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 JUDICIARY: LOST IN LOCKDOWN?
SPECIAL DIGITAL ISSUE

www.outlookindia.com May 11, 2020

Life
&
Death
in the time of
CORONA

Are even grief and joy suspended

during a lockdown? Chronicles
of birth and bereavement.

R N I N O. 7 0 4 4 / 1961
 ‹ NAVIGATOR›
T R I B H U VA N T I WA R I
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Ruben Banerjee
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30
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SR GENERAL MANAGERS Kabir Khattar (Corp),
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COVER STORY
GENERAL MANAGERS Sasidharan Kollery,
Shashank Dixit Pandemic or apocalypse, the cycle of life must go
CHIEF MANAGER Shekhar Kumar Pandey
MANAGERS Shekhar Suvarana, Sudha Sharma on. All plans and goals can be deferred, but not the
CIRCULATION & SUBSCRIPTION Anindya
Banerjee, Gagan Kohli, G. Ramesh (South), inevitable. We explore how people are dealing with
Vinod Kumar (North), Arun Kumar Jha (East)
DIGITAL Amit Mishra birth and death during the lockdown.
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The insurance sector
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DeepFake पुडलस डिरासत और जेलों
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INDIA MAGAZ
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2 O U TLO O K | MAY 11, 2020

 LETTERS FEEDBACK › OUTLOOK@OUTLOOKINDIA.COM

4/5/2020

without adequate rest, highly

skewed nurse-patient ratio
and inhospitable working
conditions are issues that
need urgent attention.

NEW DELHI
Sangeeta Kampani: I am
grateful for your cover story
on nurses. Indeed, nurses get
a raw deal even though they
stand in the direct line of fire.
I have composed a piece dedi-
cated to these brave hearts.
Salaam Sisters!
Your care
Always extraordinaire.
Our neglect
Always gross and severe.
Today, as the grim reaper
Holds us to ransom once
again,
We seek you more than ever
Diseased, desperate,
defenceless.
D I G I M A G . O U T LO O K I N D I A . C O M
As you go about, steadfast
like usual,
Healing not a few
But an entire society’s
pustules.
Our immense gratitude
to all you nurses,
A collective appreciation
from the heart
For holding us together
For not letting us fall apart.
Thank you for your
dedication,
Thank you for being with us
Even in our isolation.

Sister
Saviour FROM THE Daak Room
NAINITAL
Vijay Singh Adhikari: Your cover story
Thank You, Nurse (May 4) is
YO U T U B E . C O M / O U T LO O K M A G A Z I N E

heart-wrenching. It speaks volumes of

nurses’ and other paramedics’ hard work
and sincerity. One such instance of
extraordinary resilience emerged during
the Crimean War of 1854, when soldiers
dying of infection rather than war injuries
were given a new lease of life by the lady
with the lamp, Florence Nightingale. As
she says, “The greatest heroes are those
FAC E B O O K . C O M / O U T LO O K I N D I A

who do their duty in the daily grind of

domestic affairs whilst the world whirls as
a maddening dreidel.” The genesis of nurs-
ing can be traced to that transformative
event, which changed the contours of
medical care. She emerged as a beacon of
hope and drastically reduced the number
of deaths. In the present catastrophe too, Boston-based RR Auction has invited bids for this letter
T W I T T E R . C O M / O U T LO O K I N D I A

this noble profession has emerged as our
main line of defence against the virus. It is
said that doctors are next to god. However,
nurses too are no less than god when it
comes to saving precious lives. Social inse-
curity with low pay, long working hours
by Mahatma Gandhi. The auction concludes on May 13 and is
expected to fetch $15,000. The letter pertains to the All India
Untouchability League, which he founded in 1932. It was later
known as Harijan Sevak Sangh. The group helped lower castes
access public spaces such as temples and wells.

00 O U TLOOK4| MAY
OUTLOOK | MAY 11 , 2020
4, 2020
#indianeducationconclave

Prof. Manikrao Salunkhe

Vice Chancellor, Bharati Vidyapeeth
(Deemed to be University), Pune
and President, Association of Indian R P Yadav
Universities (AIU) Chairman & Managing Director
Genius Consultant Ltd

Amitabh Jhingan Ramananda Sengupta

Partner and National Consultant Editior, Outlook
Leader – Education practice,
EY Parthenon

Experts weigh in on how Covid-19

will impact campus placements

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May 3, 2020, (Sunday) 6:00 P.M.

