Heart of darkness: Help for millions of migrant workers has been mangled in a bureaucratic maze

The Covid pandemic has revealed India’s heart of darkness, but it has also shown us its soul. It’s residing in heroes like Jyoti Kumari, Anirudh Jhare and Mohammed Yakoob and scores of other unnamed people who set aside their own travail to give succour to fellow migrants hard scrabbling their way home.

Jyoti cycled 1,200 km from Delhi to Darbhanga, with her injured father as the pillion. Instead of heading home to Nagpur, Anirudh pushed disabled Gayoor Ahmed’s tricycle for five days to his home in UP. Pushed off a truck ferrying migrants, Yakoob refused to abandon the dying Amrit Kumar. No help was at hand as Yakoob cradled Amrit till his end.

Darkness is what is not easily visible. It is the casualness with which the country was shut down in a couple of hours, putting millions of people through an ordeal that will be remembered for generations. Whether it delayed Covid, remains a matter of debate.

The initial government fumble in handling Covid is understandable. This is a ‘novel’ or new virus, and its effects not clearly known. But by March 25, there had been enough time to think of options and consequences. Perhaps our allegedly grounded leaders and their allegedly experienced bureaucrats have no inkling of the role of tens of millions of migrant workers in the economy of their continent-sized country. Canute-like on March 29, the Union home secretary ordered the migrants to stop. Businesses were asked to pay them full salary and landlords ordered not to demand rent.

That was in the make-believe world of North Block. In the real world, it was each man for himself. For small businesses it was sink or swim. For millions of workers it was about food and rent, here and now. Beyond the fatwa there was little else. So the migrants decided to vote with their feet: Better to starve and die at home than in some distant shanty, uncared and unmourned.

So just a step beyond darkness is the emptiness you can find in the bureaucratic soul whose directive to help migrants arrived as late as May 15 and who earlier had no compunction charging destitute people rail fare with a “corona tax”, to reach home. ‘Empathy’ and ‘compassion’ are not in the common vocabulary of our languages. They do not quite translate to daya and sahanubhooti, that are more about charity than self-realisation. But even charity, with notable exceptions, has been absent.

Those who have lost everything and are still trying desperately to reach a place far away called home have been lathi charged, blocked at borders, cheated, sent to camps and generally treated as subhumans. In a recent interview Naushad Forbes, the former CII president, suggests that had government accepted a proposal to guarantee loans to companies by banks to fund wages during the lockdown and also transferred money directly into their Jan Dhan accounts on a periodic basis, the workers would have been reassured.

Now the government has come up with an allegedly vast stimulus, but it’s mainly for the long run when, as Keynes said, we’ll be dead. Schemes have been announced for migrants, though how they’ll work is a mystery. There has been some black humour as well – the labour reforms of UP and MP.  Given their hopeless physical and human infrastructure, do they seriously think they will attract Cisco or Apple by stiffing their already benighted workforce?

Orders have borne no relation to reality or logic. Restart industry, but go to jail if anyone gets infected. Fifty people can attend a wedding, but only 20 a funeral. Go through stringent social distancing till you reach your seat in the aircraft and then be jam-packed for the flight. But if you’re looking for a true blue bureaucratic maze, look no further than the shambolic evacuation of migrants by rail – which is only halfway done.

Times of India May 22, 2020

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-edit-page/heart-of-darkness-help-for-millions-of-migrant-workers-has-been-mangled-in-a-bureaucratic-maze/

Modi Must Get India Out of COVID Mess to Make Foreign Policy Work

It is now impossible to assess how Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s foreign policy has fared in the first year of his second term, without factoring in the COVID-19 global pandemic. There cannot but be a permanent question mark over what it may have been, and what it is and will be.

There are, of course, many metrics to measure the Modi foreign policy of the past year. How we fared with friends, enemies and neighbours, whether we attracted foreign investors, and, in the specific case of India of the past year — how we dealt with the fallout of controversial domestic policy decisions like abrogating Article 370 in Kashmir and the controversy surrounding the Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens.

