The Political Origins of Scale in Smart Urban Planning

To respond to the question of how we can “Rethink Smart, and Rebuild Scale’ in a Digital Urban Age” we need to remind ourselves of the political origins of ideas of scale and how democratic justice might help us rethink scale in future urban imaginations like smart cities. Ayona Datta’s exhibition and conference at London’s Building Centre is an opportune moment to reflect on this provocation. Susan Parnell, in her opening keynote said that “Governance and Regulation of the digital urban will be essential for ensuring the rights of marginalised people.” So here, I explain - drawing on the fascinating interventions at the conference and my own understanding of the political sociologies of governance in the developing countries- how reinstating democracy to the digital might help us put emancipatory politics at the heart of futurist development trajectories.

Sovereign power is always imagined in gigantic terms, and one need look no further than Hobbes’ Leviathan to visualise this. Emerging out of a landscape, the monarch in the form of the Leviathan clutches a sword with his right hand standing for worldly power and a crosier on his left hand standing for religious power. His torso and arms made up of  hundreds of humans represents the social contract.  Based on commutative justice, the social contract is where people submit their natural rights (that is their inalienable rights to life, liberty and property) for a political order that would ensure these rights and guarantee protection from violence.  The social contract of course is  a means to an end because if governments fail in providing rights and correlative duties, they are no longer legitimate to their citizens. And often we find that when sovereign power is on shaky ground and lacking in legitimacy it expresses its size and scale much more, through coercion. You just need to consider the lives of slaves and women in the 18th century and 19th century to envisage the scale of how white privilege and patriarchy controlled their lives and alienated them from these inalienable rights.

Scalar Logics, Identity and Power

Size, however is  a relative concept and the concepts of small vs big are fundamental to conceptions of identity and difference. Binary logics of self and other, define relations of power and inequality and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels is perhaps the most vivid and satirical illustration of how we deal with difference through ideas of size in organised societies. Whether he is with the 6inch Lilliputians or the Brobdingnag giants, Gulliver’s relative size to the inhabitants is a subject of spectacle and scepticism. Difference s turned in to agency in Gulliver’s travels as he helps the Lilliputians conquer an enemy naval fleet and he helps a Brobdingnag farmer earn a bit of extra cash as he exhibits Gulliver to an amused audience. But difference is also embedded in colonial encounters as Lilliputians risk famine to feed Gulliver and the Brobdingnag king  is clearly not impressed by Gulliver’s efforts to modernise his kingdom with canons and guns.

Optimising for People-based values

In development, ideas of big and small have traditionally been associated with the dehumanising effects of mass production and alternative approaches for locally led sustainable development. Schumacher’s collection of essays in Small is Beautiful is a critique of economic concepts of value attached to optimisation. Some of his theses are quite relevant to rethinking smart technologies. What are we optimising for? If technology helps reduce labour-intensive production, it is perhaps desirable for employers who want to reduce costs but also for employees who don’t want to work so hard. But if the direction of optimisation is mainly to benefit corporation and thus make more money for the few then it isn’t very helpful, is it? However, if we  attach value to work in a Buddhist sense- something that people do because they feel good when they do it, it gives them a sense of identity and purpose, then there  is very direction for optimisation through technology. It is about doing what is good for you, for your community not some derived economic logic that tells you that profit and competition is the only value. Yes, we need money, and money is good for exchanging goods, but if we keep money as the only value, what will happen to people? Economics as if people mattered (not corporations) is a way of imagining development otherwise, and I would say fundamental to rethinking urban futures like smart cities. By extension, when we consider how to apply technology for optimisation with the value frame of people, we perhaps could do with simpler but more relevant technological applications – cost effective and people friendly, and thus scaleable! 'Frugal technologies as several papers in the conference argued.

