Authors: Omir Kumar and Wriju Banerjee*
This article attempts to trace Gandhian ideals and principles in the measures adopted by India to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
As the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak of COVID-19 to be a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on 30 January 2020, no national leader imagined that this pandemic will be the reason they’ll be forced to change their governance models and will be compelled to devise new strategies to effectively combat the pandemic as well as ensure the smooth functioning of their country. As the virus rapidly spread throughout the world we witnessed national lockdowns being announced, economies crashing, healthcare institutions being overburdened with a rising number of cases, and a general sense of helplessness among countries. India was also one of the 195 countries in the world that fell victim to the novel coronavirus. Although countries struggled to adapt their modes of governance with pandemic India on the other hand saw this as a unique opportunity to rethink its approach towards governance. It formulated numerous policies to revive its economy and at the same time combat the pandemic. The call for Vocal for local, domestic production of medical equipment, constructing a decentralized strategy to combat the impacts of the virus were all measures that assisted India to tactically mitigate the impacts of the pandemic. Recently it was also one of the few countries to successfully manufacture a vaccine for the COVID-19 virus.
These efforts have been applauded by the international community at large but one thing that has gone unnoticed is that most of these measures have a commonality which is that they all have an underlying philosophy of Gandhian ideas behind them. But before we attempt to trace Gandhian ideals in India’s fight against the COVID-19 pandemic it’s imperative to first understand Gandhi.
Understanding Gandhi
The model way used by states to combat the pandemic resembles Gandhian thought and policy in ways more than one. If one were to look closely, they could see the growth of the principles of self-sufficiency within Gandhian thought, which ultimately culminated in the evolution of the Panchayati raj system as we know it today. Gandhi’s adamance for a local, decentralized model of governance is deep-seated in the influence that his younger self grew up with. A subject that intrigued him most was the evolution of the Western capitalist model. The idea of the ‘economic man’, derived from classical economics which emphasized the self-interested nature of all rational beings drew sharp criticism from all opposing thinkers, one of whom was John Ruskin. In his book ‘Unto the Last’, Ruskin dismissed the Smithian notion of division of labour as dehumanizing. This book was Gandhi’s earliest exposure to the theme of capitalism, and it heavily influenced Gandhi’s subsequent works. He wrote Hind Swaraj five years later which followed the same critique of western capitalism and used it to ground the need for self-rule. His focus rested on the countryside and the need to make village republics self-sufficient.
A subtheme within Gandhi’s critique of western capitalism was his opposition to the greed that he believed capitalism harboured, and so what followed was an equally ardent opposition of consumerism. His pushback took the form of an emphasis on a minimalistic way of living which popularised the image of him known to India today, that of an old man sparingly clothed, whose ashram only served vegetables without spices and which advocated for a simpler way of living. Minimalism was his way of pushing for a ‘limitation of wants’ and a return to simpler times.
Not wanting to see India be bound to the mills of Lancashire and Manchester to feed its consumerist tendencies, Gandhi rallied for the use of khadi which became a popular symbol of his struggle to repel British rule and dependency. He referred to it as the ‘livery of freedom’, but to Gandhi, khadi meant a lot of things. Rather than just being a homespun cloth, he believed khadi contained the essence of a revolution and was a symbol of Indian self-respect and dignity. Further, it was a symbol of an undivided people, of homogeneity and an absence of status. Most importantly, it signified the economic liberation of the masses. In line with Hind Swaraj, he believed that poverty stopped millions from attaining political liberty, as it stripped them of their dignity and limited their potential. He envisioned a humane economic model to counter the British model being enforced upon them and found it in the khadi industry which to this day harbours millions under its employment. Khadi suited Gandhi’s purposes as he recognized that India’s population required labour-intensive employment and so what followed also was opposition to machine usage in places of employment where the same work could be done by people. Poverty he considered one of the many hurdles to attaining ‘Poorna swaraj’, or complete independence.
An extensive character portrait of Gandhi wouldn’t be complete without accounting for the influence Tolstoy’s writings had on him. Gandhi was introduced to Tolstoy’s work during his time in South Africa. Tolstoy by then had written extensively on nonviolent resistance and Christian Anarchism in particular. His book, ‘The Kingdom of God is Within You’, published in 1894 laid out his basis for opposing Christian institutionalism, arguing that the ultimate authority for any Christian is their God thus denouncing all forms of state control and instead advocating for divided authority and servant leadership. Alongside John Ruskin, Tolstoy was one of the most important modern writers who influenced Gandhi, with whom he exchanged letters and ideas. Gandhi’s first endeavour at self-sufficiency came in the form of the Tolstoy farm, an ashram he set up in South Africa during his satyagraha against discrimination of Indians.
