 Salam from the People's Dispatch Studios in New Delhi. This is Dispatches from India, where we talk about the burning issues from the world's largest democracy and the impact they have on the country's economy, polity and society. We begin the show today with the second anniversary of the All India Lockdown for the COVID-19 pandemic. On the 24th of March, 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced this nationwide lockdown and over the following weeks and months threw the whole nation into chaos. The worst hit were of course the working class, especially migrants. Despite some in the government claiming there was no data, the impact was there for all to see. Thousands of migrants were forced to flee big cities and many walked hundreds of kilometres to reach their homes. For the unluckiest, death lay at the end of those highways. News Clicks Pragya Singh recounts the horrors of India's first COVID lockdown. So the Indian government basically announced a national lockdown on March 27, 2020. That was when COVID was just beginning to spread. They were around just 20 deaths by then due to COVID. So that lockdown was very sudden and total and it had a terrible impact on the economy and on income immediately. When sources of income dried up all of a sudden, people basically started walking home. There was a massive reverse migration of workers from cities to villages and thousands of, there were actually thousands of people who had started walking home. Some were walking for several hundred kilometres because suddenly the buses and the trains had also stopped running. Very often we found that ordinary people were standing by the highways and trying to assist these returning workers. Then since the lockdown was announced at just four hours notice, there was immediate shortages in food and also other supplies. The rules were so flexible, they were constantly changed. So that the movement of essential goods itself became a maze for people to, which people found impossible to navigate. For example, you have relief camps coming up, but then how can people who need to access those relief camps get there when there's no working transport? In fact, there were many state governments which actually welcomed the lockdown, but when it came down to the action, they were fearing very badly in helping people during that time. People had to register at the state level if they wanted to get help from the government, especially the workers, but the process was confusing or you needed biometrics or the schemes were simply not designed for those circumstances of a lockdown. The end result was that we saw the prices zooming up and the supplies of many items kept falling. There were long wait times for basic things which you need at the time like sanitizer, important medicines, your masks and especially in smaller towns and villages. For the underprivileged, basically it was a pretty big disaster. There were reports of people who had not been able to access food. There were some reports of people died due to lack of food, but all the governments basically denied this. Indeed, the government had promised to help all those who were stranded and even the migrant workers, but those who thought it possible decided to walk home. And if you really look at the reasons why this would have happened, it's probably because they did not believe that the government would be able to help them. Then those who had managed to walk home found, they're troubled and end there, they found that the most of the state governments where they belong to were ill-prepared to meet them. So the government, by then the government at the center, many states had essentially handed over the management of the pandemic to the police. And the police was beating up people who violated the strict lockdown. We saw many high-handed tactics, especially at the state borders, when the tired and hungry workers were basically stopped and told they wouldn't be able to go ahead. Maybe some people would argue that India's was the strictest lockdown in the world, etc. But actually, though nothing was moving in that time, actually it was a time when the resilience of the underprivileged was put to kind of very cruel trust. And at least 200 people died in that walk home, which is probably an underestimation. The lockdown was also symbolic of the government's overall management of the pandemic. We saw a lot of top-heavy, law-and-order centric and focusing on messaging. Prabhi Purkayastha, who has been studying the epidemic since day one, talks about the early approach of the government. This is two years when the first lockdown was imposed during the COVID pandemic in India. Now, we have a lot to learn from this and also a lot to unlearn from what happened. First is why did India impose a lockdown of this magnitude? In fact, it was one of the most draconian lockdowns imposed anywhere at that time. And it is not in consonance with the numbers that we were seeing. In fact, the numbers were rather low at that time. And if we look on it today, it was certainly a mistake to use all India lockdown at a time when the pandemic had really just started in India. And that also in a few of the well-connected internationally those places. So you would have some in Kerala, some in Mumbai, some in Delhi and Punjab. So it was really, the numbers were very low. To lock down the entire country was a huge mistake, which is what epidemiologists and health, public health experts said later that you locked India down at a time when there was no need to impose an all-India lockdown of this nature. You also locked down without any preparations and the entire burden of this lockdown was borne by the migrant population. Those people who have come from the rural areas and who work in cities is wrong to call them migrants really in that sense because they do work in the cities and they go back only occasionally to their homes. Their real workplace is art today in urban India. Now this population suddenly were basically into various kinds of casual work as it is called, had to leave the urban areas because they had no access to income, they had no access to food and they had no other support. So they actually left and when they left they were treated very badly because they were treated as if they were criminals fleeing from their place of work. Well, actually there was no work and there was no support for them. So this was a huge dislocation that took place and it was quite ratituous because the numbers that went up went up a lot later even in the urban areas and as I said that the numbers if you see at the beginning of the lockdown at the end of the lockdown you will see numbers at the end of the lockdown was much higher than the beginning of the lockdown. So it served no health purpose, public health purpose. Five Indian states went to the polls in Feb and March 2022. In the run up to these elections state-owned oil companies such as Indian Oil, HPCL and BPCL froze retail prices of both