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 LETTERS
For The
People
MARUTHANCODE
David Milton: This refers
to Trauma In The Age Of
The Virus (April 20). While
the lockdown was needed to
avoid mass deaths, its plan-
ning was woefully inade-
quate. It was a trial by fire
in which the flames of hun-
ger and anxiety consumed
the most vulnerable sec-
tions of society. While the
rich can afford to withstand
the rigours of a prolonged
lockdown, the poor cannot.
The central and state gov-
ernments failed to prepare
for human behaviour in
desperate situations and
anticipate the movement of
migrants. Stories of people
riding or walking long dis-
tances to reach home
abound. But this is not the
time for blame games—both
the central and state gov-
JIND
Mahendra Singh: This
refers to your cover story Is
My Job Safe?. I wonder how
India will emerge from the
lockdown. Unemployment
is a big problem. According
to the World Bank, 76 per
cent of the population of
India is in vulnerable
employment. The pandemic
is affecting sectors like tour-
ism, hospitality, transport
and entertainment, but the
worst-affected is the unor-
ganised sector. Regardless,
the way India has dealt with
this crisis is appreciable.
Albert Einstein rightly
said that in the middle of
difficulty lies opportunity.
I hope India will fight
against unemployment
after this turmoil.
60 0
O U TLO O K | MAY
O U TLOOK | MAY
11, 2020
4, 2020
ernments must take joint
action to mitigate migrants’
misery. It is their job to cre-
ate conditions for everyone
to abide by the lockdown.
They must single-mindedly
pool and deploy resources
towards this end.
GUWAHATI
D. Bhutia: Citizens are at
GOA
Aires Rodrigues: This
refers to your cover story
Corona Warriors (March
30). India needs enhanced
primary healthcare ser-
vices and more general
FEEDBACK
the centre of a democratic
set-up. It is most appropri-
ately stated in the Preamble
to the Constitution, which
starts with “We, the people
of India...”. Though there
are multiple pillars in this
set-up, like the legislature,
judiciary and executive,
these are subject to the will
of citizens. During the lock-
practitioners aware of the
health and nutrition needs
of their community. The
Cuban model provides a
good example of how the
needs of everyone, includ-
ing the poorest, can be
› OUTLOOK@OUTLOOKINDIA.COM
PTI
down as well, people’s
safety should be a priority.
While the police are
expected to maintain law
and order, the present crisis
can hardly be considered a
law and order issue. The
need of the hour is commu-
nity policing rather than
high-handedness and
baton-wielding.
met. Cuba has many doc-
tors—some are even sent
to serve in foreign coun-
tries. Recently, they went
to Italy to assist the
healthcare system over-
whelmed by COVID-19.
Medicine is a calling, not a
profession. Young people
ought to know that health-
care involves long hours
with hard work. Perhaps,
COVID-19 is a blessing in
disguise for it will filter out
those who are fearful and
motivated by self-interest
or grandiosity. Good
doctors understand
responsibility and practice
accountability. As
Hippocrates said, “Where
the art of medicine is
loved, there is also a love
for humanity”.
WARNING !!! AGAIN A DEADLY CRASH HAS
STARTED IN INDIAN STOCK MARKET 2020.
NIFTY IS GOING TO TOUCH MINIMUM 5000 LEVEL SOON.
Recently in the month of march 2020 NIFTY got
corrected nearly 40% from life high which is continuing
with the above mentioned crash. Therefore investors and
traders needs to be very careful to deal with the crash since
it will impact investors and traders wealth severely said by
the RESEARCH ANALYST Mr. LAKSHMI NARAYANAN
SUNDARAM.

