Navigating India's "Super-Spreader" Events
Also, my take on what we should expect from our government.
Hi there, I’m Aman Thakker. Welcome to Indialogue, a newsletter analyzing the biggest policy developments in India. The aim of this newsletter is to provide you with quality analysis every week on what’s going on in India.
Thank you very much for subscribing. My writing, and this newsletter, benefits from your feedback, so please do not hesitate to send any suggestions, critiques, or ideas to aman@amanthakker.com.
What We Know About the Religious Congregations That Are Being Dubbed India’s “Super-Spreaders”
Large religious gatherings have become key events in the spread of COVID-19 throughout the world. Instances of such gathering setting off widespread outbreaks have been seen in South Korea, New York City, and France. India, it seems now, is no exception to this.
In Punjab, Baldev Singh, a preacher who had been instructed to self-isolate after returning to India from Italy and Germany, defied such instructions and chose instead to continue social interactions during the first week of March. Such interactions included Singh attending a large gathering for the Sikh festival, Hola Mohalla, a six-day festival that can see crowds of 10,000 people per day. Singh, who passed away on March 19, had ended up coming in contact with at least 550 people, if not more, between his return to India and his death. Of those 550, 19 of his relatives have been tested positive. More recent reports indicate that “of the first 33 cases in Punjab, 32 were directly linked to Singh.” As of writing, 40,000 people in 20 villages are under quarantine in Punjab.
Meanwhile, in Uttar Pradesh, the Chief Minister, Yogi Adityanath, violated social distancing norms and the central government’s orders barring religious congregations and functions when he attended an event to celebrate Ram Navami, the birth of Hindu God Lord Ram, in Ayodhya. While there has, fortunately, not been any news of outbreaks emanating from the event so far, the Chief Minister’s presence at an event that should have been cancelled, and his failure to maintain social distance while in attendance, does not signal responsible governance over India’s most populous state.
However, the community that has gained the most attention, and the most vitriol, is the Tablighi Jamaat, a non-political Islamic missionary organization that urges Muslims to return to practices of Islam that were in practice during the life of the Prophet Muhammad. More than 400 new cases in India, totaling one-fifth of India’s total cases of COVID-19, are linked to attendees who participated in events held at the Tablighi Jamaat center in Nizamuddin, New Delhi.
This is not the first time that Tablighi Jamaat has been at the center of a COVID-19 outbreak. As The Washington Post has reported:
At the end of February, 16,000 people from numerous countries attended a multiday Tablighi Jamaat event at a mosque in Kuala Lumpur. That gathering was the source of hundreds of coronavirus cases in Malaysia and dozens more in Brunei, Cambodia, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Thailand”
The spread of COVID-19 in India is linked to this earlier outbreak. Missionaries from these countries came to India, and visited Nizamuddin in New Delhi. A rough chronology, pulled from various sources, suggests the spread of the virus took place as follows:
Early March: Missionaries from SE Asia visit the Tabhlighi Jamaat center in New Delhi
March 3-?*: A large gathering takes place at the center in Nizamuddin, New Delhi (*end dates are conflicting, some reports say the gathering ended on the 10th, some say they continued till the 21st).
March 13: The New Delhi governments bans gatherings of more than 200 people.
March 16: 10 attendees of the gathering in New Delhi, all Indonesian citizens, are rushed to a hospital in Hyderabad in Telangana
March 16: The New Delhi government issues rules barring any religious events with more than 50 people. The Tablighi Jamaat insists they held no events, but did continue to serve as a hostel for visitors. The complex can serve as a hostel for 8,000 people, and they argue that since visitors were not attending for a specific event, they were not in violation of New Delhi government rules.
March 21: Two Thai nationals, who also attended the gathering at Tablighi Jamaat, are tested positive for COVID-19 in Tamil Nadu
March 22: India suspends all passenger train operations, leaving nearly 2,300 people at the Tablighi Jamaat headquarters stranded on site.
