 All right, so I'd like to welcome everyone to our dot-talks webinar series, our faculty series. This afternoon we have a speaker from the Department of Philosophy from the North Eastern Hill University, Shilong, Dr. Prasangit Biswas. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy there and also a published author. I'm sure all of you have already read in his bio that he is a post-structuralist philosopher and in his recent writings he's brought about the links between the pandemic, the economy, and the norms of distancing. So Dr. Prasangit, thank you for joining us on dot-talks webinar and welcome to everyone who's also here to listen. We are looking forward to an informative and engaging session. This afternoon Dr. Prasangit is here to talk about the pandemic that's affecting us worldwide right now. We really do hope to learn more about as he's mentioned in his brief concept note the power structures at play that are affecting both the real and also the virtual world, also the politics behind this pandemic, and both the economic and social ramifications that it's bringing about. Dr. Prasangit has asked us for a 45-minute presentation this afternoon so it will be a 45-minute presentation. I will be the moderator for the session as well as the timekeeper so I will be keeping in check of the time as well and after that will be followed by a 10-minute Q&A session. So participants if you have any questions you can unmute yourselves during the Q&A session and ask your questions. In the meantime as Dr. Prasangit speaks if you have any questions that come to mind then you can also type it in the chat box so that we can take it later. Okay so without wasting any more time I'll just directly give the rest of the time to Dr. Prasangit. You may take your time. Okay I think Dr. Prasangit is having a little bit of network connections. He seemed to have just left the meeting. Let's just wait for a few minutes so that he can really join us. Sorry for this everyone. Let's give him some time to log back in. Okay yeah he's here. So Dr. Prasangit you may take your time. I think you'll have to unmute yourself because we can't hear you right now. So Dr. Prasangit we're not able to hear you. I think you'll have to use the unmute button. Your microphone is muted Dr. Prasangit on the Google Hangouts on the app. You'll have to unmute yourself. Oh maybe Dr. Rimi or or IT team if you're able to get to him you can help him out that might be. Okay but is it not in on through his phone or through his laptop? Yeah yeah yeah he just needs to unmute his microphone on the app the Google Hangouts because I think his earplugs seem fine. Yeah can you hear me? Yes we can hear you now. Yes we can hear you. Okay so nice of you for this introduction but because of some audio disturbances probably I couldn't follow everything but thank you for inviting me and for giving me this opportunity to speak to all of you which is about the situation of the pandemic in which all of us are in at this moment and how we should look at the situation and how we should understand various complications and implications of the situation are the important issues before us. So I go into the body of my talk and I plan to talk at about 35 to 40 minutes leaving you time for interaction. I think that format will be all right isn't it? Hello. Yes that sounds perfect. Yes yes that sounds perfect. All right all right thank you thank you. So I begin. The question of a pandemic is something which is which is quite repetitive in human history. Back in 1918 we had this massive plague in Europe which has killed almost like 10 million people at that point of time which was spread over more than two years and it ended up by killing 10 million people or more. Back in 1918 what had happened was not really a disease or a disease caused by a microbe which is not in the control of the human beings. Suffice it to say that in the last century the medical facilities were not that appropriate to face the bubonic plague and therefore they were huge casualties. Right at this moment given our medical facilities the availability of ventilators and personal protection equipments and various other protective measures that we have in place because of that the fatality rate even in the United States of America is around three percent which means that out of a total of six lakhs patients only a few thousands around 20,000 people have died and many of them died because of other complications in their body not directly because of the COVID. In case of India as you all know the fatality rate is even lesser. Only 1500 patients have died so far out of around 50,000 cases that we have and in that 1500 only 370 or 80 cases are directly due to COVID. So therefore what I wanted to say is that like the bubonic plague this pandemic created by this novel COVID virus is not a life-threatening one it doesn't kill except in cases of comorbidity that is when one has certain kind of other infections like diabetic or myocardial infection or certain other major organ related diseases in such cases COVID hits very hard. If someone is otherwise healthy chances are that that person will survive around 95 percent so therefore even if somebody is COVID infected the chance of he's or her survival is quite quite high depending on the medication at the right time hospitalization and other care mechanism. So therefore what I wanted to say is that fear and the kind of global fear that has been attached in the name of this novel virus is somewhat exaggerated somewhat excessive. The exaggerated state of fear has created a huge scare in the entire world even in Italy where largest number of people have died so far they are able to manage the disease to the point that after April 20th we didn't hear of much deaths in Italy. Therefore a certain way of managing the disease is always available. If these ways of managing the disease were unavailable then probably our exaggerated fear could have been a little more justified but at this point of time there is no reason to be afraid of COVID provided one has put in place certain facilities and certain mechanism. Therefore the World Health Organization has already stated that the fatality rate and the rate of reproduction of the virus is slowing down across the world and Indian Council of Medical Research in the context of India has noted with a little tinge of comfort that after May 1st the virus has slowed down and the indication that virus has slowed down is pretty clear except that there are certain areas which are marked as red zones now where there is a spread of the virus because of the asymptomatic cases whose context are being traced all the time. So therefore even in the red zones the so-called red zones the spread of the virus and its impact is somewhat limited by so many factors including the the medical ways of containing it apart from certain other administrative and public health measures that that government or people of India have already adopted and one of the major measure at this point is that of lockdown and the question that arose with lockdown are many fold whether in the name of containing virus lockdown is leading to a certain kind of economy collapse whether it is leading to a massive spread of hunger because a large section of India's population estimated around 45 crores depend heavily on a daily wage earning and they have to go to work and they do not have the leisure and the facility to just remain and stay at home which is prescribed that you stay home and you stay safe but in case of a large segment of our people who depend on their work in informal sector and whose wages aren't on a daily basis for them the the situation of lockdown has been pretty pretty pretty bad they have been threatened with hunger they have been threatened with unemployment and loss of their income and thereby