THE pandemic and its consequences manifested in different parts of the world and more importantly its differential impact on classes of people and segments of population reveals deeper chasms and structural divides that capitalism reproduces in its process of accumulation.

In the twentieth century since ‘Spanish Flu’ in 1918 we faced two more pandemics namely, the Asian Flu in 1957 and Hong Kong Flu in 1968. While in the twenty-first century already we came across Avian Flu in 2009, SARS in 2002, MERS in 2012 and Ebola in 2013-14 and finally Covid-19 in 2020.

The frequency of pandemics has increased over time and more importantly the origins of most of the later pandemics happened to be located in the global south. The geography resembles a particular pattern instead. It is the global south particularly the peri-urban centres of global agribusiness from where most of the human to human transfer originated in the recent episodes, it spreads across the globe through the trade routes and global value chains; it is mostly urban, congested slums, industrial towns and hosts of migrants who are considered to be super spreaders of the virus. This time however the spread didn’t remain confined to the darker and poorer parts of the world as it happened in the case of other diseases; instead it wrecked the citadels of capitalism, the rich and wealthy centres couldn’t see themselves as insulated and as providers of aid to the poor.

RUTHLESS PROFITEERING

Capitalism in its neoliberal phase has been ruthless in appropriating nature and facilitated activities of relocating production in spaces where both labour and nature can be easily undervalued. The livestock revolution and consequent commodification of food products, large scale production with vertically integrated structures, biotechnological innovation and the corporatisation of such value chains need to be critically looked at.

Stockbreeding, aquaculture, horticulture and large scale poultry production and hog industry have been corporatised involving huge investments and cross country value chains. Productions are located in the global south where the cost of production of feed particularly of corn is low, wages are far below advanced country averages and environmental regulations are far more relaxed. The terminals of such agribusiness chains had been the soup bowl of virus mix where humans closely interact with animals, birds are raised in stressed conditions causing easy transfer of pathogens to human bodies.

Climate change, deforestation and genetic interventions by humans often gave rise to ecological imbalance and destruction of habitats of wild animals, birds and insects that ultimately caused disease for people whose livelihood is located close to these habitats. True indeed that unlike all other beings, humans do have the unique capacity to create conducive environment for their production and reproduction and they are capable of changing their surroundings and by that process they also change themselves. But humans are part of the nature itself within which they reside and the pursuit of profit by capitalism energises an autonomous process of uncontrolled appropriation of nature which ultimately creates crisis for not only capitalism but the human race at large.

The current pandemic once again underlines the fact that human intrusion in the natural process driven by unbridled craving for profits and hence trying to control it without being concerned about the impacts on interrelated processes is only a characteristic feature of a particular class process that is capital relations and not an inevitable outcome of nature being revengeful to all kinds of human engagement. And the impact of natural calamities, epidemics and environmental degradation is not class neutral and uniform to all. It is the poor who suffer the most due to ecological crisis as they cannot afford to pay for the artificial correctives or protective device or cure. It is the undernourished who lack immunity; the poor reside in congested slums and get easily exposed to disease, it is they who cannot afford to stay at home and survive on their savings or can opt to work from home, the informal workers migrant labourers and self-employed lose their jobs and income while the rich can sail through difficult times using money, power and social capital.

The division between mental and physical labour and the assumed hierarchy that class divided societies reproduce became evident more than ever before. The contact intensive activities of production involve physical labour which is supplied mainly by the poorer segments of society, while mental labour can be performed at a distance and it is the rich and the middle class of the society who mostly operate in those segments. On the top of that the labourers who actually work at the risk of being infected are stigmatised if not criminalised as ‘corona carriers’ and were expelled from metro-cities on the one side and the fear that such stigma generated and propagated by some state governments and communities led to inhuman exclusion even in their native places.

POOR SUFFER THE MOST

The pandemic was not equally bad for all. In fact, share market recovered much early and the financial profits soared even during the pandemic. The profits of tech giants increased manifold during this period and big retail players could reap the benefits of massive expansion of online purchase during the pandemic. This is also the time when Mukesh Ambani became the fourth richest person in the world, earning about Rs 90 crores per hour according to an estimate while 24 per cent of Indians were earning below Rs 3000 a month. Wealth of Indian billionaires increased by 35 per cent during abnormal times and apart from agriculture the financial sector was least affected as this requires least contact and mostly operate through digital signals.

The impact of the pandemic on the poor and the middle class also shows a significant variation. People earning Rs 60,000 a month had to accept a reduction of incomes on an average by 10 per cent while those earning less than Rs 20,000 a month had to incur a loss of about 37 per cent on an average. This is further revealed by the digital divide which widened the difference between the poor and the non-poor in terms of continuing work, access to education, health care, vaccination as well as in regard to payments and purchase. According to Oxfam survey, 32 crore students mostly from rural India lost access to education during the pandemic as only 4 per cent of them have computers and 15 per cent could access internet. The survey further reports that 40 per cent of the teachers think that one third of the students would not come back to schools once again. This will further accentuate the gap between the poor and the non-poor in terms of attainments and earnings for the days to come. According to CMIE estimates the listed companies made extra ordinary profits in quarter ending March 21 recording highest growth in surplus and reserves during the past decade while small businesses were destroyed because they had very little working capital to sail through. In fact, replenishing their funds even after recovery becomes difficult because savings are mostly depleted and the working capital is largely exhausted. It was also the time when big corporates picked up smaller ones leading to higher concentration and monopoly growth.

The pandemic situation was also used to exercise and consolidate power at various levels. At the household, we see increased incidence of domestic violence as a mark of heightened assertion of patriarchy, while on the other hand, in most of the organisations and institutions, the people at the helm of affairs were taking a ride on their respective subjects using the advantage of isolation that all had to practice to avoid infection. The draconian labour laws and farm bills were passed during the pandemic without adequate discussion in the parliament. In this difficult time, the government had pushed forward the agenda of privatising public assets. The people who lost the most are the workers. Real earnings of regular/salaried workers declined by 7.6 per cent and for self employed by 26.4 per cent during the period 2019 to 2020. 46 per cent of Indian households had to resort to borrowing to make both ends meet. Therefore, we see that the lust for profits are causing threats to our livelihood and ecology, uncontrolled destruction of natural resources has led to disease and death, in periods of crisis it is the corporates who are bailed out while the poor had to suffer the worst consequences of the pandemic in terms of income loss, unemployment, hunger, death and deprivation.