Since this story has come to light, many within and outside of the government have taken to blaming the group for the uptick in India’s cases. India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare announced that the number of COVID-19 cases in India was doubling in 4.1 days due to spread of the virus from the Tablighi Jamaat gathering in March. They have even stated that, had the meeting not triggered such a surge, India might have seen a far lower doubling rate of 7.4 days. Others in government, however, have been less subtle in placing blame to the religious group. Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, the Minister for Minority Affairs and member of the BJP, has called the group’s activities “Talibani crime.” Outside of government, television news channels ran chyrons that read “Save the country from Corona Jihad,” while the hashtag #CoronaJihad trended in Twitter in India.
Such statements are clearly condemnable, and underscore not just the mainstreaming of Islamaphobic rhetoric in India, but the rising number of public articulation of Islamaphoblic sentiments by political leaders and news broadcasters.
In an attempt to be as clear as possible, let me say: The Tablighi Jamaat did make a number of irresponsible choices. Even before government bans on religious activity were in place, examples from around the world highlighted how religious gathering could be vectors for the spread of COVID-19, suggesting the need to take precautions. Moreover, after the Delhi governments orders that barred religious gatherings, Tablighi Jamaat, rather than sticking to the narrow definition of “event” and continuing to serve as a hostel, should have instead made the more responsible choice of scaling back its activities out of an abundance of caution.
However, those who continue to other Muslims in India through Islamaphobic rhetoric, who use this incident to blame all Muslims for the spread of COVID-19, or who gleefully call for “punishment” of the leadership of Tablighi Jamaat are incredibly irresponsible as well. At a time when the nation needs to come together for a common cause to limit the spread of this disease, those inflaming communal tensions are not just taking away from the collective effort of the nation to defeat a common foe, they are, in my opinion, spreading a different kind of virus themselves.
If you would like to support Indialogue, please consider forwarding this email to a friend who might like it too. And if someone forwarded you this newsletter, you can sign up for free weekly updates here!
Setting Expectations Right - What COVID-19 Tells Us About Governance in India
An ongoing discussion I have been having with friends, both online and offline, is what citizens should come to expect from their government in times of acute crisis, such as a pandemic.
In India, beyond the decision to enforce a lockdown, two pronouncements by the Prime Minister of India have captured public consciousness more than any discrete policy steps. The first is the Prime Minister’s apology to Indian citizens, particularly the poor, for the “hardship” caused by his decision to enforce a 21-day lockdown. The second is his call to Indian citizens to come together this past Sunday, on April 5, to turn off their lights at 9pm and light a candle for nine minutes as a show of solidarity in the fight against COVID-19.
Those who oppose the BJP and the Modi-led government have argued that these steps are nothing but public relations moves, and do little to either address their concerns with the government’s policy decisions, or to limit the spread of the virus. Supporters have fired back, saying the decision to apologize underscores the Prime Minister’s humility as a leader, and that the call to light candles fulfills a leader’s obligation to boost the country’s morale in what is likely to be a long fight against the virus before life goes back to normal. These debates, however, miss the mark in my opinion.
I concede that leaders should apologize when they make mistakes, and that they should take steps to boost morale. But we should also recognize these steps for what they are: the minimal expectations that we set for leaders, and for our government. What more do I expect from the government, then?
I expect that the government will be prepared for a pandemic long before a pandemic comes along. The government should have an up-to-date public health emergency response plan for epidemics and pandemics. India’s plan, outlined in the “National Disaster Management Guidelines Management of Biological Disasters” has not been updated since 2008. The Global Health Security Index 2019 also finds that India does not have a “publicly available plan in place specifically for pandemic influenza preparedness that has been updated since 2009.” It also finds no evidence that “India’s Emergency Operations Centers are required to conduct a drill at least once per year.” Such drills better prepare India to respond when the actual pandemic comes around. Such crisis simulations may have also allowed the government to anticipate issues such as the need to ensure migrant workers in India had the opportunity to return home, and prepare a response to deal with the issue.