creating a kind of a crisis of human security which could not have been forcing before the lockdown was enough but as lockdown crossed its 42nd day and today we are on 43rd day of the lockdown it is pretty clearly clear that across the country in various remote parts there is a certain kind of crisis of food of food shortage although the stock of food is pretty high in this country we have almost 600 million tons of surplus grains in our in our go downs under food corporation of India it depends on how their surplus amount of food will be distributed among the poor and the needy and because of the last mine problem which is the problem it is not possible to really ensure that the last man receives the necessary staple food that is absolutely needed for survival given this kind of a break between what we have and what we are able to deliver there is a certain sense of economic crisis a crisis of human well-being or a crisis of human security that is pervading at this moment across the country how we tackle it on that I will deliberate a little deeper but before but for now I go into something else and the point here is that where the lockdown helps us in flattening the curve there is a worldwide debate on this matter where the lockdown really allows us to build up long-term immunity in the community or lockdown is just meant for buying some time or building up the medical facility somebody wrote very very succinctly that the relaxations that are given in the lockdown now is meant for meant for using some ICU beds that are available at this point of time so lockdown is not for wasting away the freedom that is granted but it simply means that if you really are not able to act in a responsible manner you can be accommodated in some ventilators and icus which are made ready using the first and second term of the lockdown now we are the lockdown 3.0 where we are building up further facilities of quarantine and also medical facilities that are needed to contain the disease therefore a few more people a few thousand more if they are infected by covid can be accommodated in those facilities but there are data analysts who are pointing out that if covid spreads at this rate let's say in a state like Maharashtra where you see a huge spot of cases since yesterday and also in Delhi whether ventilators will be able to cover this entire huge infected people is a major question or it or ventilators and ICU beds are going to be exhausted in another 10 days time the data analyst pointed out that ICU and ventilator facilities will get exhausted provided at this rate covid expands beyond the middle of May by the end of May all our icus and ventilators are going to be exhausted if yesterday there was a massive rise of almost 2700 cases if at this rate cases rise that is 2700 per day until the end of May now which is most unlikely I hope such a tragic situation will not arise in this country because the virus is slowing down therefore it is hopefully expected that the current level of icus beds and facilities that we have would be suffice would suffice this part in the rise of the infected cases and people can be provided the necessary medical amenities in case it is needed so therefore what all this means is that lockdown by itself is no guarantee to contain the virus to contain and to slow down the spread of the virus it also depends on a certain sense of responsibility and the responsibility that is bestowed on each of us is to see that we do not violate the norms of safe distancing we do not violate the norms of gathering beyond the safe limit so even inside the household and in our old in our small localities now people should not be gathering unnecessarily because no one knows from where infection can spread but good news is that there is no community transmission as yet in India and especially in the context of northeast in all the seven states now that there's a little spot in the state of tripura because of because of spread of the virus in bsf and crpf probably without that among the civil population there's hardly any any spike in the infected cases only in a sum you had around 30 cases of which 24 or so are already relieved after treatment only nine cases are there here and there in a sum added to that are these tripuras almost 40 cases and one or two cases elsewhere makes it around 50 cases across the northeast which for a 45 million people who stay in northeast 4.5 pro people who live in northeast for 45 million people you have 50 cases which is a such kind of a blessing seemingly as somebody has speculated that maybe people of northeast has better immunity and how this immunity is created is a civilizational process the kind of food the kind of weather the climate eating habit and also the habits of cultivation and also working physically in the field are major factors of building up this kind of an immunity among the ethnic communities of the northeast apart from that someone else has also pointed out very very interestingly that the the the prevalent situation of inter-ethnic conflict in the case of northeast India is much much contained is much down is much restrained at this point of our COVID infection in a sense COVID infection has brought various ethnic communities together and there is a shared sense of responsibility there is a shared sense of jointly experiencing the griff and or or the kind of immunity that is built up in the community of the northeast in the communities of the northeast so so kabeed has brought us together in the form of a bigger community moving beyond our small narrow ethnic identities as somebody has pointed out one of the social scientists um professor amaryumnam pointed this out yesterday in a TV discussion which is a very very significant point which we shall delve into now i want to also take you to a certain kind of the philosophical discussion as we see that the covid situation is a crisis situation many people describe it to be an emergency situation now the question is in an emergency situation whether keeping out all debates and discussions we can formulate certain norms and principles of life and impose it unilaterally on the people and this is a question related to governance and the institutional processes of democracy whether democratic institutions and a right-based approach are better than a command system whereby certain norms and rules are rigorously rigorously imposed on a people i can give you the example of philippines where the dictator of philippines the president of philippines stated that lockdown violators need to be shocked in some cases some people advocated this kind of a police access or administrative access in the name of containing lockdown violation but in case of india the the laws pertaining to lockdown and its violation follow certain principles of human rights or or fundamental rights as enshrined in our constitution our constitution says even under emergency right to life and the individual liberty cannot be curved so under covid emergency also right to life an individual liberty cannot be curved the curve that we have we have by our own mutual consent is accepted is that of reducing the chain of transmission of covid if any now this reduction in the chain of transmission of covid is because of the collective sense of safety and security of the entire community but within that if someone exercises a little bit of individual liberty if somebody moves out on a certain purpose on a certain call and and if that person is penalized by using harsh coercive laws that actually curves the fundamental freedoms that are guaranteed under the indian constitution we have witnessed the specter of police penalizing people on the roadside now this kind of brutality this kind of penalizing of people is not permitted by the constitution at all this violates the very spirit of democracy now how does