[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM_4vyuOLiU&rel=0]
COVID-19 Has Done a Thorough Autopsy of Neoliberalism
P. Sainath
hello and welcome to newsclick today
were extremely fortunate to have one of
the world’s most important journalists
piece.i not used to be with the hindu
author of everybody loves a good drought
and the founder of the people’s archive
of rural india fari sai Nath welcome to
newsclick hey Jay
good to see you well today we’re going
to talk about the state of India months
into both the corona virus pandemic and
into the haphazard locked-down as
organized by the government of Narenda
Modi what is the pulse now as we enter
July in India regarding the coronavirus
recession the pandemic and the lockdown
for one thing there’s an extraordinary
rush towards privatizing what public
resources remain in the public in public
hands now they’re going to let out 5% of
the railways of trains 5% of trains for
private trains now the it had you had
private trains would you have been able
to transport 10 million migrants back to
their homes you won’t have had a chance
of doing it in fact they’re doing the
opposite of everything the they’re going
against the lessons that every other
nation seems to be drawing take Spain
Ireland which immediately after kovat
broke out they actually nationalized all
the medical facilities maybe they’ll
free privatize them or D nationalize
them later but they immediately
nationalized we took two months to start
saying okay
eighty percent of private hospital beds
are commandeered for Kovac whatever and
just before this the previous budget of
this government put up district level
government hospitals on the Block for
private management so we had you think
that after COBIT they would rethink that
process now they’re moving towards it
even faster in the control room for
their war room on kovat yeah
you have Boston Consulting Group sitting
there so you’re actually allowing
privateers profit-seeking representing
hundreds of extremely rapacious clients
to be sitting in the control room of the
pandemic that they fight against the
pandemic that’s one set another area
where gigantic monies are already being
made you just have to look at the stocks
and shares of companies like Baiju and
others this is online education this is
simply incredible the way it’s playing
out the amount of you if you look at all
the websites of the business newspapers
the business magazines or business
websites you can see them salivating
yeah I mean they’re just salivating
saying hey this is where the money is
this is where it is we can do fantastic
things now because anyway you had no
intention of worrying about the tens of
millions of children in government
schools tens of millions over 10 15 20
million in just the Pradesh alone right
now what’s happening with the online
education first considered that’s from
preschool to primary and even you know
even upper primary how many kids own a
smartphone that’s one second the parents
are saying even if the parents managed
to get a phone they say we don’t know
how to use this stuff
how are we
to teach the child and that’s even for
older children up to the age of 15 16 so
take a place like pal girl what used to
be part of tiny in district it’s a
heavily Adivasi area the National Sample
Survey organization’s 2018 report tells
us that only you know say one in six
people in Mahara rule Mara true one in
six had the ability to use the internet
not about ownership of products and
gadgets only one in six people and for
women that was one in 11 yeah and even a
more recent and the same they also did a
survey who actually used in 30 days
preceding and that was one in seven
overall and for women one in twelve did
if you have a fool you don’t have
goddamn network you don’t have power
supply so sometimes you can go days
without recharging your phone in fact in
Bengal it’s created and little
proficient in the last three four years
there’s a guy who comes to the village
in the morning college in in the night
collects everybody’s phones and goes and
charges them somewhere where there’s
electricity and comes back in the
morning and distributes the phones
things like that so you don’t have
electricity you don’t have the thing
these smartphones are extremely
expensive and by the way you now have a
ban on the cheapest apps which are all
Chinese now how do you download on that
kind of limited bandwidth that people
have you paid 200 rupees a month for 2gb
a day if you go into a higher bracket it
becomes much more expensive to kids in a
school older brother younger sister
first that older brother has to be
persuaded to share his phone with the
kid
second downloading PDFs you can’t print
them out you don’t have access of that
kind this is the kind of stuff that’s
going on so you’re having entirely the
basic issue of India is and has been for
a very long time extreme inequality
now what Kovac did and what Kovac
continues to do what Cove it 19
continues to do it’s given you an
incredible complete and thorough autopsy
of neoliberalism and our path of
development in the last twenty eight
thirty years so you really are now
looking at the the corpse of neoliberal
you know ideology and it gives you an
incredible covetous also given say to
someone like me an incredible brain scan
of our media and elite that these are
the two things this next so online
education is a racket it’s becoming a
ragged the incidentally burry in the
people’s archive of rural India in a few
days we are launching peri education
because there is a serious class
differentiation even within those who
have access right if you have if you
have broadband now in Mumbai many kids
have broadband in Vidarbha many kids
don’t have any back so what happens you
find here after year the topper in the
school board exams might be from latter
of marijuana Reader bar but the past
person pages in Mumbai will be excellent
not because the students here are more
brilliant but because they have access
to broadband 24 hours network in
Vidarbha around exam time they are
having 12 to 15 hour
cuts each year every year yes so there
is not even a bulb in the panchayat