This idea of building self-sufficient economies eventually seeped into his ideas of economic liberation for the masses and self-dependency of localized units, developing into the idea of the Panchayati Raj system. This was the culminating point for all Gandhian thought, an anarchical model focused on meeting the minimal needs of all as opposed to feeding the consumerist tendencies of a few. A humane economic model prioritizing the maximization of social welfare but above all, a system that can effectively sustain itself and tend to its own needs. Gandhi believed such a unit would have sustainable agricultural practices without recourse to pollution or excessive usage of pesticides and fertilizers, relying on eco-friendly practices. The land would be owned by those who tilled it and not zamindars, while others would find employment in rural industries such as khadi, handlooms, sericulture, and handicrafts that rely on family labour and do not lead to concentration of wealth. Panchayati raj systems today still hold true to this statement, as many operate their own educational and medical institutions at a time when industrialization has led to the concentration of population in a few cities, where the standard of living has fallen heavily with an equal increment in the size of the ecological footprint.It was in these conditions that Panchayati Raj institutions put up an applaudable fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tracing Gandhi in India’s Fight Against COVID-19
India’s strategy against the pandemic has reflected a lot of Gandhian Principles within it. Federalism and decentralization got a new lease of life in India with the COVID-19 outbreak. If there is one positive that the Indian polity can take away from the crisis, it is the renewed focus on these two tenets. Essential for a democratic nation, both have been enshrined in our Constitution. That is why we have distinct lists earmarking subjects to states and the Centre separately. But time and again, both have taken a backseat, getting overwhelmed by a powerful Centre. This however changed. Public health, as a subject, falls under the State List of the Indian Constitution. And by utilizing its full potential, several states have shot to the center of attention along with the escalating medical emergency.
By responding in a timely and organized manner, these states reflected Gandhi’s commitment to a decentralized form of governance. Take, for example, Kerala. The southern state announced an economic package of Rs 20,000 crore on March 19, being the first state to do so in the country. This was a week before the Centre announced the Rs 1.7 lakh crore financial package to help people during the crisis. Kerala’s announcement was significant because it came at a time when the state had little money in its coffers. Kerala was the first state in the country to report a positive case of the novel coronavirus in late January 2020. In rural Kerala, Kudumbashree movements linked women self-help groups to the panchayat system to provide relief to women and children during the pandemic. Dharavi, being the largest slum in Asia, would have had massive deaths if it was not effectively controlled by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation. Similarly, the cities of Chennai, Kolkata, and hilly areas that have a long history of Panchayati raj systems and are still governed by it were able to contain the spread of the pandemic. To effectively handle the crisis, it is important to look at the number of recoveries, the number of fatalities along comorbidities. There exists a positive correlation between operating panchayat raj system and effectively handling the pandemic. The robust public delivery system of the Indian state combined with a three-tier government structure was extremely effective in ensuring an effective delivery mechanism of essentials to the most marginalized sections of the society. The Prime Minister has also urged all the Indian States to leverage the decentralized models followed during elections and disaster management to tackle the logistical problems associated with the covid vaccine delivery system. A decentralized mechanism will prove to be extremely efficacious for the delivery of the vaccine to the most remote areas of India. On the economic front, India’s commitment to emerging out of the pandemic as self-reliant or ‘aatmanirbhar’ nation also reinstates Gandhi’s principle for self-sufficiency. His call for rejecting western clothing and manufacturing khadi aimed to serve two purposes – reducing India’s dependency on foreign nations and uplifting the local economy. India’s campaign ‘Vocal for Local’ also intends to achieve these two objectives. Initially, when the whole world was grappling to fight the virus India emerged as the largest producer and supplier of hydroxychloroquine, a prospective drug for treating covid-19. It also exported 50 million hydroxychloroquine tablets to the USA. India also significantly ramped up its production capacity of PPEs and N95 masks with three lakh units each being manufactured daily eventually leading to a surplus within domestic inventories prompting exports of N95 masks to foreign nations. The latest addition to India’s efforts to fight the COVID-19 virus is how it has successfully managed to develop a vaccine. COVAXIN, India’s indigenous COVID-19 vaccine was developed by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and has already rolled out in the entire country. The Oxford-AstraZeneca has been manufactured locally by the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer. It says it is producing more than 50 million doses a month. India is also all set to export the vaccines to countries like Bhutan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar, etc projecting itself as a self-reliant player in the international arena. Even as we approach a post-pandemic world, India’s adoption of Gandhian ideals can prove to be a sustainable strategy that can be continued to help India climb up the global order and present itself as a global hegemon.
*Wriju Banerjee is a Second Year Student of Political Science at Shaheed Bhagat Singh College, University of Delhi. His area of interest include Philosophy and Political Theory. He plans to enter Academia after his graduation.