one enforce lockdown then some people would argue that unless we have strict laws laws which make people afraid unless we have such laws on which people are fearful you can't impose a norm on the people because people by their very nature are in discipline and they are inherently guilty now this kind of an argumentation might facilitate a certain rise of authoritarian tendencies in a political democracy like ours so therefore how do we keep out authoritarianism therefore is a major major question how do we clear ourselves out of any possible authoritarian tendency that might build up within our polity is an important question is there is it possible to have a fairly democratic a fairly discursive a fairly deliberative mode of understanding what should be the role of an individual in case we have to follow certain restrictions in the interest of the safety of the community now restrictions do not necessarily constrain the individual liberty and individual liberty to really have a certain way of life without disturbing others is something very very important or rather it's the hallmark of a political democracy now the very suspicion that someone else can be a carrier if it is just a suspicion without any evidential basis without any medical basis that itself is not very fair to be suspicious of any other person now to prevent such a spot in suspicion of the other people the norm that is followed at this point of time is the norm to quarantine people people who are quarantined for 14 days to 21 days have often complained of mistreatment in the quarantine center because these quarantine centers have come up overnight without much of thoughts about good management of food hygiene and other basic necessities of people who are going to be quarantined and we have seen certain people are quarantined as if they are in a five star facility while certain other people are quarantined in a very dismal manner we have seen news items yesterday day before yesterday in major national newspapers such as Times of India and Indian Express that the migrant returners to Bihar to Thirupadesh and certain other places of India are not really treated well they are put inside the local school and in a classroom of the school which is not which is not having even electricity not to talk about running water in the bathroom in such a facility people are huddled and one very unfortunate tragic incident has come to light in Madhya Pradesh where a Dalit family has been put inside a laboratory or a toilet where they are asked to leave just because they are Dalits so one can see a certain kind of class difference a perpetuation of social inequalities even treating people during quarantine time quarantine should have made everyone equal and it should have played as a leveler but Kabir didn't really play as a leveler in the case of quarantine became once again a question of how much one can afford and to what extent the the facility of quarantine can provide good food and certain certain quality level of life became a question the governmental facilities in such cases have not been uniform there has been a lot of uneven situations in maintaining the quarantine and this has led to a certain kind of quarantine inequality between various strata of people how do we remove it because constitution gives you equal opportunity it is supposed to ensure a robust public health system where everyone is supposed to be treated equally so what Kabir has brought forth is this idea of creating a robust public health system to maintain equal and fair treatment of everyone when someone is put into quarantine if that is not done then the whole quarantine facility and the process of quarantining is not really resulting into the desired end if the desired end is to keep everyone healthy and happy that is not being successfully met by these unequal uneven quarantine facilities and that is a major major concern another major public debate has cropped up related to the migrant laborers had there not been a sudden four hour notice for lockdown we probably would not have come across in our site the the major issue of the migrant laborers now as far as northeast is concerned a large number of people work elsewhere a large number of students study in various parts of India many of them want to return now back to northeast as returning has been made open by various states but there are a lot of questions that are raised about these return is and how to treat this return is the question is creating every return with a lot of dignity and care is the most important task before the government as well as the people who are residing in that state maybe someone is not directly related to me not related to my in in my kinship line but someone should be able to ensure that such a returning in one soon locality in one's vicinity in one's neighborhood is not mistreated just because one is in quarantine there could be elderly people who needs this quarantine or there could be a person who requires support during quarantine how the community supports such a person is a very very important thing otherwise a strict imposition of quarantine rules in terms of not allowing a person to come out might result into hunger distress anxiety mental stress and also from there a certain attempt to commit suicide as well in some cases quarantine people attempted to commit suicide because no facility was available in this country so therefore it's a question of extremely sensitive handling of the need for quarantine of the large number of return is the state where i currently live is megalaya the state to which i belong is a sum i will i'll discuss about these two states a little briefly which applies to other states of the region as well megalaya government has announced that almost 15 000 people would return in this situation of returning back home and at the same time they also inform these returners that they cannot move out of the state on a long or a medium term that is for another few months they cannot at all move out of the state they won't be allowed to move out of the state once they are quarantined now people who are quarantined that they will not be able to move out of the state that they won't be able to join their workplace in that situation who are going to sustain these people and their livelihoods their basic income so just as Nobel laureate avijit banerjee suggested that we have to guarantee this is the right time that we have to guarantee universal basic income to the migrant laborers to the people who are in formal sector and who are wage owners and therefore it is to be ensured that at least 10 000 rupees is given to their bank accounts for their meant for their expenses and this has a sound economic logic because if people can spend the money then only the wills of economy can rotate again a people are not able to spend if they let their purchasing power if the prices of things are going too high and rising higher and if people do not have purchasing power of buying the basic essentials then the wills of the economy cannot really rotate so therefore the question is during quarantine income of the people have to be ensured by the government how definitely a government handles this situation for the needy is a very important question and this requires a lot of spade war a clear understanding of how much funding how much money is required to sustain these people is absolutely important and I can see that various states are not really able to calculate how much support they need to offer to these kind of needy people in terms of protecting their livelihood and their income there is absolutely no clear cut policy towards this so in terms of policy in the period of quarantine people's livelihood need to be ensured and this is a major major task before the entire country and especially for the states of northeast India