bubble where does that village kids
study so the thing the online education
thing is I think it’s the way I see it
it’s moving from digital divide
– what Bausch askin is called digital
partition you know from digital divide
to digital partition absolute separation
of two words a dividing line that you
cannot it’s a border which you cannot
cross so that is going to Karnataka in
fact has put a ban on online classes up
to class five and the beautiful people
are outraged but the fact is the
thousands of families in girl of
government school children are saying
how the heck will we do our exams how we
can’t treat each the children we don’t
know how to use these instruments and we
can’t afford them so that’s one area the
second is the gigantic racketeering
that’s happening is the health threat I
live in close proximity of the very
close proximity of one but in this and
proximity of three five-star hospitals
yeah these guys are charging six
thousand five hundred rupees and move
for Kovac testing six thousand five
hundred rupees and more and at the very
you know the very time that you need to
be thinking take we we lost an
opportunity to build a national health
system which by the way was recommended
in the first commission of one of the
first Commission’s India made as going
towards independence the bourree
Commission they said this build
something on the lines of what was
coming up in Britain which serve Britain
very well until Thatcher came along and
picked its bones out but we don’t have a
national health system
and felt the racketeering is getting
into let me tell you from Mumbai I said
this if you go back to the piece of
March 26th which I published in the wire
you’re going to have a lot more dense
from non common diseases than for
Corbett because we have come up we have
focused the every bit of the limited
medical resources India hairs on kovat a
heck of a lot of people are dying of
other diseases the migrants on those 800
kilometer walks 800 mile walks to they
were dying of dehydration they were
dying of diarrhea they were dying of all
the old usual suspects in Indian
morbidity so that that was another thing
the hospitals now to get in someone dies
a person dies of another disease you
can’t get a medical certificate without
paying ten thousand rupees or more in
Mumbai without paying 10k or more so
because the government hospitals cannot
give you a death certificate until they
conduct an autopsy they are in no
position they tracking at the seams they
are in no position to do autopsies so
you go around a classmate of mine in
Chennai mothered Kumar died it was not
at all it’s not at all clear what he
died of
it’s not at all clear they were not cold
like symptoms or anything and my
literally my classmate from MCC school
the family was forced to dispose of the
body fast by the rest of the society
buildings etc saying do this because you
know it’s um problematic for everyone so
they ran around for a death certificate
and he has been cremated without thee
without any examination of what
went wrong with it so people suffering
from diseases other than Kove it heart
patients diabetes patients are in a very
bad way that’s so that’s the health
center third in the education sector all
the private universities are
recalibrating they all built huge
infrastructure giant buildings
conference centers etc now they are
racing – and this has a lot to do with
labor they are racing to seize the
online world where they know that they
are a thousand miles ahead of government
schools and colleges you’re going to
watch the dismantling of teachers unions
you’re gonna work it short it’s already
begun you’re going to watch the
dismantling of the entire you know
you’re going to see a lot of faculty
members laid off yeah because by the way
this situation famous guys like us
because what the universities are going
to do is to try getting a lot of
freelance lecturers yeah who come and
speak about whatever they speak about
and you pay them fight fight game
10k whatever it is you’re not high
you’re not giving the students a full
time teacher so you’re going to find
actually a reduction in the number of
students those students completely
excluded switcher and is free software
movement under a chapter they are trying
to see how to reach non you know
students excluded from that whole
process then you come to the sector of
labor it’s astonishing
we have reversed the hundred year gold
standard of labor law taking the
eight-hour day and making it a 12-hour
day and the BJP states have made it 12
hours without overtime payment
Rajasthan Madhya Pradesh
Gujarat have extended the working of us
to 12 without overtime I’m sorry I’m
saying muddy Pradesh Uttar Pradesh and
Gujarat Rajasthan has also extended to
12 hours but is paying overtime for
those 4 hours with a limit of 20 hours a
week over time which means 6 days in a
week people are going to be working like
what the heck they’ll be working and the
kind of you know one another thing is
it’s common to the US the complete
bankruptcy of the ruling elite in terms
of people who can think who can actually
think you see not no one in this
generation is aware for instance that
after the 8th when the eight-hour day
came up Henry Ford was one of the first
to accept the eight-hour day not because
of his love for the working class but
because they had done studies that
showed that after eight hours
productivity sharply fell off and you
would be paying more for less Ford
actually embraced that and he was
roundly criticized by his contemporaries
all of them went into it two years later
when they saw that the year he had
adopted the eight-hour day
Ford’s profits doubled from 34 to 60
million okay so at least you had some an
enlightened self enlightened capitalists
interest you know a self-interested
enlightenment if you might want to call
it that
here the ruther Pradesh government apart
from an ordinance which it claims to
have withdrawn suspended 38 laws labor
laws all the basic labor laws of the
country are now in limbo some are saying
it openly someone not but you had just a
neighbor the first of course was mr.
