Politics of a New Normal
"The only thing constant is change" and how epochal it has been at the very start of the new decade. With the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, it is hard to imagine that the politics of who we are and our interactions both personal and political will ever be the same again. I have started the blog Politics of the new normal to account for changes in rule, inequality and socio-political interaction that are being reshaped in South Asia and beyond through the course of the pandemic. Some of these changes may be temporary, others will become permanent features of our lives, and still others if you recognise them will take sharper more virulent forms through the course of the pandemic.
A contagious microbe- unknown, invisible, unpredictable has exposed most sharply and vividly the areas where modern infrastructure and is its reach is both deficient and irresponsible. Let us start with cities, those arenas of global-local linkages, crammed social neighborhoods and choking transport networks, which became the early breeding grounds of Covid-19 transmission. When governments in South Asia somewhat belatedly decided to lockdown it brought life to a standstill but also showed that in the face of an exceptional threat states have the power to stop life and livelihoods. For some middle class families this may have come as a relief while for migrant workers it was a relay race against the virus and hunger - which one would get them first. Obviously, to observe a lock down governments need the trust of their citizens above all else - how will I pay my rents? will I get food? what about essential services like health and electricity? Ambitious relief packages were promised to assure people that they should stay at home until health systems could cope. Eventually, though rapid economic free fall meant that cities had to open. There is no risk free option to "open" socio-economic activity in the midst of a pandemic, so exposure to risks get weighted, stratified and its impact sits firmly over existing divisions of class, ethnic, gender inequality.
Pandemics historically have ended rarely with a medical solution and rather more often with a social ending when people have had to take fear in their hands and get back to work. We can expect a similar social ending to the Covid-19 pandemic, with governments taking on a new architecture of rule and power to manage risk. Lockdown is a form of governmentality, an exceptional technique of rule that states take in the face of an existential threat and society accepts as a rational and necessary condition. It involves both persuasive and coercive measure - not in equal proportions but varying contextually. Even as the lockdown is eased we can expect that Covid-19 has already introduced a new governmentality that will regulate and redefine the new normal in South Asia and elsewhere. What laws, powers, exceptions from the lock down can we expect will be removed, will stay and will take more aggressive forms.
We can expect the powers that will be removed will include the restrictions on movement of a wider range of workers (who cannot work from home, typically live on daily wages and short-term and informal contracts). Primarily economic considerations will allow some shops and services to open - liquor shops for excise duty, banks, real estate construction and so on.
What powers will stay? Social distancing will stay. The potent combination of regulation and primal and prejudicial fear will ensure that people keep a distance. This will mean higher prices for travel, food for example. Space an its use has and will change as people embody a clinical regime of physical separation.
And which powers will take more virulent forms? Surveillance for sure. India's Arogya Setu, the dominance of Google, Facebook, Bangladesh and Pakistan state's eagerness to watch over digital activity will only get more sanction under the pretext of contact tracing. Data privacy a term that gained traction in Europe will have little or no meaning in South Asia. Populist democracies and authoritative states are not mutually exclusionary - we now that- and we can expect that Covid-19 will give their legacy of digital surveillance a greater impetus. New elite coalitions of states, tech giants and data analytic wizards will together mine information on people's movements, contacts and by extension their ideas, interests, actions.
We could, however, take a different learning from Covid-19. A more inclusive, decentralised and responsive public health infrastructure has helped. Governments that have shown a duty of care like in New Zealand have dealt with the crisis with more trust from their citizens. In fact 'care' we now understand is the key driver of economy, social life. Finally, we will eventually realise that without the workers who have left the city, now hundred of miles away our cities, our modern luxuries and essential services will fall apart.
We must change, but it us up to us to decide how meaningfully we will go through it.
Ipshita Basu, London, 26 May 2020