who are now receiving a large number of returners from other parts of the country and maybe other parts of the globe as well so this is an important point the second most important point is that that apparently north is creature is somewhat free of the virus transmission but people argue people who are extremely cautious and who take a kind of a very cautionary position they would say that the first wave is just over but there could be a second wave of the virus and they draw upon this case of a second wave from 1918 bubonic plague when second wave killed more than the first wave but fortunately the reproduction rate of the virus at this point of time is somewhere around 3.5 that means one infected person can get most in fact 3.5 persons but in case of India the rate of reproduction of the virus was maximum 1.5 and it is slowed down and it will be going down 2.5 as experts have predicted so the predictions related to the rate of reproduction of the virus in case of India and then in the case of northeast India it is pretty much encouraging because this is not going to going to going to create havoc amongst us at most it can create a controlled anarchy or a peaceful anarchy in the case of northeast India meaning thereby that at most it can create a certain kind of cautionary situation where people have to be cautious they have to be careful but really it is not more than anything being careful so therefore being careful is the only impact that this virus with a lower reproductive rate and with a slowing down procedure at this moment can create so how is it to be careful at this moment as I have said to be careful is doesn't mean to be suspicious of the other person so lots of people who are returning now one has to ensure that the people who are residing in a particular place are not suspicious of those people because if those people are following quarantine norms and they are happily accepting the the period in which they have to self isolate themselves if they are happily accepting that there should be every reason to support them in every possible way and there shouldn't be any suspicion which is based on many things a suspicion can be based primarily on the sense of difference that one has with another person and the sense of difference is perceived in terms of community language caste tribe ethnicity religion and region as well so therefore all these factors of difference which through which people perceive how someone else is different from someone else will play out even in treating these return is but this playing out should not be to cause any harm it should be a harmless playing out of the differences that we have between us and if we can ensure that no one shall commit any harm on the basis of this external differences that exist between one person and another if that could be ensured that no one shall commit any harm then it is possible to accommodate this large number of return is without any fear or without any scare because the other important reason is that if these people are returning healthy and fine after having spent more than two to three weeks in another part of the country it means that they are not infected and if it means that they are healthy and not infected that means their quarantine procedure also will be successful now among them some may be asymptomatic and by a procedure of testing what is tested are two kinds of antibodies the short-term antibody and the long-term antibody in the in the in the body in the blood sample so in the blood sample if one has long-term antibody which is called interglobulin G protein interglobulin G protein if someone has let's say 80 percent of interglobulin G protein in one's blood it is for sure that that person will not be infected by COVID at all and I'm sure that because of the historical reasons of an already existing immunity in the communities of the northeast most of the returners will have this long-term immunity else they would have by now suffered wherever they were and some of them were in the red zones and even in being red don't see if they haven't suffered how is that after returning they would suffer so there are there is less likelihood of their suffering from COVID because COVID virus slowed down in the case of northeast India therefore there is nothing much to worry about the return is rather these returners have to be welcomed wholeheartedly so that they feel at home back at home they feel at home without any scare and fear and they're accommodated readily in their state of quarantine be it home quarantine or any other institutional governmental quarantine to which they have to now visit so therefore it is possible to have a systematic cooperative ethical response in this moment of crisis towards others who are returning from other states and other regions of the world now the test of our community the test of fraternity really lies in accepting them in facilitating their quarantine period and also at the same time really keeping a watch that infection doesn't spread which doesn't mean ostracizing people on the basis of cultural communal or ethnic differences so it is to be always remembered that we are fighting the ailment and not the ailing people if there is any ailing people among them and I can extend this by saying that we are fighting COVID by accommodating the returners because most of these returners have already developed immunity and once more immune people join our community it really increases the level of immunity in the community so therefore they should be welcomed in order to increase the immunity of the community now immunity of the community is also described as herd immunity at rd hard immunity this hard immunity is absolutely needed for fighting COVID in the long term because in the long term COVID cannot be fought by using medicine or vaccination it has to depend on large amount of antibody that is created by individual members in their body and who live in a community this community of immunity and this community of people with immunity is the resistance against the virus we have to remember that therefore we have to solidify immunity in the community by accepting more people who are returning from various states and various parts of the world we should not have any other thought or a second thought about it now this description that I have given in all this actually tells you what best we can do for the people who are needy who are marginalized let's say the case of migrant laborers migrant laborers from northeast who are working in various metros let's say in goa in Bengaluru in Delhi in Calcutta in Hyderabad in various other cities of India these migrant laborers actually need two kind of support medical support and economic support now community has to really evolve means to support them there should be an attempt to build up a wider trust and cooperation between individual members of the community in generating financial material support for these people who really need medical and financial support as they are returning home and as they need very very seriously a support to continue their life and livelihood because there are many distressed families who depend on the income of a migrant laborer of their own family now these laborers are deprived of their income how will this family sustain themselves people the children who are going for education among these family members or women members who require nutritional support and also medical support how all these supports can be built up in the community that a community must really discuss and deliberate and also keep up a certain kind of a moral pressure of the government based on these discussions and debates that is happening in themselves so that government can also actively take part in discussion and this is what professor Amartya Sen yesterday in a tv interview described the mode