Democratising Digitised Governance

Ofcourse, when we begin to envisage digited governance  as a means to sustainable urban development, then we confront a form of power which is not quite as corporeal as the Leviathan. It is more latent, more elusive, more taken for granted but it is pervasive as it mediates through every aspect of our life, our behaviours and our thinking. In this respect therefore when we decide to rethink smart cities and digitised governance from  a local first, small is beautiful approach we are in fact pressing for democratising approaches to futuristic development interventions. Now, democracy is one of the greatest ‘inventions’ of modern society but also most corrupted with oxymorons like illiberal democracy and majoritarian democracy. Substantively, democracy at its core is autonomy, the rights to deliberate on the norms that we decide should regulate our lives. In this sense, a good democracy is where people as members of a ‘political society’ (whether national or transnational) can express  individual and collective autonomy when they decide on social rules and public policies. This is the deliberative aspect of good policies and upholds a very different notion of power. Power as Communication as Hannah Arendt argues not as Coercion or Bargaining as masculine/patriarchal rationalities of power uphold.

If we take autonomy as something that is not conditional on specific outcomes  like efficient development but an expression of the people who decide on social rules, -good social rules - we can begin to envisage more inclusive, locally relevant, community-led futures for our cities. So, what does a democratic approach to smart cities and more broadly digital technology for development entail? Here I offer three elements:

1.       Establishing a social contract where citizens consent to the form of collective rule or government which will guarantee their rights in exchange for correlative duties. The social contract is often missing in technocratic governance, as public-private partnerships tend to prioritise on efficiency and effectiveness in providing urban services, for example, but ambiguously bracket out or contract out the welfare functions to the ‘state’. In my ongoing research on the impact of the pandemic on urban mobility operators in Dhaka and Delhi it was clear that social contract did not exist for them. Relying on personal risk management for what is a Public health crisis most operators themselves left or sent away their families from cities in India and Bangladesh. Living with ‘belongings in a bag’ after the first lock down in March 2020, they acted well ahead of government announcements of subsequent lockdowns. Much unlike upper middle class residents who stayed put! Ideas of stakeholder citizens and anti-politics in smart cities (Datta and Srivastava) tell us that the social contract has shifted from legislative processes to elite coalitions of bounded epistemic communities (see Basu, 2019)

2.       Make public reason or deliberation an integral part of  policy-making, not just in the run up to elections (niti) but as a part of social justice claims-making throughout (nyay). This will ensure the most issues that don’t appear in the political radar – poverty, hunger, exclusion are addressed. After all, it has been conclusively noted by Sen, that famine never takes place in functioning democracies. Take the same to urban planning, if people and by this I mean all people - not just the middle classes - have access to the political spaces where they can deliberate on issues that matter, on norms they need then we would have much better social policies. Often avenues for public reason, focus on the ‘reason’ - what are rational arguments that are being made to further a particular policy but not on the ‘public- who is considered ‘rational’ enough to take part in public debate. The priorities have to shift to democratise deliberation – between and beyond parliaments and civil society. In sites where the where the ‘public’ contrary to liberal notions of equality is fundamentally ‘unequal’, subaltern counter publics that is discursive arenas that develop in parallel to the official public sphere- where subordinated groups can make counter discourses on their identities, interests and needs is much needed. Sarah Elwood’s argument that we need to consider A.M. Brown’s concept of Emergence in Digital Geographies, helps us consider how small actions and connections between digitally connected individuals can create new solidarities in times of crisis like the pandemic..

3.       Knowledge is power and so is mis-information: Fundamental to democratic practice is access to information so that rational choices can be made. In most patronage societies like India, people make political decisions with little or no access to information. Votes are based on ethnic head counts, entitlement and relief measures are accessed through arbitrary rules made by middlemen and brokers not as rights. And more recently Data narratives created through public service  apps expose dominance by concealment. India’s  Poshan tracker app launched in 2017 has under reported child malnutrition data while in Bangladesh the Digital Securities Act has created a culture of surveillance  and censorship on digital streets. There are immense possibilities for digitally connected publics to access, mediate, contest data narratives as knowledge is translated between analog and digital scopes, and this was vividly displayed through papers on digital witnessing in the wake of the earthquakes in Mexico for example (Andres and Alejandro) and jugad in post-pandemic digital cities (Gupte). As most processes get digitised in urban governance, in public life - translations between analog and digital, between local and non-local, real time and past time - create new frontiers for decolonising knowledge creation.

These suggestions I argue, would firmly attach democracy to digital governance. Much of the challenges we face today are a consequence of neoliberal logics, which promoted markets but forgot liberalism. A post pandemic sustainable urban future is an opportune moment to remind ourselves of the fundamental liberal tenets to address equality, diversity and decolonial ethics. Small is beautiful, local does come first, and all this I argue is possible if we repair liberal democracy in planning and development imaginations.