Internationalising the Kashmir Issue

Indian foreign policy had to face considerable headwinds, first with the Kashmir issue. The bifurcation of the state and indeed, its demotion to Union Territory status in August 2019, met with adverse response across the world, especially on account of the large scale detentions and the crackdown on information. New Delhi undertook a major diplomatic outreach which met with, at best, mixed results. There was an unprecedented closed door meeting of the UN Security Council, and the European Parliament also discussed the issue. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar traveled to China, Europe and the US, other ministers traveled to West Asia, and the PM personally spoke to President Trump, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel termed the situation ‘unsustainable’ during a visit to New Delhi.

In the past year, we have seen the US Congress Committees get active on the issue and the US President repeatedly offer to mediate between India and Pakistan. Mediation offers came from other friends as well — UAE, Saudi Arabia, Norway and Russia.

The CAA, which was passed in December 2019, led to widespread protests across the country as it was seen as a deliberate move to target Muslims in the subsequent NRC. The protests led to a brutal police crackdown in UP and several university campuses, and the arrests of hundreds of people. Beyond the violence, the issue was now being seen as a matter of religious freedom. To top it all, serious riots broke out in Delhi, even as President Trump was in the process of winding up his visit. He obliquely referred to this when he deflected a question on the CAA at a press briefing, even while implying he did raise the question of religious freedom in India with Modi

Post-CAA Crisis Face-Saving Exercise & India’s Established Foreign Policy Agenda

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres condemned the violence and “alleged use of excessive force by security forces” and called on the government to respect the freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina felt that the CAA was “not necessary,” even though she accepted that these were internal issues of India. There was sharp criticism from Malaysia, Turkey, Kuwait, Afghanistan, as well as the European Union. The research arm of the US Congress said in a report that the CAA, in tandem with the NRC, could affect “the status of India’s large Muslim minority.”Countries that had viewed India as a rising economic power, a rational actor promoting global peace and stability, were taken aback by the developments. New Delhi, which was envied even by China for its democratic and pluralistic credentials, was suddenly on the back foot. Instead of promoting India as an investment destination, ministers were forced to explain our domestic policies in capitals around the world.

 Beyond these issues was also India’s established foreign policy agenda — managing ties with China, maintaining the tempo of improved relations with the US, keeping ties with Europe and Russia well oiled, providing greater depth to India’s economic partnership with the Gulf countries, keeping India’s neighbours in line, and playing a larger role in the world stage – preparatory to a stint as non-permanent member of the UN Security Council next year.

India’s Continuing Inability to Deal With Pakistan

But, perhaps because of the domestic protests and, of course, COVID, nothing has really stood out, except the somewhat florid ‘Namaste Trump’ tamasha in Ahmedabad. Even the Chennai informal summit between Modi and Xi Jinping of China was lowkey, if useful.

But if there was something striking in a negative way, it was the continuing failure of India’s ability to deal with Pakistan, or even with other important neighbours like Nepal.

A unique metric in judging Modi’s foreign policy always is his numerous foreign visits. Outbound visits, barring the months of December and January, have been a regular feature of Modi’s first term. In the first six months of the new term, Modi’s performance was par for the course. Ten foreign visits which virtually took him around the world —Brazil, US, Russia, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Maldives and Sri Lanka, France, UAE and Bahrain, Thailand, Bhutan and Kyrgyzstan.

This year, even as he was rounding off the winter inbound visit season with the Trump visit, COVID-19 was spreading its tentacles. Visits to Europe for the EU summit, a stopover in Egypt, an important visit to Bangladesh, the Victory Day parade he was to have witnessed in Moscow in early May, were all cancelled.

Various multilateral summits such as those of the SCO, BRICS and G20 and a possible participation at the G-7 summit hosted this year by his ‘friend’ Donald Trump are on the horizon, but there is a question mark before all of them

Future of Indian Prosperity Depends On FDI & Foreign Trade

There is only one major challenge in the coming year for Modi where domestic and foreign policy intersect — getting India out of the COVID quagmire. Principal among these challenges is to ensure that his implementation matches his words. His government has laid out a vast reform agenda and he has spoken of a “quantum jump” for the economy through the bold reforms announced “to create a self-reliant India.”