of governance that India must have at this moment is a government by discussion and not a government by dictation so a government by discussion would take part in the community discussion in order to ensure all kinds of support the material the financial the medical the nutritional the food and also the larger economic support that needs to be augmented at this point of time to support the community in accepting the the returning migrant laborer who has brought in a good news of immunity with him or are they are all to be accepted in terms of building up herd immunity in the community and that is an absolutely essential from where no diversion or deviation are really are really necessary because such deviations are going to going to derogate going to bring down our effort to contain covid in a systematic manner but i can see that there is a tendency of undermining the return is as if these return is a some kind of suspect and they are to be treated with strict surveillance and supervision well strict surveillance and supervision is not at the cost of compromising the human dignity and the human right of those return is therefore one has to draw a fine line between surveillance necessary for medical purposes and the human right and human dignity of this return is how does one draw such a line is very very important that depends on the fine skills of understanding the situation the situation can be understood in a collaborative manner people should collaborate with the information that they have and there should be a bridge building between the people and the government therefore discussion is the only way for bridge building between people and the government more there is an informed discussion about how to tackle covid how to accept the return is how to ensure economy and social support for anyone in this crisis period of lockdown for for the needy and the marginalized are to be discussed publicly in the community in which the government can take part and can together evolve into better policy making and its implementation for the person who is standing at the last row of the queue now now this this sounds you know morally normatively a high premise i don't know to what extent in a democracy like india we are able to achieve such moral premises in our governing principles but governance should be such that it is based on public morality and it addresses urgent needs of the public in an urgent manner in many cases the metaphor of war is used but i don't think the metaphor of war is a good metaphor because when the enemy is an invisible enemy how do you launch a war against the invisible enemy the real task is to build up the community or rather rebuild the community in order to sustain our effort to contain the virus and to maintain the semblance of collaboration cooperation and and collective building of strength in the community which can happen only if people deliberate issues openly frankly and thereby they draw right kind of decisions by way of good discussion between them and this must happen now the other important thing is that the picture that i drew is a picture from the bottom is a picture from below i have not grown a picture from the top where you have directives you have some kind of norms described by the government our point is that when the government describes such norms who are going to implement these norms these norms are going to be implemented by the ground level officers by the public representatives in various institutions so these public representatives and ground level officers must have certain autonomy so that they can discuss issues with the public but in a moment of crisis without much discussion lot of steps are taken and many of the steps are not really yielding the desired results we must review those action which could not result into the desired result and there must be a dynamic review process not just talk taking and reporting but also a dynamic review process of the policies and the prescriptions that have been made so far in terms of their level of success and failure on the ground in order to achieve that once again the scope of discussion must also be very specialized it must involve the right kind of experts people who have ground level knowledge unless we have right set of experts and right kind of people from the governing institutions and also the ordinary public who would be able to express their needs better than anyone of the experts or public representatives are all brought together to discuss what next and what should be the next higher level step in order to in order to make the situation better is something that really needs to be worked out the other important issue here is the ongoing economic slowdown in which the whole country is plunged in as far as north east is concerned it has been pointed out that agriculture and the agricultural production probably in various states of northeast is a big bone because of huge agricultural production and surplus that north eastern states are able to generate they are able to sustain the demand for food and they are able to supply food locally to the people in the community so therefore it is possible to develop a local supply chain and in developing a local supply chain there must be close collaboration between between individual producers the farmers the traders and also the community at large who can ensure a fair distribution of food material so that no one goes hungry and no famine builds up in the case of northeast India in other states wherever there is a possibility of famine especially among the non-agricultural sector where people are hand to mouth and where they have to depend on supply from outside in such cases the local supply chain have to be extended to the needy people and probably that also could be achieved in the context of northeast India and in the in the context of other states of India Dr. Prasantji I'm sorry to interrupt you but just a gentle reminder that it's been about 40 minutes I request you if you could kindly wrap up in a few minutes thank you sorry sure thank you welcome I'm wrapping up so the point here is that the the kind of economic slowdown that we're experiencing at this moment now we have to overcome this economic slowdown so to sum it up what I was trying to argue is that we have to welcome the returners that is first and foremost we have to ensure that immunity builds up in the community and there are good news for us that COVID has slowed down in India therefore there's nothing to scare and fear so time now is to rebuild our social and collective life which will rebuild in close collaboration in discussion in involving various experts even the needy people who can best express what is their need and and address those needs so that the last mile delivery shortage or last mile delivery problem can be overcome in mutual discussion if we can overcome the problems of delivering things where it is to be delivered in terms of delivering cash put another medical items if we can overcome the the constraints of delivery it will be possible to manage COVID at this point of time in a very systematic manner and in the context of northeast because we are in a better situation we should take all efforts to start our economy and at the same time maintain safety norms in a manner that unwittingly we don't expand the transmission of virus that is absolutely important and for that we have to act responsibly without compromising the the choice and the freedom of the individual as well because we live in a democracy and in a democracy it's always a matter of individual choice and discussion to arrive at a good decision which we need to maintain and overcome the differences that are already there in terms of race color caste creed tribe religion blah blah we cannot really harp on those differences and we have to forget differences