West Bengal Election is not a Victory but a Wake up Call for the Bengali ‘Bhadrolok’!

Back in May 2011 when Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress swept over the West Bengal state assembly elections, my father declared that he will not be stepping foot into Kolkata again. Baba supported the CPM, which had ruled West Bengal uniterrupted for 34 years since 1977. He always said, “no matter what happens, CPM is always guaranteed one vote, and that is from me.!

Nandigram and Singur

In the wake of Nandigram and Singur protests, Baba knew that the tide was changing in his homeland. So, in January 2011 we undertook what was supposed to be our final visit to Kolkata. We visited the Boi mela (Book fair) where the theme country was United States, and a pristine white installation of Capitol Hall stood as an emblem of democracy. We made our usual stops to College Street, Calcutta Rowing Club, Park Street and Swabhoomi as if our experience of our favourite places was an ode to something that would never come back.

Baba supported Buddhdev Bhattacharya’s decision to install industrial plants including a chemical factory and the Tata nano plant on farm land in Singur and Nandigram. Since 1977 the CPM had built an excellent track record for land redistribution. By 2005, poverty had reduced by 55.35% compared to the Indian average of 49.22% (Guruswamy et al., 2005). While the agriculture sector improved, the industrial sector was in decline, in part due to Central Government allocations but also due to a vile culture of confrontational politics in the state. Between 2008-2011, somewhat ominously, it was the same land issue, which had once propelled the CPM to power that also brought its decline.

Baba, was worried that politics in Bengal would now move away from the generation of lawyers, scholars and literateurs he so respected to a “Jhograti” (fighter) Didi. On this trip, we made our customary gourmet visit to Nizaam - the favourite joint for egg rolls. We were the only customers, eating in at this restaurant which was clearly in decline. While walking up the stairs to the restaurant, I noticed that in one corner there were very old men, dressed in red holding up flags in protest. While the egg for our roll was being beaten with that familiar assertive whisking motion, and the oil was sizzling on the giant tawa (frying pan) , I stepped out to speak to the protesters, Elderly and frail, they mentioned that they had lost their jobs and although Nizams was now under a new management they would neither get their jobs or their pensions. I walked back to Baba, and said that this is why CPM is losing West Bengal. I had spent time in Madhya Pradesh with the Narmada Andolan (anti dam agitation) a few months before, so back then our political views were quite at odds with each other.

While the violence of the state and the CPM against farmers and protestors was indeed wrong, Baba did have a point on the development future of West Bengal. Tata pulled out of the Nano factory in Singur, and returned over 9000 acres of land to the state and farmers. Meanwhile, it is rumoured that it just took a one worded SMS from Modi to Ratan Tata, that said “suswagatham” to welcome Tata to Gujarat. In 14 months Tata Nano was opened in Sanand, in Gujarat - now regarded as a automobile manufacturing hub. Yet, we cannot lose sight of the fact that development and nationalism are closely linked, and the Gujarat model of development hasn’t worked for India, leave alone West Bengal.

The Fall of CPM, The Rise of BJP

But this ‘nationalism’ is the subject on which I ask the Bengali Bhadrolok - the term used to describe educated, liberal minded, secular, elites to raise some self probing questions. While celebrating the victory of a Didi in a chappal (slipper) against the mighty Modi, ask if you are not part of the problem? In West Bengal’s state assembly, there are 77 seats held by BJP candidates and 213 by the Trinamool Congress. The Left Front has a score card of ‘0’. Over the last two decades the BJP has sucecssfully taken away the CPM vote share. Much of this transition was started by Mamata Banerjee herself. When she broke off from the Congress Party in 1998, she allied with the BJP. The partnership helped her to negotioate resources from the Centere, while for the BJP it earned secular credentials in a state where their MLAs were ridiculed as the “Ram-Hanuman” party.