Like it or not, the future of Indian prosperity still rests on the tried and tested formula of FDI and foreign trade.

For that, wooing foreign companies and governments is an important thing, but far, far more important are domestic changes that will create the kind of pool of trained and disciplined labour that can deliver on the promises.

Six years ago, as Sadanand Dhume pointed out in the WSJ, the same Modi announced his ‘Make in India’ scheme of raising manufacturing to 25 percent of India’s GDP. The reality today? Between then and 2018, manufacturing has actually declined from 15.1 per ent to 14.8 percent of the GDP.

So, this change will not come by ringing declarations, clanging thalis, or lighting candles, but patient and systematic work to transform the every day lives of Indians, make them better educated and in better health.

This project will require a decade and more to finish, if we are lucky

US-China ‘Estrangement’: An Opportunity & Danger For India

Prominent in the emerging foreign policy agenda is the fallout of the US estrangement with China. It provides both an opportunity, as well as danger for India. The US is mooting the Economic Prosperity Network (EPN) of like-minded countries, organisations and businesses to re-jig global supply chains away from China.

Though India is mentioned as a major component of this EPN, it’s not clear whether New Delhi is game for the kind of standards that the US will insist on the areas of digital business, energy and infrastructure, trade, education and commerce.

Our level of readiness made us balk at membership in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). The US is unlikely to give India the kind of economic space it gave to China in the 1980s and 1990s, and whatever be the case, a new American ‘technosphere’ with re-constituted supply chains will take a decade or so to stabilise, if it actually gets off the ground.

The dangers to India from adopting an adversarial posture towards China are mainly geopolitical.

Given our poor record of dealing with our other neighbours, Beijing’s open hostility could prove to be much more costly. There will also be opportunity costs to pay in the area of economic relations with what could be the rival ‘technosphere’.

Quint May 19, 2020

 https://www.thequint.com/voices/opinion/indian-foreign-policy-covid-modi-govt-china-united-states-pakistan-relations-diplomacy#read-more

Why is China Building Its Nuclear Arsenal As World Fights COVID?

On May 8, the editor-in-chief of the Chinese Communist Party newspaper Global Times, Hu Xijin commented in his weibo post that “China needs to expand the number of its nuclear warheads to 1,000 in a relatively short time and procure at least 100 DF 41 strategic missiles.” This was needed to “curb US strategic ambitions and impulses towards China,” he added. The discussion in the weibo (Google translation) appeared to support the view, though some did mention the fate of the Soviet Union which got into an unrestrained competition with the US.

The next day, in a longer editorial comment in Global Times, Hu, noted that while in the past the numbers of Chinese weapons were enough for a nuclear deterrent, they may not be sufficient to deal with the US government’s “strategic ambitions and bullying impulse” against China.

Snapshot

• The numbers of Chinese nuclear weapons may not be sufficient to deal with the US government’s “strategic ambitions and bullying impulse” against China.
  
• China has 290 warheads, as against 6,000 each held by Russia and the US.
  
• The debate on capacity expanision in China could well be a trial balloon floated by the government itself.
  
• The last remaining arms control agreement—New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), that limits long range nuclear weapons—is set to expire in February 2021.
  
• For India, a fledgling nuclear weapons state, such developments can only bode ill.

China Is Concerned About the Nuclear Arsenal of the US

Hu argued that in the past, China was seen as a second rate country by the US, but today it had recognized it as a strategic competitor. Since Trump took office, he noted, China was the target of US “nuclear arsenal investment.” If China continued in its old thinking, it “would bring us a tragedy.”

An accompanying article in Global Times the same day featured a noted Chinese military expert Song Zhongping as saying that the US was no longer seeing nuclear weapons for just deterrence. They are “now viewing them as deployable [for use] on the battlefield”. He was referring to the US decision to field low-yield nuclear weapons in February this year.