Modi’s Gujarat commerce chamber Chamber
of Commerce the moment the migrant
laborer problem started they made an
appeal
for a ban on trade union activity for a
year no formation of trade unions so
this is on the labor sector you are in
every extent moving to a neoliberal
nightmare and and you have people if you
know every newspaper magazine is handing
something saying don’t waste a good
crisis you know paraphrasing Winston
Churchill’s absurd speech one of the
senior most of Indian editors Shekar
Gupta says on his online TV without
attributing it to Churchill where it
came from never waste a good crisis you
see in other words this is the time
you’ve got the working class on its
knees ran through what you have to run
through on on on labour that that’s
happening on the labor front on the food
front at a time we are witnessing
unprecedented levels of hunger you know
really unprecedented levels of hunger
vijay the so-called surplus or buffer
stopped with the government of india
crossed 104 million tons on June 1st can
you believe that
a hundred and four million tons
yesterday the Prime Minister makes a
speech to say wow you know what we are
going to do we are going to extend that
5 kgs per person free for another three
months incredible generosity considering
that it’s going to limp it’s limited to
those coming under the national food
security act which excludes 30 percent
of the country’s population so you are
having that hunger situation and you are
having States encouraging their farmers
to repeat the crops of Rabi which this
is my personal biggest nightmare you
know to try growing cash crops again we
take a tea
lack quintals of cotton are lying and
sold and all the cotton growing states
are repeating cotton and Punjab and
Haryana are giving up pani to grow
cotton on the plea that paddy is what
honestly bt cotton is no less what
honestly but if the problem is by all
means give up any go to millets you’ll
be safe you know in one acre or the
water you used for one acre of paddy you
can grow cultivate twelve to fifteen
acres of July yeah you’re going for
another quart water grizzly grub we are
going now here’s another terrible
situation you know who was our biggest
export market in cotton last year yes
China okay
now you’re sitting with 80 lakh tonnes
80 lakh quintals of unsold cotton more
piling up some with the cotton
Corporation of India some with the state
governments and many 30 lakhs with the
farmers in Maharashtra alone 30 lakh
quintals with the farmers come state
governments have no more money to buy
perishable cash crops are dying in the
fields watermelons okay those things are
dying
sugarcane lakhs of tons and quint or
quintals and tons are lying with the
sugar mills and the farmer now if me
repeat it please hello you know all over
the world there’s a huge income crash a
huge consumption – hmm
who’s going to buy your stuff whose girl
I have been begging begging from the
Kisan Sabha downwards – every farmer for
God’s sake this Karif crop grow food or
at least damn it half your acreage you
put the food crop you’ve got a
government in power that is not
distributing it’s piling up it was 60
million tons when the crisis
it’s not hundred and four million tons
and what do you think they announced not
a signal editorial not a signal
condemnation on April 12 or April 15
they announced that the cabinet had
given permission for the conversion of
an unspecified amount no cap unspecified
amount of rice to be converted into
ethanol you’re having an unprecedented
level of hunger and you’re going to
destroy food grain to create ethanol for
me where are we living so you you you
very rightly characterized the situation
saying that this is an autopsy of the
economic and political model that India
has been following for the last four
decades you said it quite directly the
corpses on the table an overworked
doctor is now looking inside it and what
they see is a digital partition what
they see is education hemorrhaging they
see employment hemorrhaging they see
health hemorrhaging they see basically
hunger increasing a hunger pandemic if
you can put this sharply I mean let me
ask you a question and you can say the
answer in just a few sentences but is
this government a malevolent government
is it an incompetent government
how would you characterize this
government because everything you say
also illogical so just characterize the
government for us you know even before
Kovac I was making this point that you
know say the emergency marked the
consolidation of the authoritarian state
and I say this every I say two things
every June 25th that all do 25th be
ritually you know are we ritual eyes or
remembrance of the emergency yeah
institutionalize our embrace of it every
day of the year
we ritualize a remembrance of the
emergency on one day in a year we
institutionalize our emergency every day
of the year for the last 30 years it’s
not just this government a hell of a lot
happened with the previous UPA
government as well but this government
like if this government is I think I