Later, ofcourse, Mamata broke off from the BJP even though during the 16th Assembly election Modi tried to appease her with his slogan, “Didi in Bengal, BJP in Delhi”. Yet, the voting patterns thet set in made some lasting changes. If we take education as marker, then while most non-literates and upto primary level educated voters support the AITC, and only 7% and 14% of them for the BJP, then almost an equal number of College educated voters split the vote between AITC, BJP and the Left. Almost double the number of Hindus vote the AITC over the BJP (40% - AITC, 21% BJP) (NES, 2014). However, class-wise voting patterns show that most of the poor and lower class (neo-middle) support the AITC, while the rich and the middle class tend to distribute their votes almost evenly across the AITC, BJP and the Left. Muslims steer clear of the BJP, with only 2% vote. Mamata’s success owes in part to the populist gestures that she has shown to the Muslims who make up 30% of the population and to the poor and neo middle class who are a growing majority (NES, 2014). Most upwardly mobile Bengalis migrate out in search of jobs. Further, many Bengali workers make up the migrant labour force in Kerala, Karnataka, Delhi and other states as jobs and income security are limited in their home state.

Elite Bengali Nationalisms: Part of the Problem

Here, I ask with all this rhetoric on Bengali intellectual culture and secularism, how much is the Bengali elite in tune with the class inequalities on the ground? For that matter, do Bengali elites realise how they have themselves played a part in pushing forward these nationalist notions that divide societies? The BJP made much of Shyama Prasad Mookherjee in their electoral campaign. He became the first President of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh with the backing of the RSS and saw a limited period of electoral success mainly from Hindu refugees from Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) between 1951-53. He was invited to join the Nehru Government as Minister of Industy and Supply, but resigned as he opposed the Delhi Pact (1950), which was a bilateral treaty between India and Pakistan to protect minorities in their respective countries. A point that Amit Shah often mentions in light of the Citizen Amendment Act in 2019.

Shyama Prasad Mookherjee was a barrister and represented a form of elite Hindu nationalism, that emerged in the wake of the violence of partition. He stood firmly for the partition of Bengal along communal lines. Mookheejee’s politics stood in opposition with the Congres Party. He opposed the Quit India Movement, and famouly in his letter to the Governor of Bengal, he wrote that any Government (including the British) must crush a movement that opposes the state in a time of war. In the run up to the partition of Bengal, he opposed the United Bengal Movement led by Suhrawady and Sharat Chandra Bose.

Rentier Hindus vs Liberal Bengali

Similarly, a generation before Mookherjee, in the early 19th century, nationalism in Bengal was divided beween the Hindu elites vs a new liberal elite of professional Bengalis. Naba Gopal Mitra with the patronage of Debendranath Tagore started the National Paper in 1867- an English weekly where he promoted the idea that Hindu society was best served by a caste system, as lower classes educated in English were no substitute for the natural leaders of Indian society . In response, the Bengalee an English newspaper started by Girish Chandra Ghose in 1862, argued for representations of Indians at all levels of the colonial governement but equally pressed that working classes in Caclutta should change their social habits to be eligible for the formal offices of the states. This divide between the tradititonal rentier elites pushing for cultural Hindu nationalism to preserve the social status quo and the new professional elite pushing for liberal values and reform of indigenous society has had a lasting legacy in the making of nationalism in Bengal and beyond. I discuss this in detail in my Chapter on “Governing wthout the Politics” in the book Postcolonial Governmentality, 2020. Both versions of elite Bengali nationalism saw the working class and the rural peasantry as a subject of reform than a political voice, and often supported the colonial state in suppressing their political agitation in the name of order and stability.

Wake up Call

It is this divide and disconnect from the real Bengal - in its villages, in its migrant workers, in its struggling working class, in its new middle class aspiring for staus without the resources - that I believe is the reason for the success of Mamata’s tokenist gestures. On the other hand, it is the legacy of elite nationalisms, led by privilege and power that has made it possible for the BJP to penetrate. I therefore argue, that this West Bengal election should be a wake up call to make this state- its development, its secularism, its social fabric work for the real Bengali!

References:

National Election Studies, 2014. Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Data Unit.

Guruswamy, at al, 2005. Economic Growth and Development in West Bengal: Reality vs Perception. Economic and Political Weekly, 40:21, pp. 2151-2157.