Chinese experts like Song and Wei Dongxu saw the possibility of conflict spilling over from what was happening in Taiwan and the South China Sea. The article noted Chinese nuclear force modernization in the form of the fielding of the DF-41 road-mobile missile, the testing of the Type 096 nuclear submarine and its companion JL-3 missile and the development of the H-20 stealth bomber. The issue that seems to be bothering Beijing is that of numbers. As of now estimates say that China has 290 warheads, as against 6,000 each held by Russia and the US, but of which only 1500 or so are active.On the same day, asked to comment on Hu’s remarks, Hua CHunying, the official spokeswoman of the foreign ministry said that those were Hu Xijin’s personal views “and he enjoys freedom of speech in China.” Pointing to Beijing’s No First Use policy on the employment of nuclear weapons, she said it was the duty of the big nuclear powers (US and Russia) “ to further reduce their arsenal drastically”.

The ‘Moderate’ Chinese

Other more moderate voices have also spoken up. On Monday, Tsinghua Professor and top nuclear expert Li Bin, wrote in The Paper that the size of the arsenal is a matter of scientific calculation and that there was nothing in Hu’s argument that was specific as to why a thousand more weapons were needed. He offered a four point algorithm that would help reach that number of weapons that were “enough.” There could be circumstances, arising out of new roles for the weapons, or technical issues, which deemed the number insufficient. But people like Hu, needed to point out what these were instead of deriving some new numbers “intuitively.’

All this debate in China could well be a trial balloon floated by the government itself. The reasons are not too far to seek. Besides the February 2020 decision to field low-yield nuclear weapons, the US is also moving to rope in China for any future arms control talks.

US-Russia Conflict is Passé, It’s All About China Now

Nine months from now, in February 2021, the last remaining arms control agreement—New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), that limits long range nuclear weapons—is set to expire. The US has been delaying the talks for its extension because it now wants China to be part of the treaty as well.

The US walked out the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) with Russia in August 2019 claiming that Russia was violating the treaty by deploying a new type of cruise missile, the 9M729 which violated the provisions of the treaty .

Russia, in turn, blamed the developments for the US abandonment of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002. But the subtext of the decision was China which has hundreds of what would be INF class missiles on the mainland, ones that can hit Taiwan, Japan, India and the US territory of Guam.

Both the INF and New START were essentially US-Russia agreements. Now, with China looming larger in US calculations, it wants Beijing to also join up to any future agreements, even though the Russians are game to renew New START for another five years. China legitimately claims that in terms of numbers, its arsenal is simply too small for it to be involved

New Trends in Nuclear Capacity Building Dangerous For India

New START now restricts deployed strategic warheads and bombs held by the US and Russia to 1550, a steep reduction from the 6,000 cap of START 1, though the warheads have been “retired” not scrapped. China is reported to have some 290 strategic warheads.

While there is no confirmation of Chinese numbers, the US NSA Robert O’Brien believes that they are “moving ahead very quickly on every type of advanced platform and weapons system known to man.” China itself acknowledges that it is modernizing its arsenal, but does that mean numbers or delivery systems ?

Old treaties expiring is bad enough, as is modernization of the weapons delivery system. But even more dangerous are the new emerging threats in the nuclear area—the use of AI and hypersonic missiles. For India, a fledgling nuclear weapons state, such trends can only bode ill.

Quint May 15, 2020    https://www.thequint.com/voices/opinion/china-us-nuclear-weapons-warhead-russia-treaty

Quite the flop show: At every level, the handling of Covid situation has been far from satisfactory

The Covid-19 pandemic has been compared to war. But to go by the performance of our society, leaders and those responsible for its governance, we would cut a sorry figure, were we to, indeed, face the destruction and disruption of a modern high-intensity war. For millions of Indians, the country has regressed into the 18th century, with its attendant anarchy and deprivation. People have been reduced to penury, forced to march across the country on empty stomach, with wives and children in tow. The Centre has simply left the people to fend for themselves, much as the powerless Moghul emperor of the time.

