free run in near future. We are not faced with just the problem of containing the spread of the virus. It will be equally challenging to protect the ‘freedom of speech’ which includes ‘freedom to dissent’ emphatically from the dominant discourse of pandemic-induced ’emergency’.
It will also be a challenge to ensure societal peace even as competing claims on otherwise trivial matters of holding functions and ceremonies, walking the pet dog in a park and putting the kid on a swing in the park shall be policed. Policing the simplest of the tasks may breed distrust among citizens.
Adopting coherence in policy approach at the national and international stage and allowing diverse voices to bloom is one of the first steps to reign in the leviathan-like tendency of the state. Judicial scrutiny of executive actions should take place with more regularity to outdo the likelihood of any brazen action leading to impairment of the basic dignity and other fundamental freedoms envisaged under the Constitution of India for citizens.
There is actually no need to ‘justify’ executive actions in the name of the pandemic scare. Executive actions should inspire more and more confidence among citizenry about the resolve of the government to battle the pandemic. The fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic is multidimensional. It is more than just a number crunching exercise. Medicinal understanding of the disease is just the starting point. We are already living in a dystopia. The question is—are we ready to face it upfront in the near future?