The Modi Wave - Politics of the pandemic in India - Transcript

Opener  (00.00:02) 

This is the Nordic Asia podcast.

Kenneth Bo Nielsen  (00.00:09) 

Welcome to the Nordic Asia podcast, a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic Region. My name is Kenneth Bo Nielsen. I am a social anthropologist based in Oslo and also the coordinator of the Norwegian network for Asian Studies. I am here today with Alf Nilsen, professor of sociology at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, and a scholar of Indian democracy and politics. In addition, he is a longtime associate of the Norwegian network for Asian Studies, and also of the Nordic Asia podcast. And today he joins us for a conversation about the impact of the devastating second wave of the covid 19 pandemic that hit India earlier this year, and the full impact of which is only now emerging. Welcome, Alf and thank you for joining us.

Alf Nilsen  (00.00:58) 

Thanks, good to be back in the podcast.

Kenneth Bo Nielsen  (00.01:01) 

Now, as we know, the second wave of the COVID pandemic that hit India was devastating. Although official death figures are low by comparative standards, a survey of different estimates of the entire pandemic period actually suggests that India's COVID-19 death rate is likely to be in the several millions, with one estimate as high as 4.9 million deaths, making this arguably India's worst humanitarian tragedy since partition and independence. Alf, what is the story behind these staggering numbers?

Alf Nilsen  (00.01:37) 

Well, thanks for that question Kenneth it's truly an important issue that needs to be interrogated. In light of the fact that we have such discrepant figures, we have a government that claims that some 400,000 people died in this pandemic, whereas the real figure is likely to be much higher. I noticed that just yesterday, new figures have come in in terms of the death rate for the month of June, suggesting that we still don't know the full scale of the devastation that happened in India from March through to the summer months. Now, the single most important factor behind the staggering figures would be the absence of effective public health interventions to mitigate the impact of the covid 19 pandemic in India. Now, we saw that tendency quite clearly already during the first wave where a strict lockdown was imposed upon the nation by the Modi regime, but where the government then failed to properly expand the medical infrastructure in that time span that was opened up by lockdown. Now, after the first wave dissipated, we saw a continuation of this failure to intervene with effective public health governance. First of all, of course, the Modi regime and its propaganda machinery and the pliant media that is tends to simply echo government messaging, began peddling a success story that was centered on the false idea that the death rate in the first wave was low. We know for a fact that that's not the case. We have estimates saying that the number of people who died ranges between one and a half to 3.4 million people rather than 160,000 people, which is the number cited by the Indian government. We know that this false idea was then used as an excuse to ignore warnings, both from parliamentary committees and from medical experts, that a second wave was bound to come, indeed that it was on its way. We know that reports were manipulated reports coming out of the Indian Council of medical research were manipulated. So that reports pointing out that the second wave would come, that it was on its way, were sidelined. Whereas reports saying that India had reached herd immunity, that India had performed well in terms of curbing the impact of the pandemic, in the first wave took center stage, in a sense, in terms of how the front line of medical expertise, echoed government messaging. And then of course, once more, after the first wave there was a complete failure to boost medical infrastructure. Now here oxygen is a case in point during the ravaging that unfolded. During the second wave, we all heard the grueling stories from India about people struggling to find oxygen. And the reason for that is of course, that whereas the Modi regime floated tenders for 150 oxygen plants across India in late October 2020, only 11 of these oxygen plants had been installed, and only five of them were operational in April 2021. So this is an example of how once again, there was no serious attempt to put in place a medical infrastructure that would enable the country and its citizens to better cope with a second wave. Instead, what the government did was of course to proceed with elections and election campaigning across five states, in the mistaken, as it turns out, belief that they would make great advances in Bengal. They also allowed an important Hindu religious festivals to be pre by one year, effectively promoting a super spreader event. So these are some of the factors that came together to create this sort of ferocious scenario, this viral Inferno that we saw during the months of the second wave. And I think that it's really important that we recognize that this is about more than just complacency or incompetence, or an obsession on the part of one particularly narcissistic leader with this public image. It is actually a politically engineered disaster. I think that the failure to effectively prioritize public health and the governance of public health flows straight from the political logic of Modi's political project, which is one of authoritarian populism.