don’t surely described it very well when
he said the BJP is the Congress is that
if the Congress plus cow and okay I
think that’s a wonderful wonderful
description at the Congress + cow
however I would also say this it’s the
whatever the Congress did on the damage
that they did in economics in the
economy these guys do that on steroids
they do it on steroids so I was saying
that the emergency saw thee it so the
consolidation of an authoritarian state
but when I look at the last six years
and I look at the outsourcing of terror
to mob violence see in the emergency all
of us you know everybody the civils
so-called civil society everybody
develop the next 20 years of their
activity in terms of fighting the states
in terms of combating state oppression
but from 2014 it wasn’t any longer just
the state the state was outsourcing
terror yeah you had the vhp in the
budget and none of us were prepared for
this I’m saying
Indian society was not prepared for this
this outsourcing of them so you’re
looking at and the kind of attacks on
minorities the kind of violence the kind
of bloodshed it’s almost like you’re
moving from the consolidation of the
authoritarian state
to the state s sociopath
it has you have never seen government I
mean all governments have been
vindictive nasty it’s not true I will
not pin one government I will not say
the government of mr. moody is
vindictive and nasty and the government
of Manmohan Singh was so that would be
untrue I know in the countryside what
was the criminalization of dissent had
been going on for duda kids two three
decades no less under the UPA did but
these guys have taken that to an
entirely different level it’s an
entirely different level that makes a
lot of the previous stuff look rather
benign there is somehow what I can never
understand is it is not enough in the in
the current Indian elite and society it
is not enough to defeat your adversary
it is imperative to smash him humiliate
him trample on him
KS that’s net character then the person
everything everything that is what is
telling me about have you seen the state
s sociopaths you because an
authoritarian state lot of people up
here I mean here in the police came and
dealt with you yeah and you ran away
from the poiice or whatever you could do
here you are attacked in in
communication terms you have the largest
army of paid trolls in the planet going
after anyone everyone and how do we say
that they’re paid and they don’t know a
damn thing I mean the trolls of the BJP
give stupidity a bad name now for
instance I write something on farmers
suicides will be 200
guys they say did he ever say one word
about farmers suicides in the when the
Congress was it okay I was the guy who
broke the damn story and stayed with it
for 20 years okay so this is it’s pre
formatted responses that they’re going
to put out without knowing a damn thing
so you have this entire paid and by the
way you’ll find that the attacks are
usually between nine and five because
these are nine-to-five jobs and on
weekdays okay so it’s a fact so you have
this huge thing and then you have the
Indian media and its first in two
hundred years I’ve been shouting for
twenty years about what corporatization
will do to the media it’s done it to the
Hindu okay it’s done it I mean the time
Sunday HD which I over a thousand
journalists and my estimate have been
laid off
in the last two months many of these
journalists were going to be laid off
anyway the pandemic gave these guys an
excuse to throw them off The Times and
many other groups did this after the
2008 Wall Street collapse in 2009 before
the elections they you know and the same
newspapers were saying India unaffected
by The Times of India had the thing what
what one headline said what recession
the economy is soaring yeah and they
were laying off people and they
will-they
it again happened after D monetization
again there was another room thousands
and thousands of jobs have been lost in
journalism since 2008 this year
journalists and non non journalists
employees also must be about a 1500 in
the last few months and look at this
fact
that time you need journalism and
journalists the most you are responding
to the pandemic by laying off a thousand
journalists and restricting the coverage
of what you need to cover so click this
so so desperately need to cover and
therefore you have a situation where
much of the coverage was on the edge of
the cities as the migrants marched out
you need your TV stuff and one or two
went around again it’s the it’s the
problem of journalism of covering the
event versus covering the process not
this the media have simply been unable
to ask the right questions because they
never had beats on this the media has
never been able to ask the right
questions they’ve never had beats on
this but you have after all spent a
lifetime asking exactly these questions
this interview will run on newsclick
will receive real assault from that
barrage of trolls that you talked about
looking forward to that this was a very
insightful conversation piece Anna
thanks very much for joining us