for a while in order to have a collaborative struggle collaborative fight against the COVID which requires this mutual empathy mutual collaboration mutual support and also and also an effort to to restart the economy to restart the the social linkages that we have which are slowly limping back to normalcy so we have to wait for the restoration of our life by maintaining medical safety and security i think with this word i conclude for a while and i'll be ready to discuss matters in case there are questions thank you all for patiently listening to me thank you thank you very much dr presanjit that was a very informative session i think you've given us a lot of insights to think about on the responses to COVID-19 dr presanjit you've given us i think a very different perspective of the COVID-19 probably a less grimmer picture of it i would say that about the chances of survival seeing that the global fear is actually really high and maybe excessive or even exaggerated at times and also because of the infodemic yesterday we had a session on infodemic and how news can actually spiral out of control and a lot of misinformation can go around um so i think the session has given us a really different perspective on it i'm going to open it up now to questions if there are any from amongst the participants you can actually unmute yourselves i don't see any questions in the chat box right now but we can give a minute to participants to ask any questions uh the rest if you just like to you can actually just unmute yourselves yeah okay so uh dr capesa has a question capesa you can just unmute yourself and ask it i guess that would be better yeah go ahead thank you uh thank you dr presanjit that was a wonderful presentation um my question is vaguely related to the quarantine inequality that you mentioned and also the um likening of the fight against the covid-19 to a war so overall um i mean if we look at it the north east uh during the lockdown have sort of gracefully observed the lockdown without much uh protest without outburst compared to the other parts so um this makes me wonder if this has to do with our civilizational values that we are generally uh low abiding people we're generally good people or if this has to do with our perception of the state how will we see the state and how the state sees us so i'd be very happy to hear your thoughts on that thank you yeah this reminds me of jamesy scott's book i know seeing as the state sees it seeing like a state as it titled this book in the context of south east asia uh he argued professor jamesy scott the renowned anthropologist who has written this book on zoomias uh describing the migration of people of the northeast uh you must be harder you must have heard about jamesy scott i'm sure seeing like a state now uh the way state sees this whole problem you know the problem of uh spread of the virus state is combining two different things here state is turning a medical emergency into a political and an economic emergency and there comes the critical question of whether that results into a certain curve on our fundamental rights whether that results into a certain kind of an imposed imposed difficulty in maintaining our life and livelihood of course uh from an experiential point of view we can see that there are a lot of difficulties but at the same time we fall back on our families on our community on our society which provides us a certain kind of a sucker which is independent of the mechanisms of the state now if state can step into with a kind of help with a with an attitude to provide necessary financial and materials supposed you know uh if state could have done that the sense of crisis would have been much reduced the kind of psychological distress people are experiencing during this period of lockdown and covid which is also resulting into a certain kind of suspicion if not hate towards certain other people or a certain other country let's say if there were appropriate support system such psychological and social psychological reactions would not have come over that people are suspicious of another country another people people who are different so therefore our perception of this state is in terms of how state relates to us and how we relate to other people there are two dimensions of this perception how we relate to the state state expects one to relate to the state in terms of following certain norms of behavior now these norms of behavior often undercut the the freedom of choice the freedom of the individual uh and there comes a kind of a conflict so states prerogative and the prerogative of what we have achieved in terms of our rights in terms of our entitlements uh run at cross purposes and in a crisis moment it becomes even more acute in the sense that in a crisis moment one is looking to state for help and sustenance which is not easily coming forth therefore state is failing in its duty towards its citizens while it is demanding citizens too much to behave in a certain manner so there is a discrepancy here that state is creating in the usual perception of the citizen about the state the other important issue is how we look at others we look at others from an angularity of whether the other is useful to me whether the other is is is productive and beneficial to me if the other does not fit into my scheme of things one really gets really one starts rapid dating about a kind of a uniform relationship with the other and that's that's a problem of human relations so relations with the state and human relations are both at this moment in a kind of examination and re-examination and hopefully this process of re-examination would lead us to a certain kind of a stable perspective which is absolutely needed in this moment of containing covid yeah thanks thanks dr presanji for the answer yeah um i've been hearing a lot about uh high trust societies and low trust societies and there has actually been a lot of debate or discussion going on about what's the best strategy in a pandemic trust or suspicion not towards the migrants or towards daily wage or towards infected patients but towards the response of the government and also the response of the public where we're seeing that in high trust societies it probably the policies that are laid down by the government may not be as stringent as policies laid down by governments from low trust societies so you have some states or countries being able to exercise this lockdown or control the pandemic through public goodwill whereas you see other governments having to use more stringent or authoritative measures alongside that uh do you agree with this uh term of like the existence what are your i just wanted to know your thoughts on that about high trust and low trust societies what what what do you feel about that what's happening in the world right now yes the idea of trust actually needs to be re-understood in the context of covid now trust is not just linear because trust involves a multiple number of actors and factors so all these actors and factors have to be taken together in order to understand trust now are we able to really take cognizance of these multiple factors and multiple actors first of all we can see a certain governmental machinery which is directly responsible for our health and well-being but this kind of a vision where we directly see something you know reduces our ability to depend on many other correlated factors so when we emphasize on one factor and forget about many other factors it is then then there is a problem of trust because those other factors and other actors they also come into picture now that a lot of things are happening together simultaneously on the one hand you have on the other hand you for a vaccine so lot of these issues and factors are coming together and they are really clouding out the existing level of