{"id":6511,"date":"2016-03-10T04:01:43","date_gmt":"2016-03-09T22:31:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=6511"},"modified":"2016-03-10T04:01:43","modified_gmt":"2016-03-09T22:31:43","slug":"internet-making-us-meek-callous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=6511","title":{"rendered":"Is the Internet Making Us Meek and Callous?"},"content":{"rendered":"\nY<\/span>esterday, I asked a rather simple yet slightly provocative question to some people around me who were advocating a continued strict lockdown: Would your opinion remain the same if you didn\u2019t have access to the Internet? There was some hawing and huffing, but by and large the consensus was that Internet connectivity<\/a> was the primary reason why people \u2013 people like us, that is \u2013 have been able to deal with the lockdown without getting wholly overwhelmed by it.\n\nIt has allowed the children of the privileged to avail of online classes carried on by some tech-enabled schools. It has allowed people to get their daily or hourly dose of entertainment on their video-on-demand services, be it Amazon or Netflix<\/a> or YouTube or MX. It has allowed \u2013 thanks to e-commerce \u2013 people to lead a rather \u201ccomfortable\u201d lockdown existence with all the essentials intact. More importantly, it has given us the comfort of constant data.\n\n

Would your opinion remain the same if you didn\u2019t have access to the Internet?<\/p><\/blockquote> \n\nBut imagine if the Internet was not as omnipresent. Or that connectivity was not as good as in the 4G era. Would we have been as comfortable? Isolated, uninformed, un-entertained, and unserved by Big Basket, would we have been so unquestioning about the validity of this enforced lockdown? I heard today about village called Bagaha, about 250 kms from Gorakhpur where a young, desperate mill owner, tired of waiting for his workers, started working his own machines when his kadha got entangled, pulling his right arm into the gears. I don\u2019t know what drove him to attempt to operate heavy machinery, but I can easily imagine. Would we, like him, have not been tempted to push ourselves or break rules if we have to, in search of goods, services, or cash even at great harm to ourselves?\n\nIn many ways, the Internet has shaped the current pro-lockdown narrative, as much as governments and doomsday angels who look at data from other nations and apply precautionary long-term clampdowns without context. \u201cLook what happened in Italy and US\u201d is the common refrain. Many use the example of a lockdown<\/a> as the reason why India has relatively less than 50 cases per million of Covid-19 as against a huge multiple of that number in Italy or US. But few question the fact that even with a lockdown in place, ICMR<\/a> projections gave us only around 50 days extra<\/a> to face the peak rate of infection. According to this leading panel of medical experts, daily infections without a lockdown would peak in about 100-150 days and with the lockdown the peak would 150-200 days! There was never any question of us not reaching peak infection.\n\n

We who are advocating the lockdown are envisioning a contact-less, work from home, Internet-fueled economy to be our future.<\/p><\/blockquote> \n\nNow over a month into lockdown, our headstart is all used up. We can only hope that it\u2019s been used well to prepare for the fight that lies ahead. It seems evident now that Covid-19 is here to stay, but instead of focusing on how exactly we navigate as close to normal a life in the midst of this disease and develop a playbook for this new world, we\u2019re focused on perpetuating one of the strictest and most crippling lockdowns any country has seen. We want to believe desperately that if we put our head in the sand long enough the virus will pass like some inclement weather.\n\nBecause, we can afford to. We have our Wi-Fi\u2019d home bubbles and life, although dull, is not so bad. But do we really understand the impact of this unthinking advocacy on the poor? Do we even realise that most of the migrants who started walking back home weeks ago<\/a>, and who we forgot as we tuned into season 3 of Ozark<\/em>, are still walking? \u201cMinimise democracy, maximise interfaith distance, maintain aloofness from poor \u2014 may be the new normal,\u201d says an Indian Express editorial<\/a>. \u201cEqually disturbingly, the lockdown has ensured that the class-chasm would become more real, more sharp and yet politically infructuous. The overwhelming support that the lockdown has received among India\u2019s middle classes is noteworthy not just because of the gullibility of that class but also because of its complete lack of social connection to anything beyond itself.\u201d\n\n

We have our Wi-Fi\u2019d home bubbles and life, although dull, is not so bad.<\/p><\/blockquote> \n\nSo instead of ratting on neighbours taking a walk, advocates of continued strict lockdowns should reassess their humanity a bit by envisaging themselves in the situation of that dal mill owner who was probably driven to desperation because the economic cost of not doing it felt far greater than losing his right hand. Or his missing workers, millions of whom are holed up with fellow villagers who work as construction labourers or security guards or delivery boys, in 10X10 foot rooms used in rotation in three shifts. Envisage an average of 15 men to a room, taking turns to sleep on a hot summer, on rationed electricity, without a toilet. The hours tend to hang hot and heavy, weighed down further by fears of a virus too complicated to understand and a future too bleak to comprehend.\n\nIn a country where the common man lives an uncommonly hard life, we who are advocating the lockdown are envisioning a contact-less, work from home<\/a>, Internet-fueled economy to be our future. This idea is as bizarre as Marie Antoinette suggesting the poor should eat cake if they didn\u2019t have bread, but we don\u2019t see it. Around us are millions like us, living in this echo chamber, while the urban migrant and poor don\u2019t even have a voice. They have been missed out of this entire narrative primarily because they do not have access to the shouting rooms of social media<\/a> where the \u201cmodern\u201d Indian narrative of being a global leader in aggressive lockdowns is being shaped. Governments have a thing about hearing the people, but unfortunately, it is this cacophony of the relatively privileged that keeps getting heard. Loud cheering on the Internet is almost akin to checking the pulse of the people and the people seem to be doing just fine. After all, they\u2019ve got the Internet.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Would we, the advocates of a strict lockdown, have been able to take this decision if we weren\u2019t cushioned by the comforts of the Internet-enabled economy? Would we call for a harsher clampdown, if, like millions of others, our lives and livelihoods depended on going to work every day?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":6512,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10108],"tags":[10543,10544,1203,10435,10545,10546,10547],"class_list":["post-6511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coronavirus","tag-advocates-of-the-lockdown","tag-dependence-on-the-internet","tag-internet","tag-lockdown","tag-privilege-of-the-internet","tag-privileged-middle-class","tag-supporters-of-extended-lockdown"],"yoast_head":"\nIs the Internet Making Us Meek and Callous?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Would we, the advocates of a strict lockdown, have been able to take this decision if we weren\u2019t cushioned by the comforts of the Internet-enabled economy? 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