Our politicians and bureaucracy have revealed that they have lost touch with the real India. When PM Modi struck fast and hard on

March 24 by declaring a shutdown, it was seen as another of his famous ‘masterstrokes’. A sudden decision, with little or no consultation, and aimed at inducing ‘shock and awe’.

On March 25, factories ground to a halt, crops were left to wither, leaving tens of millions who lived hand to mouth, wondering where their next meal would come from. Some were hundreds of kilometres away from home. No provision had been made to pay and feed them through this period.

Those who planned it did not consult the states, neither did they seek any feedback; that is not their style. It is only at the PM’s third meeting with the CMs a month and a half after the lockdown that all participants will get a chance to speak.

Going by the word of his NITI Aayog experts, Modi probably believed that a draconian lockdown would break the cycle of infection by mid-May and the PM then would have been seen as the saviour who had defeated Covid. Now, with the infection growth rate rising from 4.7 to 5.5 per cent, the problem has revealed a complexity that requires much more than the theatrics of ringing bells and lighting candles.

Officials advising the government overlooked the consequences of locking down the country with no notice. Confronted with harrowing scenes of migrants, they turned a blind eye to it: ‘As of 11 am this March 31st, no one is on the road. They have been taken to the nearest available shelter,’ Solicitor General Tushar Mehta grandiosely declared to the Supreme Court on behalf of the government.

Only when state governments started making plans to evacuate people that, a full month later, on May 1, the Centre agreed to let the Railways run trains for evacuation. Characteristically even this operation has been marked by chaos and incompetence, cash-strapped migrants, some who had sold even their mobile phones to survive, were asked to pay for the passage back home.

The bureaucracy’s functioning has been marked by confused and confusing directives. One called for the reopening of industries, but ensured that would not happen by warning that CEOs would be held responsible for any Covid infection. Another demanded written explanations from medical professionals who caught the infection.

And then, there was the idea of red, orange and green zones. The original idea depended on its timing. Had zoning been done at the outset, things may have been different. But by the time the Home Ministry bought the idea, three weeks late, the system had already crashed. The crowning tragi-comedy has the inability of state babus to manage the reopening of the liquor shops in an orderly way. The overwhelming impression of the working of the government under Covid is the pleasure the bureaucracy and the police seem to be deriving from governing by fear — on the anvil of the disease, they are able to hammer the people with the danda and the fatwa.

The government has so far refused to unbelt any money to deal with this mass misery. Even foodgrain from the 77 million tonne reserve has not been distributed, even though some of it is rotting. The $22 billion relief package in March was merely accelerated disbursement of expenditure planned for in the Budget. The additional expenditure of $12 billion, 0.4 per cent of the GDP, is among the lowest offered in the world.

No one knows what the PM Cares Fund is doing, even as the people who it is meant for are suffering here and now. In all likelihood, the government is waiting for that magic moment to deliver another masterstroke, but by that time it will be too late.

In the meantime, some black humour: UP and MP have abolished most labour laws to attract business from China. A region that rivals Chad and Congo for backwardness and has no infrastructure to speak of, is going to compete with Southeast Asia and Mexico?

Policy makers are thinking along established lines — control inflation, keep the fiscal deficit within a narrow range and investors will flock to India. But we’re already in a war and all the rules must be thrown out of the window. Hardworking people, who kept the economy going, have become beggars, refugees in their own land. Hundreds of thousands of businesses may never reopen. We are hurtling to a future which we can only faintly grasp. This is not a time to be taken in by your own slogans, nostrums and self-image.

Tribune May 12, 2020

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/quite-the-flop-show-83558?f

The Throttling of Internet Speeds in Kashmir is Aimed at Fighting Ideas, Not Terrorism

RIGHTS

SECURITY

02/MAY/2020

The Jammu and Kashmir administration has opposed the plea raised by the Foundation of Media Professionals in its petition to the Supreme Court that in the light of the COVID-19 epidemic, the throttling of  internet speeds in Jammu and Kashmir is depriving people there of access to education, healthcare facilities and justice.