I expect that the government will learn from the experience of other countries, and avoid making the same mistakes. Several countries, when faced with COVID-19 outbreaks in their respective countries, recognized early on the need to ensure adequate supply for personal protective equipment (PPE), and faced shortages as cases grew. India, which saw a rise in cases much later than several countries, should have used the time before cases inevitably grew in India to ensure it had an adequate stockpile. Indeed, the Chairman of the Preventive Wear Manufacturers Association of India, said the organization had reached out to the central government in February regarding the PPE stockpile. The government did not respond until March, leading to India losing around five weeks of precious time that could have been used to ramp up production of PPE.
Some might say these are too idealistic, and that no amount of prior planning and simulations can prepare us for what came. Yes, we cannot possibly anticipate everything or plan for everything. But I think we sell ourselves short when we say such expectations are too idealistic. Rather, we should start thinking of preparedness, proactive thinking, and smart policy should be the norm, not the ideal.
In Other News
The Supreme Court of India announces it will hear all of its cases through video conferencing, and will hear only urgent matters.
India restricts export of the anti-malarial, hydroxychloroquine, which, despite no evidence that it is effective against COVID-19, has been suggested as a “possible cure” to the virus. Indeed, the Indian Council of Medical Research has recommended the antimalarial as preventive medication for high-risk individuals or for healthcare workers. A report said close to 30 world leaders, including President Trump, have called upon India to relax export restrictions or increase supply so that they might import the drug to their countries.
The Reserve Bank of India, India’s central bank, announced a slew of policy measures aimed at mitigating the financial impact of the spread of COVID-19. Measures included an interest rate cut of 75 basis points (0.75 percent), a three-month moratorium on loan repayments for any outstanding loans as of March 1, 2020, and a liquidity injection of $49.6 billion (Rs. 3.74 trillion) in order to incentivize banks to lend to the productive sectors of the economy.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) delays elections to the Rajya Sabha, or India’s Upper House of Parliament. Indirect elections (with state legislatures electing candidates for membership to the Upper House) were scheduled for 55 seats from 17 states. However, 37 seats went uncontested, and therefore elections were only needed for the remaining 18 seats. Sitting members from those 18 seats will see their term extended for the time being, and the ECI will plan to announce a new election date.
Three to Read…
From cogent analysis to potentially big news that you should keep an eye on, here are a few commentaries and other pieces of writing that I found particularly enlightening.
Elizabeth Roche of Livemint paints a picture from inside the Ministry of External Affairs of India’s COVID-19 Cell: “Since it was set up on 16 March, the MEA control room has been the human interface between the MEA and stranded Indians abroad desperate to get back home, foreigners stuck in India, [and] worried parents… the control room was inundated by calls. From a peak of about 800 a day, they have now tapered down to 400-500 calls a day.”
Isaac Chotiner of The New Yorker, in conversation with Ramanan Laxminarayan, an epidemiologist and economist who directs the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics, and Policy: “We discussed why India is at such grave risk from the coronavirus, the different ways that rural and urban India are likely to be affected, and what the disease has laid bare about the long-term consequences of insufficient health systems.”
Raghuram Rajan, India’s former central bank governor and currently a professor at the University of Chicago, writes: “Once the government has the response under control – and hopefully India’s hot temperatures and humidity will weaken the virus transmission – it has to rebuild hope. The economic outlook even before coronavirus had been weakening steadily, and the socio-political environment was deteriorating. Few would be enthusiastic about simply returning to that situation. It is said that India reforms only in crisis. Hopefully, this otherwise unmitigated tragedy will help us see how weakened we have become as a society, and will focus our politics on the critical economic and healthcare reforms we sorely need.”
… And Two to Listen To
This week also includes two podcast recommendations:
“The Moving Curve,” recently launched by Rukmini S.: A nightly (India time) podcast that averages around five minutes per episode, and is focused on one discrete question per episode, with 12 episodes out as of writing. The most recent question/episode: “Just how flat does that flattened curve need to get before we can go about our normal lives again?”
The latest episode of Carnegie India’s Interpreting India, “Globalization in the Age of Coronavirus”: “Rudra Chaudhuri joins Srinath Raghavan as they talk about the global nature of the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on world politics.”
Thanks for reading this latest edition of Indialogue. Please let me know if you have any thoughts or feedback by emailing me at aman@amanthakker.com.