petrol and diesel for a record 137 days. Now that the elections are over in which the ruling Bharatya Janta Party dominated the hiatus on revisions of oil prices has ended. There were four hikes of 8 tenths of a rupee each in the five days starting from March 22. A trend that's likely to continue with international crude oil prices in the 100 to 120 dollar range per barrel. Industry watchers say India's oil companies have lost over 2 billion dollars since November last year and at current crude rates will lead to hike prices by as much as 25 rupees a litre for diesel if they want to pass the entire load down to the customer. We spoke to Paranjoy Guha Thakurtha to get a better sense of this dance between politics and market economics. I'm Paranjoy Guha Thakurtha in Gurugram, near Delhi, the capital of India. On Saturday the 26th of March 2022 for the fourth time in five days oil marketing and distribution companies in India increased the prices of the two most commonly used petroleum products namely petrol or motor spirit and diesel. Behind the increase for the fourth time in five days lies an interesting story. These oil marketing companies are mainly owned by the government of India if not owned certainly controlled by the government of India. On the 4th of November in the run up to elections in five states or provinces in India these oil marketing companies froze prices. Prices didn't go up. Then after the elections to the legislative assemblies of Uttar Pradesh which is India's most popular state Punjab which is one of India's most agriculturally prosperous states not to mention smaller states like Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur after elections were completed and the results were declared on the 10th of March 12 days later the prices started going up. The prices were kept on hold for four and a half months and during this period international prices of crude oil shot up from roughly $82 a barrel to around $117 a barrel. There were various reasons for the increase in the international prices of crude oil the most important one being the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Now international prices of crude oil are very very very important. Very simple reason. India in the recent past in the last two years has been importing between 85 and 90% of the country's total requirement of crude oils. That means India is producing domestically between 10 and 15% of our total requirements and this includes the petroleum crude oil which is imported to India refined and then exported. The short point is that this four and a half month long freeze in the prices of the retail prices of petrol, diesel and other petroleum products has resulted in these oil marketing companies which as I mentioned earlier are mainly controlled by the government of India but it resulted in them losing 2.25, 2 and a quarter billion, billion US dollars. So even after these four increases in the prices, the retail prices, the prices available at the pump there's every likelihood that prices will go up again and these include not just the prices of petrol and diesel which are used largely in the automotive sector also to some extent for power generation but also petroleum products like LPG or liquefied petroleum gas or cooking gas. So the prices of all these products, the increase in the prices of all these petroleum products which have been kept on hold because of political reasons have had an important, one of the important contributory factors to the rise of inflation in India and the rise in prices of a wide range of commodities because these are used for transportation and therefore are an intermediary which results in the prices of other products going up. And finally, ugly scenes are playing out in movie halls in India during and around the screening of a film called The Kashmir Files. The film claims to tell the story of Kashmiri pundits, an upper-caste Hindu group who were forced into exile in 1990. However, the film and its director have been criticised for blatant disregard of facts and for using the film to promote an anti-Muslim narrative. The film has been strongly backed by the ruling BJP with several states giving it tax exemptions. Journalist Anand Dev Chakravati decifers the model of propaganda in our times. Kashmir Files has generated an intense divisive debate across the country. Its filmmakers and those who support it say that it's an eye-opener which tells the tale of the genocide, the alleged genocide of Kashmiri pundits that took place more than 32 years ago and that it had been pushed under the carpet neglected by successive governments till the coming of this government which has read the issue again. Those who criticised this film say that it's a thinly-wailed piece of propaganda and it has been used essentially to target one particular community and to generate communal polarization. And whatever the filmmakers might have intended to do and one can give them the benefit of the doubt, it is without any doubt that it has resulted in intense communal passions. We have seen across the internet videos being shared of people giving communally charged hate speeches in theatres where the film was screened and that these videos are being shared on social media by politicians and also on WhatsApp groups across India causing deep-seated anxieties, resentment and bubbling over of hatred. So whether the filmmakers like it or not, there is no doubt that it is working as a propaganda film but the question is why do people believe in propaganda? Why do they accept disinformation and believe it? Now propaganda has become an absolutely easy tool in the hands of those in power and those who control the economy which is corporates with the spread of social media with the decline of old forms of knowledge whether it's books, whether it is articles, newspapers where a certain form of debate could take place. Today's social media, easy newsbites, a few texts, photographs, pictures, memes they dominate public discourse, they dominate messaging and it is very easy to control this with control over money and to spread it as existing old forms of political mobilization have become weaker as reaching people through social media, through national mainstream media has slowly replaced the old system of workers, party workers going and campaigning the ability to control messaging, political messaging and corporate messaging has become much more easy and it's an easier tool today in the hands of those in power. That means for democracy to survive you have to question power everyone needs to ask questions, without that you will be a victim of propaganda and you will be a carrier of propaganda you will never question, you will believe whatever is being fed to you. That's all we have on Dispatches from India for today for more on all of these stories visit our website peoplesdispatch.org and give us a follow on all the regular social media platforms we will be back next week, until then stay safe, goodbye.