Kenneth Bo Nielsen  (00.06:01) 

It's interesting, you mentioned this just now, the image of Modi as an authoritarian, populist leader, if we could dwell on this for a little while longer. More specifically, how has Modi's authoritarian populism shaped India's response to the pandemic? And how more specifically do you see it as having contributed to this disastrous second wave?

Alf Nilsen  (00.06:24) 

Well, to answer that question, I think we need to start by defining authoritarian populism. Now, authoritarian populism is a specific kind of right wing populism, a specific kind of authoritarian conservative politics that is predicated most fundamentally in the Indian case on drawing a line between what is portrayed as the true Indian people, which just happens to be the Hindu majority in the country. And then their anti national enemies within, you know, which is an entity that's typically constituted by Muslims and by dissidents. Now, the true Indian people, the virtuous people who's opposed to both corrupt leads and threatening enemies within, is directly linked to Modi as a strongman leader, and a strongman leader who is apparently capable of brave and decisive action in defense of the nation, and its people and their interests. Now that again, that relationship between the strongman leader and the people, you know, depends for its existence on the constant production of a public image, which is created by and embodied in spectacles. Now, when I say spectacle, I mean basically big attention grabbing policy decisions and policy implementations. And we've seen this throughout Modi's reign, I mean, de-monetization in 2016, was one example of it. The lockdown that was imposed in late March last year was another example of it. We also see spectacles being produced through the circulation of narratives of great national successes, under the able leadership of Narendra Modi. So that's what happened, of course, in the first wave, as we've talked about before, I think in a previous episode of this podcast that the lockdown was imposed, but nothing much was done about that. Nevertheless, the imposition of lockdown succeeded in creating an image of Modi as someone who would take decisive action to protect the nation against a pandemic. Now, if we want to understand the second wave, we have to understand how the regime prioritized the circulation of this success story as a further bolstering of that public image, basically saying that the Indian nation with Modi at its helm had vanquished the covid 19 pandemic, had effectively won the battle. That was a story that was going around. And that story, of course, was produced. Throughout the pandemic, we saw that data was manipulated. I've already referred to that we saw during March, April and May how people who chose to simply tell the truth about the kind of hellscape that was crystallizing in India were persecuted. We know that the figures in terms of infection rates and in terms of death rates, in particular were forged in order for the regime to keep insisting that India was doing well. They kept insisting that India was doing well while crematoriums could no longer accommodate, while crematoriums were running out of firewood, whilst the Ganga was full of dead bodies that were being disposed of because people have no other way of disposing of their dead. So this is in a sense, what happened with the second wave. That production of the public image, of the leader as someone who's linked directly to the people and it will fight for the people, took precedence over everything else, and basically sidelined any engagement with the imperatives of public health governance.

Kenneth Bo Nielsen  (00.09:53) 

But these authoritarian, populist tendencies and this link that you've now described between authoritarian populism and the pandemic has also been extremely evident in the shaping of India's vaccine policy hasn't.

Alf Nilsen  (00.10:07) 