After banning the internet in Jammu and Kashmir for approximately six months beginning August 5, 2019, the Centre now allows access but with speeds much slower than what people in the rest of India enjoy. Mobile internet is restricted to 2G speed.

Under the constitution, every Indian has, or is supposed to have, freedom of speech and expression and the right to carry on any trade or business. In Anuradha Bhasin, the Supreme Court this January said:

“We declare that the freedom of speech and expression and the freedom to practice any profession or carry on any trade, business or occupation over the medium of internet enjoys constitutional protection under Article 19(1)(a) and Article 19(1)(g). The restriction upon such fundamental rights should be in consonance with the mandate under Article 19 (2) and (6) of the Constitution, inclusive of the test of proportionality.”

Yet, the Jammu and Kashmir administration – by which we really mean the Narendra Modi government operating through the Union Ministry of Home Affairs – has told the apex court in an affidavit that citizens do not have a fundamental right to access the internet for any purpose. No doubt there will be arguments for or against the issue within the framework of the laws of the land and its constitution but the court made it clear in January that as far as it is concerned, the internet is only a medium of communication – the way newspapers, TV, books etc are – and that only reasonable restrictions as envisaged by Article 19 (2) and (6) may be placed on this freedomThe court was being logical by insisting there cannot be two yardsticks for different mediums of communication. After all, what is the internet all about ? It is a platform to access information published on, or to use services provided by, websites that put out everything from news, information, music, educational lessons and commerce to games and even pornography. As a technology, it is somewhat like printing or canvas and paint. Printing technology itself is value neutral, but you can publish books on everything under the sun, and they can be religious texts, poems, novels, pornography, art, mathematics and so on. Paint and canvas can be used to create all kinds of artwork.

Also Read: ‘An Hour to Download ICU Guidelines’: Amid COVID-19, Kashmir Doctors Struggle With Slow Internet

Can printing be banned, or as in this case, downgraded, say, to permit only the use of woodblocks, because printing presses can also be used to produce “subversive” literature? The moveable type printing introduced by Johannes Gutenberg in 1450 led to the spread of printing across Europe and the world.   Before Gutenberg, there were just about 30,000 books in all of Europe, but by 1500 there were anywhere between 10-20 million and by 1600, 150-200 million. These books created a torrent of ideas and knowledge that helped spread the Renaissance and led to the Reformation.

Many of the ideas were deemed subversive at the time, certainly when it came to enabling people to read religious texts themselves instead of them being mediated by a priestly class. Printing enabled the emergence of an intellectual class that was able to expand the horizons of knowledge. The European monarchs were helpless before this technology, but the Ottomans felt they were not: “In 1485, Sultan Bayezid II  issued a royal decree prohibiting the use of printed books. A similar decree was issued in 1515 by Sultan Selim I”.

Also Read: Internet ‘Not a Fundamental Right’, J&K Tells SC as Students’ Careers Hang in Balance

Philosophically, that is about where the J&K administration seems to be pitching its claims: 4G can transmit ideas and views at an exponential scale compared to 2G, so it should be banned.

The reply of the administration, somewhat conveniently, seeks to tell the court that terrible things have been happening in the state and therefore there is need for such draconian action. It spoke of 41,866 people having been killed during the course of the insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir, including 14,000 civilians, 5292 security personnel and 22536 terrorists. The figures are probably an underestimate of the number of civilians killed, but that is not the issue.

The point is that since 2006 or so, there has been a sharp decline in the level of violence in the state. There was much more violence in J&K when the level of internet technology was 2G, and much more before that, when there was no internet and all communication was over land lines.

This is borne out by figures that are available in the South Asia Terrorism Portal. If there has been a bump since 2016, it has been because of the policies of the government which undertook ‘Operation All Out’ to kill all terrorists and militants, rather than focus on a balanced policy of making a political outreach that could have led to the end of the violence.