trust in fact the whole world is suffering from a certain kind of trust deficit at this moment and they don't really know whom to trust anymore can we trust the government anymore can we trust the medical professionals can we trust our immediate neighbors can we trust these so that remains an open question so therefore you know the existing situations of low trust low trust get slower existing situations of high trust also get slower so overall there is a decline of trust and in this moment of decline of trust you see high trust or low trust societies are behaving alike all of the people are looking for a certain ready solution and the ready solution is not coming forth it is getting different how long it will get different will depend on how long it will take for us to really contain this virus so therefore the attack by the virus and the pandemic and its impact on our social psychological setup and our makeup is now very different than this usual categorization of high trust and low trust because trust itself is on decline and therefore that's another level of the problem which is a deeper deeper layer of this problem which needs to be understood re-understood and one has to work out ways out of it which is easier said than done true very true yeah thank you doctor do we have any more questions from the participants yes okay hello hello hello yeah I can hear you hello hello this is Richard yes we can hear you yeah so this is Richard from Ceylon oh Richard yes oh how are you Richard so nice fine thank you sir thank you so much uh just so colleagues for this platform and thank you so much sir for your insightful talks my question here is that sir government ensuring income of the poor is something which is very important we just need to be discussed and then needs to put forward to the government as you have said so but the question here is that how can we in such a country where there are lots of poor people securing the income of the poor is a big a Hercules task for the government so I'm still wondering how we can or how government can take up these steps if you can suggest something on that yes yes you must have seen in the newspaper yesterday's discussion that a rigid energy the latest Nobel laureate in economics who is an Indian-American has suggested he suggested that this is the right time to introduce universal basic income now what should be the label of universal basic income and how it will be transferred those things are issues about methodologies and procedures but one should on principle agree that the basic universal basic income needs to be guaranteed to the large number of poor people that we have in our country now this requires not more than six percent of our total GDP in one calculation Raghuram Rajan he calculated that over three months if we are supplying 5000 rupees in the accounts of each of these 45 crore migrant laborers we give them 15,000 rupees in three months and that requires a total expense of 65,000 crores which is somewhere around you know 0.3 percent of our total GDP now these migrant laborers who work in informal sector contributes almost 27 to 30 percent of our GDP now those who contribute 30 percent for our GDP for them can't we spend less than 0.5 percent of our GDP over next three months and after next three months as the situation gets normal and these people goes back to their workplace we can recalculate a certain level of basic income that could be infused in there to them so that they are economically secure and they don't feel insecure to contribute more to the national wealth and that will require in a calculation that Avijit Banerjee has done if we provide 6000 rupees per month annually 72,000 rupees to these 45 crore of migrant laborers that will cost us around three lakh crores of rupees per year you see which is how much which is somewhere around you know 4 percent of our total GDP per year so if 4 percent of the total GDP goes in universal basic income the output that it creates in terms of calculation will be at least three to four times more than the current output you see it's not that people will take money they will just see it in it but they will create their own possibilities of production their own possibilities of economic activity which will increase the economic activity by three to four volts Avijit Banerjee has calculated and I am ready to believe that calculation as a student of economics and I believe that injecting universal basic income is going to double up our GDP in next two years itself which will be a major up turning major overturning of the current Morris current recessionary tendency that is set in the economy so therefore universal basic income can start from the covid moment and it can go to the moment of completely overcoming recession and coming back to eight to ten percent growth level in our economy which is a wonderful solution and a wonderful idea which is cost effective affordable for the people of India okay Richard thank you sir thank you thank you thank you sir yeah any other question yeah please hello hello sir yeah it's great to meet you and it's a humble and opportunity to talk to you in chat I'll just uh precisely point out my views you talk about the global fear suspicion yes and that I just this is much I'm just pointing on my view is that I can see many people outside roaming randomly even after these endemic we know the consequences of this and we can we cannot predict to some extent what it must take to the experts are saying I might be taken two years but that is not exactly we have no idea about how many years is going to take so people are just roaming outside that doesn't is it doesn't mean that there is still a lack of fear in them this basically means that in to some extent they are also putting your lives and other life in the rigs we have no idea about how it's going to cause so so can we say that even if the fear is exaggerating if the fear is saving lives what's wrong in it because we have mentioned about a global fear that it is exaggerating which is basically primarily you mean to say that according to my understanding we don't have to be fear so as parma understanding fear is as of the situation current situation fear can be a shield power states and people around globally so don't you think fear is necessary in this case yeah your question is very valuable question you know because that's the crux of the issue at this moment in our behavior and in deciding what should be the norm of behavior now look at the advanced countries they are less fearful you know look at USA a part of US economy is running look at the New York City I mean there is still you know people moving carrying out economic activities despite huge death toll now one argument that is given about New York City you know New York City is supposed to be the capital of the world at this moment because all the major economic activities the huge amount of capital both menpower scientific technical and also financial capital that is there in economy in economic terms in New York City is the highest in the world now if you look at New York City are they really afraid you know I don't see it to be hello Dr Prasanchi hello can you all still continue to hear yes ma'am I can still hear you but I can't hear sir president I think he's cut off yeah Dr Remy could you please find out for us if there's anything wrong I think there's probably a network issue here it's been going on and off throughout the meeting but hold on let me let's check yeah I think he's logged he's logged out yeah ma'am he just called me and I'm just restating this give me one minute okay okay just allow him to come back and maybe quickly sum up the question for Ning Daolang and you can probably treat that as the last question unless anyone else has any more questions those we could probably treat that as the final