Absolutely. If we look at the vaccination program in its totality, it's evident that it's been entirely shaped by the politics of spectacle. India launched its vaccination program in late January this year. And they did so with a grand announcement in which Modi spoke to the nation and promised that the weary people of India would soon have their hopes redeemed by the launch of what he described as the world's largest vaccination campaign. When he spoke about this vaccination campaign, he focused on the ways in which India with its handling of the pandemic and with the launch of the vaccination drive had attained both global attention and global respect. And he also spoke about the fact that this drive was based on what he referred to as two Indian made vaccines, one of them being the Cvoshield vaccine that was produced on a license by the Serum Institute of India on license from the British/Swedish company AstraZeneca. And on the other hand, the COVAXine, which was produced by biotech, a smaller vaccine producer based in India, all of this was represented them as being part and parcel of how India under his leadership was becoming more and more self reliant, it was commanding the respect of the world and this was also reinforced by the vaccine diplomacy program that was implemented. Just a couple of days after the National Vaccine drive was put in place India was exporting vaccines abroad. Now the flaws in the vaccination policy became painfully evident when the second wave erupted. By May, when India was breaking world records in terms of both case rates and death rates every single day. Only 1.29% of the population had received both doses of the vaccine. And this was part and parcel again, of a trend of steady decline, where vaccination started to go down, the number of vaccinations started to go down as the pandemic peaked. Now, in other words, what this means is that the vaccination campaign that was implemented with so much fanfare, fanfare that was totally emblematic of the spectacle that shapes so much of policymaking and governance under Modi, utterly failed to provide enough vaccines for the Indian people. And this has remained the case, that's another point that I think is really important to note. We've seen numerous policy changes and tweaks to the vaccination policy, but progress on vaccinations remain slow. We have seen a process that has been punctuated by one day spectacular peaks in vaccination. But we know that this is the result of manipulation. So for example, in June, when the central government resumed responsibility for vaccine procurement both at central level and for state governments. There were announcements of an enormous peak in vaccinations. We know that that was enabled by the fact that BJP state governments held back on vaccinations in the days leading up to this massive peak. We saw the same thing happening on Modi's birthday no less, when, again, claims were being made that India had given out more doses of the vaccine than anywhere else in the world on that day, we know that there was extreme pressure to produce these results. We know that vaccine certificates on that they have been given out to people who actually died of COVID, several months prior. So the political manipulation is plain to see for everyone here. And of course, we know that India's population would be much better served by a consistent pace of vaccinations and an expansion of the supply of vaccines. So even you know, now, at the very end of September, we're looking at a country which has only vaccinated somewhere between 20 to 25% of its population fully, even though it's vaccine drive stops in January. So again, then we see how the politics of spectacle in authoritarian populism effectively undermines public health governance.

Kenneth Bo Nielsen  (00.14:16) 

I know that in your current writings on this topic, the topic of the pandemic and vaccines and authoritarian populism, you also cover what you refer to as India's healthcare capitalists who have been heavily involved in what we may call, pandemic profiteering. What does this tell us more generally about Modi's relationship with Indian corporate capital?

Alf Nilsen  (00.14:41) 

Well, I think the basic point has to be noted, first of all, which is that the same vaccination policy that failed the Indian people so badly and contributed to staggering levels of mass death, made it possible for corporate tycoons to profit from the pandemic and there are two key aspects of the policy that did this. First, of course, is the policy related to vaccine production and vaccine prohibition nationally in India. So there were two vaccines that were approved for domestic use: COVIShield or the AstraZeneca vaccine and then covaxine which was produced by biotech, even though these producers were given favorable treatment in the approval process compared to foreign competitors, such as Pfizer. This created a situation in which there was a failure to produce a sufficient number of vaccines. Nevertheless, these two producers still profited very handsomely as they've effectively enjoyed access to a captive market. It should be noted that under the initial procurement regime, where the central government bought vaccines and distributed to state governments, both the Serum Institute of India and biotech enjoy profit rates as high as 180% to 500%. With the change in the procurement regime that was introduced in late April, where the central government would buy 50% of all vaccines, and the remaining 50% were to be shared between state governments and the private sector. And the pricing of the vaccines that were being purchased by state governments and private hospitals was deregulated so that the two vaccine producers could increase the prices they charge per dose, we saw their profit margins increase to somewhere between 2000 to 4,000% per dose, right. And this is in terms of their sales to private hospitals. So basically, then, what the Modi government did in terms of vaccine produces, this was to constitute a captive market where these two companies could sell vaccines that had been developed through publicly funded research. And also, of course, these companies enjoyed financial support from the Indian government that mitigated their risks in terms of sales and also of course, support from Bill Gates Foundation, and GAVI, the global vaccine Alliance. The other great profiteer here were the private hospitals, who constitute major corporate chains in India who profited from selling vaccines at somewhere ranging from 700 to 900 rupees per dose for COVID Shield, and 550 to 1500 rupees per dose for covaxine prices that put vaccines out of reach for the majority of Indians. Now, the point about this policy where we see the favoring of corporate interest is that it's exemplary of Modi's close relationship to corporate capital. This is a relationship that developed during his days as chief minister in Gujarat, where he was very close to certain select business groups who do to their closest to him and due to their material support for his regime also experienced that policymaking was very much in their favor. With Modi's transition to or ascension, rather to the pinnacle of national power. This policy has been transposed, if you will, to the national level. So what we see that it's the same pattern where corporate groups benefit from business friendly policies implemented by the Modi regime, and more the benefits from corporate funding, we know that big capital in particular has largely fallen entirely in line between Modi since 2014, and that they have bankrolled very substantially his extremely expensive election campaigns. So that's the bargain, if you will, that is at the core of this relationship between capital and the Modi government. And this has turned out to be very profitable for capital. If we look at numbers during the period from early April 2020, when the first wave kicked in up to early April 2021. We know that the number of dollar billionaires in India in the pandemic year increased from 102 to 140. And we know that their combined wealth almost double, we know that 24 of these dollar billionaires are healthcare capitalists and we know that the top 10 health care capitalists in India increased their wealth by 75% during this pandemic period. So this is clearly paying off for groups that the Modi regime has nourished a very close relationship to and scandalously it's happening at the same time as the number of Indians living below the national minimum wage increased by 280 million people.