Thereafter, the government has egregiously deprived Jammu and Kashmir of statehood and autonomy under Article 370. Ironically, now there is talk of extending Article 371 like protections to the state.

So, the degrading of internet speeds is not motivated by security conditions in the state, because as we have said, the level of violence had already come down, and what was needed was a political outreach – but not of the kind that was eventually undertaken.

Also Read: India Must Treat the Internet as a Public Utility During COVID 19, and After

The J&K administration’s claim that social media is being used as an instrument of war is akin to the Catholic Church maintaining the Index Librorum Prohibitorum – an index containing thousands of book titles and blacklisted publications because they were viewed as being subversive to the Church.

Let us be clear: the J&K administration is not fighting terrorists through its ban on high-speed internet. What it is actually fighting are ideas. Because if they were fighting terrorists, an unrestricted internet is an ideal place to track subversive activities. Indian intelligence agencies have the means and the ability to track such traffic though they are oddly enough depriving themselves of invaluable intelligence by worrying about what the J& K administration calls “shadow handles” .

The only conclusion we can arrive at from this is that the purpose of the exercise of keeping the Internet at the 2G level is to punish the Kashmiri people and deprive them of the means to avail of the freedom of speech, expression the right to carry on any trade or occupation — as they have the right to do under the Constitution of India.

The Wire May 2, 2020

https://thewire.in/rights/the-throttling-of-internet-speeds-in-kashmir-is-aimed-at-fighting-ideas-not-terrorism

The Coronavirus Conspiracy Theory Doesn't Add Up. It's Also a Self-Defeating Diversion.

On April 30, the Office of the Director National Intelligence of the United States noted in a statement that it was investigating whether “the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.”

The statement also concurred “with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not man made or genetically modified.” In short, the apex intelligence community body seemed to be saying that while the virus did originate in China, there was no direct evidence that it had escaped Wuhan’s research facilities.

This week, the US government’s top infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, has once again reiterated that it was unlikely the coronavirus originated in a Wuhan lab. Scientific evidence, he said was “very, very strongly leaning towards” the fact that virus “evolved in nature and then jumped species.” Neither does Fauci accept the view that someone found the coronavirus in the wild and brought it to a lab, from where it accidentally escaped.

According to a report on Tuesday, intelligence shared within the Five Eyes alliance – the UK, US, Australia, New Zealand and Canada – has indicated that it is “highly unlikely” the coronavirus was spread because of an accident in a laboratory, but rather originated in a Wuhan market. Clearly, the US president is not yet able to convince even his closest allies that the virus spread was the result of a lab accident.

The Five Eyes report and Fauci’s statement came a day after President Donald Trump ’s townhall meeting at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC where the issue of Chinese culpability again came up. He said that he expected to get a “very conclusive” report soon as to what happened in Wuhan. Pressed on whether there was something nefarious in the Chinese behaviour, Trump said “I think they made a horrible mistake and they didn’t want to admit it…. They tried to cover it.” He went on to imply that having been hit by the coronavirus, China then acted in a way that ensured its spread globally.

The difference between the ODNI and its ultimate boss, the American President, marks the difference between a professional agency – one that coordinates the work of 17 different US spy agencies – and a politician who is up for re-election and is using the “escaped virus” thesis as what is termed in American football a “Hail Mary” manoeuvre.

The standard narrative has  been that the virus originated in an animal and seafood market some 30 kms away from the  Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) where the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory is housed. Speaking to Fox News on April 15, Pompeo remarked that the wet market and the WIV were a “handful of miles away,” and that the US was “working diligently to figure it out.”

Subsequently, right-wing American publications and some tabloids began to run stories claiming that the outbreak originated in the lab. More extreme ones like the Washington Times even claimed in late January that the coronavirus may have originated in a lab linked to China’a biowarfare programme.

The bioweapon story was squashed in mid-March when Nature published  “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2”,  noting that the COVID-19 pneumonia originated in SARS-CoV-2, the technical name for the novel coronavirus, and was the seventh coronavirus known to infect humans such as SARS and MERS and others. The authors noted, “[Our] analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.” Washington Times took back its claim on March 25 and that is when the accidental release story gained traction in the US.