Forgetting to Remember: 2020

Memory is a curious thing. The hippocampus on either side of our brains records events, both recent and bygone. But it is not a google drive with infinite capacity, so as new memories are formed, mundane experiences like what we ate for breakfast three days ago are forgotten. Many people, have said that they are happy to say goodbye to 2020. Part of what they are hoping for, is linked to the desire to forget difficult experiences. But what will we forget, and what must we remember?

Personally, as I write during the the Christmas holiday lockdown in London, one listless day folds into the next and I can barely recall what I was doing three days ago. I remember what I was doing on Christmas day or Boxing day but the remaining 10 days are simply hazy memories of quiet hibernation. Yet, there are moments from the last year that remain in my mind like vivid photographs. Empty shelves in the flour section of the super market, desolate motorways when driving to our new home, locked playgrounds. Difficult, tragic experiences, in the past year, like losing a loved one also keep recurring in my mind. But gradually the last traumatic moments sediment to my subconscious, and I recall a whole lifetime of memories together as I go through everyday tasks.

Memory is very personal but also very political. How will this pandemic be remembered, and what will be forgotten? I have for over a decade, studied the politics of indigenous people, and I have learnt that being able to have a continuous history is vital to establishing your identity in mainstream politics. Indigenous histories are punctuated with lapses because of state practices of consolidating one national identity by unimagining those whose histories have been subverted as a result . Indigenous resistance therefore, is to remember and celebrate those forgotten stories, because stories of losing land, losing children, losing heroes is integral to who they are and how they want to be seen in the present.

With this in mind, I ask how this pandemic will be remembered decades from now? The pandemic may be remembered through the journey of a vaccine from laboratories in rich countries to the rest of the developing world. A skewed culturalist account of a virus that came from China may also be told. Perhaps, political choices around austerity and higher taxation, may be explained through the memories of the pandemic. These are, however, dominant narratives. There are other stories that may be buried with time, and these are the stories I turn to here.

For migrant workers in India and Bangladesh the last year was one of negotiating and surviving through new risks as old ones like not having a tenured job, or a stable home exacerbated. For them, 2020 is not a year to be forgotten but what happened before 2020 that led to their exodus from cities and what followed after is significant to how they can position themselves in the new normal. My project on Urban Mobility and the Margins is tracing the changes to the workplace, homes and duties of care on migrant workers in India and Bangladesh, and soon I will share findings from the surveys on this blog.

For women, 2020 is the year that challenges their duties of care to children, elderly and their families in multiple ways. Gendered roles at home changed for both men and women in ways that were determined by what they were expected to do before the pandemic, but also what a crisis ultimately does to their choices and behaviours in the future. Some women may never return to work, others may have blended care and work in unprecedented ways. Still other, may have played vital roles in surviving multiple health and social crises for themselves, their families, their communities. Their stories most be remembered- not as sporadic episodes but as a feminist history of the impact and possibilities out of a crises.

Children stayed at home. Young people could not go to university. Not going to school or college is worrying in so many ways. This last year will have a fundamental impact on their learning, their relations with their families and their peers. Also the emotional experience of living through a crisis will have a lasting effect on young minds. Their stories, are the stories of our future. They are the possibilities and challenges our world will face, and thus must be told.

Finally, there are stories stigma, of prejudice of racialised bodies fighting for recognition under the rubric of Black Lives Matter. Their stories intersect so much with the pandemic, but they neither begin nor stop here. Race, today, is not a token word, it is consciousness, it is hope. The story of the pandemic must be told as a story of race- recognising the vital role that key workers played, the exclusions that are going on in vaccination campaigns in some of the most ethnocentric countries in the world (Israel), the contributions of immigrant scientists, of borders that divided communities as free insiders and imprisoned outsiders (Singapore, India).

2020 may have gone, but the issues that surfaced have not. This last year is a watershed in many ways, and how we remember it, as a continuous history is vital to how we rebuild our worlds!

Why is speech silver and silence golden?

Freedom of expression is integral to any education institution so that free and open discussions can take place without fear of being silenced or interrupted for holding different views. This is the deliberative aspect of democracy- where the space for holding respectful and meaningful debates includes all and widens worldviews. The gruesome murder of Samuel Paty, a history teacher in a quiet suburb of Paris, last Friday afternoon (16 October) strikes not only at the heart of liberal and secular freedoms but also at the epicentre of learning - “the classroom”.

