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.
Harsh Mander, 'A pandemic in an unequal India', The Hindu