By and large, scientists have stuck to the belief that the coronavirus is a natural phenomenon, and not something cultivated in a lab. While the virus’s origin still eludes scientists, “the evidence that does exist paints a consistent picture  of a wild virus.” What many scientists worry about is the politically charged atmosphere which would make future international scientific collaboration difficult.

A detailed  analysis in NPR has suggested that “there is virtually no chance that the new coronavirus was released as a result of a laboratory accident.” After consulting 10 leading scientists who do the work of collecting samples of viruses from animals and understand how lab accidents happen, the NPR concluded that “an accidental release would have required a remarkable series of coincidences and deviations from well established experimental protocols.”

Yet, accidents happen, and Kelsey Piper has detailed in Vox how dangerous viruses and bacteria have escaped in the lab time and again. The report detailed how small pox leaked in a lab in Birmingham Medical School and killed a photographer, it listed a number of other accidents in laboratories. There have been serious incidents in many US labs, as well as in other countries with poor training and slack oversight being a major cause of them.

The experts NPR consulted said they believe the virus was transmitted between animals and humans in nature, much as the way it happened in the case of Ebola or SARS. Just exactly how it transmitted from nature to humans remains a mystery, though bats are suspect, having been carriers for SARS and MERS. Further, the scientists noted that  the protocols used require a deactivation of the virus before they were worked upon and in any case, the work is done in biosafety cabinets.

But all this has not stopped all manner of speculation. For example Fox News  has claimed that it did originate in a lab, not as a bioweapon, but because China was trying to show it was as good, if not better than the US in identifying and combating viruses. In the process, there had been an accident and citing intelligence sources, the channel said that the first bat-to-human transmission took place in the lab and “patient zero” worked in the laboratory.

There have been other explorations of this theme such as one in the Washington Post which suggested that there could be another culprit, the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, which is just half a kilometre from the market. The CDC, which did deal with bats, is not as secure a facility as the National Biosafety Lab.

By their own admission, the US, and presumably other intelligence agencies, are continuing efforts to assess whether the virus may have inadvertently escaped in a laboratory. No specific evidence has emerged to support the theory, the Chinese government has denied it, but the issue has a salience in the US where it is being used as political football in an election year.

Other issues, too, have emerged, suggesting why we need more information on the subject. For example, the coronavirus came to New York from Europe, not China according to researchers in Northeastern University. This raises questions about Trump’s boast that he had almost pre-emptively  banned travel from China on February 2, but he did not do so for Europe till March 13 and so the infection travelled comfortably for more than a month across the Atlantic.

More intriguing is  a recent report based on a study by Institut Pasteur suggesting that the outbreak in France was not imported from China, but from a locally circulating strain of unknown origins. Were it to be established that the virus existed in France or elsewhere before it was discovered in China, it would have huge implications for the current debate, as well as future course of action.

The world most certainly needs to know how the virus originated and how it spread, and whether or not there was an unconscionable delay on the part of China in alerting the world to its spread.  But this should not be because it wants to soak China for trillions of dollars, but because it would want to prevent a recurrence and develop common protocols to deal with what appears to be a disease that may be with us for a while.

Unfortunately, by deciding that China is a criminal in advance, as vociferous sections of the American opinion have, they have ensured Beijing will not, and cannot, participate in the process. Without Chinese cooperation, we are unlikely to get an answer and even the best intelligence tradecraft is not sufficient to do the needful by itself.

One way out would be for a global  inquiry into the  spread of COVID-19, the steps taken, or not taken by various governments—China, US, Italy, Spain, UK and so on. This could perhaps be more useful  in aiding the global community to move forward, rather than in the self-defeating exercise on trying to pin the blame on China, especially since there is no way of examining the issues without Beijing ‘s cooperation.

The Wire, May 6 2020

https://thewire.in/world/the-coronavirus-conspiracy-theory-doesnt-add-up-its-also-a-self-defeating-diversion