A
gain a deadly crash has started in Indian Stock Market
2020. In this big crash NIFTY will fall and reach minimum
5000 level. Once NIFTY reaches 5000 level, the fall will
be calculated 46% fall from the recent level. This is going to LAKSHMI NARAYANAN SUNDARAM
be the second biggest fall after 2008 crash. RESEARCH ANALYST (SEBI CERTIFIED).
M I X E D
POLIGLOT S H O T S
SNAPSHOT
Got An
Aspirin?
Puneet Nicholas Yadav
WHEN Shivraj Singh
MP Chouhan called on
Kamal Nath after suc-
ceeding the latter as Madhya Pradesh
chief minister on March 23, the Con-
gress stalwart reportedly had a pithy
message for him: “Now you have my
chair but also my headache”. The
headache, a close aide of Nath tells
Outlook, was a reference to the for-
mer CM’s bête noire, Jyotiraditya
Scindia, whose rebellion had trig-
gered the Congress government’s fall
and paved the BJP’s return to power.
For a month since, Chouhan bat-
tled the challenge of running the
state while the coronavirus toll
steadily rose across MP. His inability
to install a council of ministers when
he assumed office only added to his
problems. On April 21, days after he
gained infamy of being India’s long-
est serving CM without a council of
ministers, Chouhan formed a
five-member cabinet.
Having run MP as its CM for over 12
years in the past, Chouhan perhaps
has some tricks up his sleeve to navi-
gate the current barrage of criticism
against his handling of the coronavi-
rus pandemic. But, if the composition
of his cabinet is any indicator, Chou-
han needs a crash course in managing
the headache Nath had warned him
about. The biggest losers in the recent
cabinet formation exercise were Scin-
dia and his brigade of 22 paratroopers
who had deserted the Congress last
month. The cabinet colleagues chosen
by Chouhan are old BJP stalwarts
Narottam Mishra, Kamal Patel,
8 O U TLO OK | MAY 11, 2020
Fresh Catch This fish
market in Kochi is a
short walk down the pier
Meena Singh and Scindia loyalists
Govind Singh Rajput and Tulsi Silavat.
Scindia, say sources, wanted Silavat,
Rajput, Pradyuman Singh, Imarti
Devi, Mahendra Sisodia and Prabhu-
ram Chaudhary—all cabinet ministers
in the Nath government—to be given
ministerial roles in the first round of
cabinet formation. Chouhan nixed the
idea. BJP insiders in the state insist
that the party’s leadership has sent a
clear message to Scindia by not only
ignoring his demand to accommodate
his six loyalists immediately but also
ensuring that the two who became
ministers weren’t from his political
citadel of Gwalior-Chambal.
Silavat and Rajput belong to the
state’s Malwa and Bundelkhand
regions respectively. The Gwalior divi-
sion is being represented currently in
the cabinet by Mishra who has also got
the home and health portfolios. Sila-
vat, who was health minister in the
Nath government, has been down-
graded as water resources minister.
Rajput was given the food and civil
supplies portfolio as opposed to the
plum revenue ministry he helmed
under Nath.
“By not accommodating his loy-
alists from the Gwalior-Chambal
region, the BJP has indicated to
Scindia that he will not have a free
run… He must earn his place in the
party by ensuring that 16 vacant seats
in the assembly from the Gwali-
or-Chambal division are won by BJP
in the bypolls,” a BJP leader says.
For now, Scindia will have to wait
to extract his pound of flesh while
Chouhan figures out how to keep the
new party satrap under check. O
INTERVIEW
‘Words will live.
Censorship won’t.’
The J&K Police has slapped the
Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act on
Kashmir-based journalists Masrat
Zahra, Peerzada Ashiq and Gowhar
Geelani, triggering condemnation from
media and human rights bodies across
the world. Geelani tells Naseer Ganai
that such moves may “either silence us
or make more people speak out”.
Excerpts from the interview:
How you see the use of UAPA against
you and other journalists?
➞ These FIRs are not meant to attack
individuals, but to silence Kashmiri
voices, to stifle free speech and the insti-
tution of journalism here. The process
itself is the punishment. It is harass-
ment, intimidation and an attack on our
dignity. The aim is to legitimise only one
narrative that suits the present dispen-
sation. Such steps may either create fear
in everyone who has an opinion or
encourage more people to speak out as it
is now about everyone. When you are
being watched, you remain more
focused on your safety than your work.
But intimidating tactics from any quar-
ter won’t cow me down. All I have are
words. Let me assure one and all that
journalism and words will stay, censor-
ship won’t. I think others too
wouldn’t remain silent.
The media fraternity
came out in your
support….
➞ Such draconian meas-
ures take a psychological
toll on our families and
friends, but they also do
understand the larger
design—that it is Big Brother trying
to instil fear and criminalise the middle
ground. Are we moving towards a future
where everything belongs to the State
and everyone is in chains? It concerns
everyone who believes in equality, free
speech and the principles of justice. O
 POLIGLOT
TAMIL NADU

