India's investments in public health are among the lowest in the world, and most cities lack any kind of primary health service. India's rich and middle classes have opted out of public health completely, leaving the poor with unconscionably meagre services. The irony is that a pandemic has been brought into India by people who can afford plane tickets, but while they will buy private health services, the virus will devastate the poor who they have infected, and who have little access to health care.

Recorded messages on our phones urge us to wash our hands regularly. We forget, however, that millions live in shanties without water supply, and they buy a pot of water, sometimes for a fifth of their day's earnings (irregular incomes decimated by the lockdown), Regular cleanliness is a remote luxury beyond their means. We are also advised 'social distancing' (physical distancing) and 'self-isolation'. How is this feasible for large extended families who crowd into narrow single rooms in slums and working class tenements? Or for the homeless people who have no option except to sleep in overcrowded unsanitary government shelters, veritable breeding centres for infections? Or for destitute people in beggars' homes? And I cannot forget those confined to detention centres in Assam, which are jails within jails.

India must immediately commit 3% of its GDP for public spending on health services (current allocation is 1% of GDP), with the focus on free and universal primary and secondary health care. But, since the need is immediate, authorities should follow the example of Spain and New Zealand and nationalize private health care. An ordinance should be passed immediately, that no patient should be turned away or charged in any private hospital for diagnosis or treatment of symptoms which could be of COVID-19. While one part of the population enjoys work and nutritional security, health insurance and housing and of globally acceptable standards, others survive at the edge of unprotected and uncertain work, abysmal housing without clean water and sanitation, and no assured public health care. Can we resolve to correct this in post-COVID India? Can we at least now make the country more kind, just and equal?

Most of the official strategies place the responsibility on the citizen, rather than the state, to fight the pandemic. The state did too little in the months it got before the pandemic reached India for expanding greatly its health infrastructure for testing and treatment. This includes planning operations for food and work; security for the poor; for safe transportation of the poor to their homes; and for special protection of the aged, the disabled, children without care and the destitute. For two months, every household in the informal economy, rural and urban, should be given the equivalent of 25 days' minimum wages a month until the lockdown continues, and for two months beyond this. Pensions must be doubled and home-delivered in cash. There should be free water tankers supplying water in slum shanties throughout the working days. Governments must double PDS (Public Distribution System) entitlements, which includes protein-rich pulses, and distribute these free at doorsteps. In addition, for homeless children and adults, and single migrants, it is urgent to supply cooked food to all who seek it, and to deliver packed food to the aged and the disabled in their homes using the services of community youth volunteers. To ensure jails are safer, all prison undertrial prisoners, except those charged with the gravest crimes, should be released. Likewise, all those convicted for petty crimes.

‘It felt good to just be at the border and raise slogans for peace’ - Harsh Mander

After a long fight led by Harsh Mander and argued by Colin Gonsalves in 2017, Delhi High Court had decriminalized the act of beggary. “People beg on streets not because they wish to but because they are left with no other option,” the court had observed before adding, “The State simply cannot fail to do its duty to provide a decent life to its citizens and add insult to injury by arresting, detaining and ... imprisoning persons who beg in search of essentials for bare survival.” The order followed a long drawn legal battle fought by bureaucrat-turned activist Harsh Mander and activist lawyer Colin Gonsalves. “The law against begging is one of the single most oppressive laws against poor and destitute people in a country that has no social protection net,” argued Mander. The central government had then told the Delhi High Court that it would bring forth a Bill to decriminalise beggary aimed at rehabilitating them. However, since then the Centre has gone back on its promise and informed the High Court that it had no proposal to decriminalise begging.

Harsh Mander nominated for Nobel Peace prize