Teaching Freedom of Expression

About five years ago, I was teaching a small group students on: “what the so-called clash of civilization thesis (Islam vs West) does to liberal values like the freedom of expression?” To inform this discussion, I talked about the attack on the Charlie Hebdo office (2015) and I showed some of the controversial cartoons of the Prophet published in 2006 that led to this incident. I selected the ‘milder’ ones as some of the cartoons could be rather offensive even to those who were not practicing Muslims. Equally, I also showed cartoons from the International Holocaust Cartoon Competition - the Iranian newspaper Hamshahri’s satirical take on Zionism and response to Charlie Hebdo’s interpretation of freedom of expression.

While the students were engaged in a lively discussion, I noticed from the corner of my eye two students talking to each other. Soon, they left the classroom. I didn’t question them, I never do, as they have the freedom to leave if they are unwell or need the restroom. At the end of the class, the same students returned and they complained to me that they found the lecture very offensive. I should not have shown the cartoons of the Prophet, they said. I held my ground as an academic, and very politely asked them why they felt offended, when our discussion was taking a clear stance against Islamophobia and the selective interpretation of freedom of expression by some Western newspapers. Their response was that it was offensive to their religious sentiments. To this comment, I replied that, “well, then you should have said that. And I would definitely have given you the space to speak. This is a university, and we are committed to ensure that all our students feel that they can express their identity, their viewpoint without inhibition and without being silenced by others.” I also told them, that this is a ‘safe space’ but tomorrow they would be in the real world with more hostile and vociferous viewpoints. The seminar was therefore a good opportunity to hone their debating skills, and hold up their view in a deliberative manner, I explained. The students, seemed convinced with what I said. And we left amicably, and in fact one of them continued on my other modules.

Yet, somehow, once I returned from the classroom to my office in the department, I was a bit shaken. Did I go wrong? Maybe, I should have been more careful in a multicultural classroom in London? I had taken the same lecture in Surrey and Berlin before but there was no such reaction there. I spoke to one of my colleagues, who is a expert on student relations. He assured me that I was right and I had conducted myself very well. He mentioned that some students could hold their religious beliefs very strongly, but in general all academics in the university were inclusive and many did not hesitate to condemn extremist views of any form.

When I heard of the fate of Samuel on the radio, I was imagining how he would have conducted his class. He did warn students that the images could be offensive (something I started doing only after the incident). Perhaps, he just wanted to have an open discussion on “freedom of expression” without hurting anyone.

Why is Freedom Expression under threat at Universities and Schools

What is “freedom of expression”? And why is it becoming more precarious at schools and universities in UK, France or indeed in India. There are number of reasons for this, and indeed the wider political context of right wing populism, Islamophobia, abuse on social media, Trumpism (is that even a word?) is unhelpful. However, there are more specific reasons related to our education sectors:

1. Silent ‘students’ in Schools: Recently the UK government produced two contradictory legislations. In 2019, The UK Higher Education Authority, in charge of UK universities launched a guidance to protect lawful free speech and empower students and universities. Meanwhile, the Department for Education in charge of UK schools just a few weeks ago advised schools NOT to teach any extreme political views, including anti-capitalism, as this goes against the freedom of expression. What this means is that for a good 12 years the schooling system disciplines students around norms of ‘silence’ and when they enter a university they don’t have the language or the skills to ‘speak’ in a deliberative environment. Students of different faiths, race, ethnicity, political views should not just have the space but the essential skills to hold a meaningful and respectful discussion. Silence breeds violence, especially the violence of abuse on social media.

2. De-radicalising the ‘Academic’: Universities for some time have been struggling to preserve their autonomy against forces of markets and illiberal governments. Hungary’s Central European University, India’s Jawaharlal University are the most vivid respondents of these changes. Within this struggle, the distinction between an academic and teacher has become less evident. Yes, both are in the job of pedagogy but they are not just providing a stipulated service. They are scholars who can develop, introduce and inspire radical views. The French Revolution, English Radicalism, the Young Bengal movement would not have charged for ‘reform’ without the radical teacher-student exchanges Henry Derozio, Albert Mathiez would have had in their 19th century classrooms. Today, in India, academics who hold left leaning views are called ‘urban naxals’-a derogatory oxymoron used to belittle their political agency to couch-potato activism and to warn of the dangers of their teaching.