Walking the
Tight Rope
G.C. Shekhar in Chennai

C
IRCUS: along with memories of
unalloyed childhood happiness
and wonderment, the word
conjures up a world of barely-there
make-believe, gaudy paint, tinny music,
betasselled costumes of trapeze
artistes, the sudden burst of wild animal
smell—all so tangibly lifelike for its
being rough to the touch. Then there
are the tear-stained characters smiling
under the arclights—so beloved of
writers, artists and filmmakers. It has
been driven to near-extinction for long,
as entertainment moved from the old
telly to virtual reality wearables. Now,
the few barely surviving has been dealt
a fatal blow by the lockdown. Like the
100-year-old Great Bombay Circus now
touring Tamil Nadu.
The circus had pitched tent at
Mannargudi town of Thiruvarur district
since February 27 and had been attract-
ing a lukewarm response except during
weekends. Since the March 26 lock-
down, its performers have nothing to do.
With no revenue, performers and ani-
mals faced starvation till locals decided
to step in. The state food minister R.
Kamaraj led by example—arranging pro-
visions for performers and instructed
the animal husbandry department to
give fodder for the animals that include
camels and horses. Local grocers pitch in
too whenever the circus manager alerts
them about rations running low.
“Ever since the clampdown on per-
forming animals, big cats, elephants
and monkeys cannot be part of any cir-
cus in India. We only have a couple of
camels, four horses plus a few macaws
and dogs. There is a 134-strong staff,
including performers and mainte-
nance staff from different states eager
to return to their homes as there’s no
income,” says manager M. Ramesh.
While local performers were paid Rs.
1,200 a day, those from Ethiopia and
Ukraine (who returned home after the
Chennai leg was truncated) earned
Rs1,800 a day. “We need at least
Food items being given to the
circus stranded in Chennai
Rs 25,000 a day to feed the troupe and
animals and Rs 5,000 to buy diesel for
the generator. True, we are getting
three meals a day thanks to locals and
volunteer groups. But since workers
are unable to send money back home
the mood is one of despondency,”
Ramesh adds.
Even though the few surviving
Indian circuses have jointly appealed
to PM Modi for a loan to tide over this
existential crisis, the bleakness
extends into future prospects—post
lockdown, it is unlikely that audiences
would be allowed to assemble. Forlorn
employees hope the state government
would help them get back once trains
start running. The Great Bombay
Circus was founded in 1920. In its
hundredth year, their Big Top could be
consigned to history. O

brevis

Theatre actress Malayalam actor Sanjay Kothari Football legend Actor Rishi
Usha Ganguly, Ravi Vallathol, has taken oath as Chuni Gosw­ Kapoor has died in
75, died of a cardiac son of drama legend India’s new CVC. He ami, 82, has died of hospital after a long
arrest in Calcutta. She T.N. Gopinathan Nair, was selected with multi-organ failure in battle with cancer. He
had founded the died at the age of 67. majority votes, Calcutta. Captain of was 67. He debuted in
Rangakarmee group Nephew of poet V.N. though the Congress the 1962 Asiad gold a lead role in Bobby
in 1976, known for Menon, he acted in had objected to his winning team, he (1973) and his
productions like over 100 movies and selection. played 50 interna- last release was
Rudali and Antaryatra. TV serials. tionals for India. The Body in 2019.

M AY 1 1 , 2 0 2 0 | OU T LOOK 9
 POLIGLOT

MixedShots
SULTANS OF SWING CAN’T
SCHRODINGER’S PATIENT
LICK BALLS

B D
OWLERS once spat on their balls
to lick their opponents, but in a
world wracked by COVID-19,
that’s too dangerous. The International
Cricket Council has taken note of the
increased risk of infection with the ‘spit
and polish’ method to bowl a reverse
swing. “If we don’t use saliva, how will we
shine the ball?” asks fast-bowler
Bhuvneshwar Kumar. “Then we will be hit
and people will say we are not bowling well.” So
the council is considering legalising ball-tampering
with shoe polish, petroleum jelly and moisturiser once matches resume.
We hope these more wholesome alternatives will keep the ball rolling. O
OES the case of a 33-year-old
Dimapur-based trader testing positive
for coronavirus belong to Assam or
Nagaland? Both and neither. Nagaland
claims it is free of COVID-19—the state’s
health secretary explains that the patient
has been listed in Assam’s case tally as he
was diagnosed in Guwahati. But Assam’s
updates do not account for the man either,
leaving him in a stateless limbo. “If Nagaland
wants to keep its slate clean, we cannot do
anything about it,” says an Assam health
official. Considering how Assam refuses to
acknowledge the patient, they are indeed
not doing anything about it. O