Kenneth Bo Nielsen  (00.19:21) 

So this in a sense brings us to the big question, or the million dollar question. In light of the scenario that you've painted for us up until now, surely we must ask will there be an hour of reckoning for the pandemic disaster? Or to put it differently? Will Modi's project of authoritarian populism unravel as a result of this evident failure to avert mass death, suffering and impoverishment?

Alf Nilsen  (00.19:51) 

Well, I think that's a generally hard question to answer. If we look at indicators such as approval ratings. There are very divergence scenarios out there. We know that the mood of the nation poll which is carried out by India today, a major media outlet in India, in mid August show that only 24% of India's people want Modi to be the next prime minister. So that would indicate, of course, that the evident policy failures, the evident failure to actually govern the pandemic, if you will, in a way that mitigated its impact would have taken its toll on the regimes popularity. But two weeks later Morning Consult which also tracks approval ratings for global political leaders put Modi's approval rating at 70%, which is unusually high in global terms. According to Morning Consult, Modi is still one of the most popular leaders in the world. So if Modi's authoritarian populism is to unravel, I think it's important to bear in mind that it will do so if it loses the support of supporting groups, by which I mean if it loses the support of lower castes and lower classes that have been won over gradually, both in the 2014 election and in the 2019 election to the BJP, and to the wider project of the Hindu nationalist movements, it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that that might happen in the aftermath of a pandemic. After all, it's India's poor, and marginalized who have suffered the most. We saw that with the mass exodus from India cities after the first wave, or when the first wave kicked in. But we can't assume any kind of automaticity. In this, we know that Modi is sustained by what has referred to as the politics of belief, which is a kind of dynamic, a kind of relationship where a government and a prime minister's popularity is disconnected from what is actually materially delivered, and defined instead by an aspiration, hope and investment in the idea that sometime at some point, things will get better, this person will improve our lives, right? So there's a constant deferral than of the hour of reckoning. So I think that's what makes it possible for Modi to constantly peddle empty promises of material improvement and social mobility. We know that this isn't happening in India, we know that the economy is stagnating, we know that poverty is increasing, we know that unemployment is increasing, we know that inequality is increasing. Because he manages to cancel the impact of that out by offering, and I'm drawing here on the ideas of the African American sociologist, W.B Dubois, offering a kind of psychological wage, off majorityterian belonging, or what I call a psychological wage of hinduness, which is predicated on the promise extended to lower caste groups and lower class groups of inclusion into a unified rising assertive Hindu majority community under Modi's leadership. And much of what we've seen in terms of what's happened in India's political landscape since 2014, when Modi first assumed power is, of course, one testimony after the other to the solidity and the resilience of that psychological wage. So my answer would be that one would have to wait and see, the first indicator that we're going to get would be I think, the state elections in Uttar Pradesh, which, of course, was a state that was heavily ravaged by the pandemic. But again, it's an open scenario and I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that the disaster that was India's second wave will necessarily cost Modi the political support

Kenneth Bo Nielsen  (00.23:47) 

Alf Nilsen, thank you for joining us. My name is Kenneth  Bo Nilsen and thank you for joining the Nordic Asia podcast, showcasing Nordic collaboration in studying Asia. L

Closer  (00.24:01) 

You have been listening to the Nordic Asia podcast,