3. Knowledge-making in the virtual classroom: Finally, where is knowledge made and distributed? It is not in the library of shelves and books. Why did some students in Samuel Paty’s class feel the need to share what happened in their class with people who had nothing to do with it? Why did they discuss their ideas of “what is right and wrong” outside the class?. A generation, perhaps, more comfortable in virtual worlds of posts, comments, tweets, whatsapp groups, fake videos and misinformation. Within this context how do we keep the sanctity of the classroom at school or university? How do we tell our students that there are multiple truths to embrace, but there are lies disguised as truths that kill? Knowledge today is floating like ether, it is everywhere but not in our grasp for long.

Je suis Samuel, because the classroom, the teacher, the student must be protected to save democracy, education, freedom!

Race, Space and Disease

Race, risk and space are three vectors which define the urban spatial strategies of fighting an infectious disease like Covid-19. In the past, rather crudely, an epidemic allowed for the elimination or segregation of perceived carriers of disease, and indeed the ghettoisation of infected people had elements of structural racism. Today, racial difference combined with urban spatial use (of living and working) is emerging as a significant definer of the risk of contracting Covid-19. In UK, for example Black people are 1.9 time as likely to die as White people (ONS, 2020), whereas in Singapore migrants living in dormitories and travelling in crowded lorries stoked up the infection transmission rate (Guardian, Apr 2020). So what can we learn from the racialised affect of the disease?

The first ofcourse is to note that blaming individual morality of communities is unhelpful and even racist. In India, during the early stages of the pandemic Muslims were blamed for congregating at a religious gathering and spreading the infection, ignoring that Hindus, too had assembled in large numbers before the lockdown. In Singapore, Kokila Annamalai an activist working for migrant labourers noted that people blamed them for being unclean and for their eating habits. Global cities like Toronto, as SARS 2003 had made vivid are more susceptible to virus transmission across borders but this risk also strikes at the heart of urban communities - its diversity and multiculturalism.

Secondly, the pandemic has revealed the structural racism which, compounds the risk of not only countering Covid-19 (or any other life threatening ailment) but of being segregated from mainstream society. Existing structural racism in housing, employment, citizen rights have accentuated the risk of countering the virus among racial and ethnic minorities. In the UK, there is evidence that BAME have higher death rate than White people. Why? Because there is an element of invisibilation of their public service… “1 in 5 members of the BAME community work for the NHS” (BBC 19 Jun 2020) . When the nation was asked to clap for keyworkers, they should have been reminded, too, of the structural racism that goes on in the public health care system. The British Medical Journal’s special issue on Racism in Medicine cautioned against biological determinism in explaining the higher rates of deaths in the BAME community. Not just underlying health conditions but structural racism in the health care profession they explained was a key factor. BAME members experience differential career progression, pay levels, complaints processes and bullying at work. They have precarious contracts, visas and are often too scared to ask for PPE.

Finally, race and urban spatial organisation are closely connected. When Leicester went in to a further two-week lockdown in the U.K., it was unsurprising given that its predominantly BAME populated inner city has overcrowded housing, with small businesses co-existing cheek by jowl with homes and essential public services. The ONS found that under a third of Black communities live in overcrowded households compared to 2% of White British. In China, African students were sent out of their homes by landlords or left in desolate campuses as cities went into lockdown. Meanwhile, in India slums like Dharavi closed off from the rest of the city turned into refugee camps. In Singapore migrant workers were assured that they would be looked after by the state, but locked in dormitories with assured risk of transmission “felt like living in a prison” (Guardian, Apr 2020). Crucially, spatial reorganisation to manage the risk of infection takes the form of enclosing or removing real or perceived carriers of the disease. What this enables, however, is racialised linking of their status as disease carriers, with their residence and their economic utility for the system. The spaces migrants and minorities live in increase their risk of countering disease, and equally reorganising these spaces to fight the pandemic leads to further marginalisation and discrimination. What is needed in response to the racialised effect of the corona virus pandemic is systematic and concerted effort to introduce legal measures to stop structural racism and public health measures to reduce the risk of death. These are separate measures but need to be addressed simultaneously for real change.