Ning Daolang I think you're the only UG student that has his webinar it's really good to see you actually attending and are voluntarily like that I just it's a great opportunity for me so I just grabbed the opportunity uh hello ma'am yeah yeah yeah I just contacted him and then I will be he will be coming in in two minutes okay two minutes okay yeah two minutes this kind meantime uh yeah yeah okay um the meantime of course does anyone have any questions about it uh I hope the rest of you all enjoyed you know the session and you found informative I think we have a few of our staff left and I know the internet connectivity is really disruptive today I've been logging in and out also throughout this session we hope to be contacting more webinars uh just for the information of everyone who's here our next dot talks webinar is scheduled on Friday that's 8th of May at 3 p.m and our speaker is going to be Dr. Shobana P. Matthews she is an assistant associate professor in the department of English studies at Christ University she is also one of our advisory editorial members of the so interdisciplinary journal so she'll be speaking on the topic free reading with Bob Dylan this information I think would will be going out on the internet shortly so if you're interested then as usual you can just sign up register yourselves for the webinar and attend it on 8th of May at 3 p.m so please try to do that and if anyone here also has resource people who would be interested in speaking on you know our dot talks webinar from your own universities or professors or even yourselves I understand that the faculty are soon going to be presenting webinars from each of the schools so we're really looking forward to that no pressure on anyone but this is more of I think most of us here are yeah all from the digital community right now so yeah this is an exercise for each one of us and also even for students the students recently had a student webinar or the UG students the PG students are also hopefully will be seeing a student webinar from them and the higher secondary the class students are also planning to organize a student webinar so these are the things that we're looking forward to this hopefully should happen on a regular basis yeah Nintala yes ma'am on the other day the BTS uh station that we have our director has just mentioned about if we can organize something like debate or competition for the students oh yeah yeah or averaging or kind of thinking about it it will be very interesting my opinion yeah that's a good idea um we can think about it actually uh the student council has also mentioned that they're what about organizing a student fest you know an online fest and the debate can be a part of it or a different set of activities they're even mentioning like singing a song I think some institutes or right organizations have been composing songs from putting together songs from different singers like that so those are things that I think we can think about why why don't you get in touch with our student advisors you know Meran and also Sorriting also and maybe we can put together something by the way our general secretary Sorriting he is going to be live on Instagram tomorrow uh on edu edu center yeah so he's going to be talking about the college and his experience um you can put in any questions live I think they've been doing it for all the different institutes in Nagla yesterday so Saint Joseph a student from Saint Joseph College Jakama uh was uh speaking on uh Saint Joseph is an admission procedure and all other you know any questions that were fielded at him on Instagram so Sorriting is going to be doing something similar tomorrow uh 7th of May I've forgotten the time now but uh you'll be posted on our Instagram page and even on edu center that's edu center Nagaland so um you can catch him there yeah okay really sorry about this I know that today you know it's kind of been disruptive to network and thanks to all the teachers for patiently staying logged in and waiting um we'll probably just wind up with this question so that he can just answer any dialogue and try to conclude the session so let's wait and see Dr Rimi any updates oh yeah ma'am actually uh he asked me to resend the link to his messenger I did it I did it and then now by now I think I think I don't know his phone maybe he just texted me he's getting back and he just opened I think from another laptop or something okay I don't know maybe his battery is out or okay oh okay okay okay okay otherwise you know if if it's becoming difficult for him what we can do is um Ningdao Lim and we can connect Ningdao Lim with him later also for them to you know discuss or um through email also because we have his email id we can provide that also um if that's not a problem so uh you can just let him know yeah ma'am he's just he's just texted me now that he's just he's just open he's just I I also want him to just come in and come through the session okay yeah of course yeah we can just extend one more minutes okay okay of course for further questions it may not be possible today yeah I think everyone yeah but we have our email id dot talks at the school college I'm just going to type it here for everyone in case you guys want to email or in case you guys have suggestions on anyone who can come and speak on that yeah then what do we do sir these are the glitches that you know can't just help sometimes and it's just out of our control so I think we'll all just have to bear with it so this is the email id I posted in the chat box uh dot talks at the school college or G I'd like to especially request you know the professors here the teachers who are here from your own respective universities you can get someone who'd be you know interested in talking on dot talks um as you know the topics are open for anyone and so you can choose a topic that's of interest to you a relevant topic also draws in more people so that can be kept in mind when selecting topics our teachers I know are going to be presented very soon so you can keep that in mind when you're trying to select a topic of course it can be from your own discipline also oh hello ma'am yeah it's so happened that I think it is looking like that he's going to take a little longer time so he he he sent me his apology that okay okay the last part he couldn't be able to complete the session so I'm now heading over to the entire thing to you so then we can wrap up and then when he don't know I think he can still connect with sir and I can also I have I can also just lead him and guide him to to talk to him also in different formats okay okay ning tell him you're okay with that is my mom okay with that it's okay okay but thanks I think that was a really valid question uh that you posed you know so uh that's something food for thought I think we can keep on reflecting on some of the questions that he posed to us about whether you know COVID-19 and this lockdown has actually brought societies closer together and how different governments are responding to it I think there's so much there's so much debate and differences of opinions on this but so good to keep on hearing different perspectives let's keep reflecting on it and with that I think we're just going to conclude the session for everyone thanks so much for attending thanks Dr. Rimi for connecting us with Dr. Prasangit Biswas hopefully we can hear from him in the future again or whenever he comes on campus whenever the lockdown was removed hopefully we can have these speakers who are in dot talk webinar keep coming come to the campus for future workshop seminars like that so uh finally just a reminder everyone we have our next dot talk webinar on Friday at 3 p.m. please check the staff and student intranet for more information okay thanks everybody okay bye thank you thank you ma'am thank you everyone okay