T
BAD BOA BOYS
HE lockdown might provide the perfect cover for shady dealings, but turns out that it
is hard to outsmart the Karnataka police. Two boys in Bangalore were masquerading
as delivery boys to sell two sand boa snakes for Rs 50 lakh.
The ‘two-headed’ snakes (their tail and head look alike) are quite
valuable in the international market as there are several supersti-
tions associated with them—people believe they secrete ‘anti-age-
ing chemicals’, bring prosperity and are useful for black magic! The
snakes, however, did not bring any prosperity to the boys, who were
promptly arrested. But snakes are not the only creatures people are
smuggling in Karnataka. A teenager in Mangalore tried to smuggle
his friend into his apartment in a suitcase because he was lonely! O

DHAK DHAK CORONA LAGA BORED TO DEATH?

“H
OW are Hindu
festivals celebrat-
ed in Pakistan?”
This query of a young man from
Gurdaspur district in Punjab
posed to a woman in Karachi soon
blossomed into a tale of love across
borders. They started talking on Facebook
in September and by November, Amit Sharma had
proposed to Summan RantiLal. Reader, she said yes, but
as they say, the course of true love never runs smooth.
First, there was the long-distance courtship, then Amit
had to convince his family. All eventually panned out
well and the wedding was scheduled for June, until the
pandemic put a spanner in their plans. But Amit and
Summan are willing to wait—lovesickness, we hear, is
not as fatal as COVID-19. O
N
OW that international travel is shut, what could be the
biggest risk factor for contracting COVID-19? Bore-
dom, perhaps. A truck driver in Vijayawada played
cards with his friends to kill time, but time was not the only
thing he ended up killing—the games resulted in him spreading
the disease to 24 people in one locality. Another truck driver’s
ennui resulted in 15 people getting the infection in the Krishna
Lanka neighbourhood after cards and tambola sessions.
Meanwhile, in Punjab, the police
caught a man taking his nephew
for tuitions. The man tried to
hide why he was out, but the
five-year-old spilled the beans
and even took the police to the
tutor’s house, presumably to get
some reprieve from classes till the
end of the lockdown. O

10 O U TLOOK | MAY 11, 2020 I L LU S T R AT I O N S : S A A H I L , T E X T BY S A A D A H M E D A N D A L K A G U P TA

Watch it on
BUSINESS/MARKET JITTERS
Front-End Leaks
The collapse of six Franklin Templeton mutual funds underlines the volatility of credit risk funds
in times of economic shock. It behoves investors to be more cautious and more patient.
Yagnesh Kansara in Mumbai
“A
bull market is when you
get a stock tip from your
barber…a bear market is
when you get a haircut from your fund
manager.” Thus tweeted corporate
leader Lloyd Mathias in a particularly
jocular vein on April 20. Little did he
foresee the prescience of his witti-
cism. Three days later, the lockdown
necessitated by the COVID-19
pandemic marked its first casualties in
the Indian financial market. The
closure of six debt schemes by the
Franklin Templeton (FT) Mutual
Fund has resulted in eroding the
confidence of investors to a large
extent and has created a sort of crisis
of confidence in the market. These six
debt schemes together have Assets
Under Management (AUM) worth
over Rs 28,000 crore.
Through a notice dated April 23,
2020, FT MF announced its decision
to wind up six of its schemes—Franklin
India Low Duration Fund, Franklin
India Ultra Short Bond Fund, Franklin
India Short Term Income Plan,
Franklin India Credit Risk Fund,
Franklin India Dynamic Accrual Fund
and Franklin India Income
Opportunities Fund.
As per the fund house, “There has
The closed MFs have
been facing great
redemption pressure,
with net outflow of
Rs 9,148 cr in March.
been a dramatic and sustained fall in
liquidity in certain segments of the
corporate bonds market on account of
the COVID-19 crisis and the resultant
lockdown of the Indian economy
which was necessary to address the
same (sic). At the same time, mutual
funds, especially in the fixed income
segment, are facing continuous and
heightened redemptions.”
These funds have been facing signifi-
cant redemption pressure, which
intensified in the months of March
and April, witnessing an estimated net
outflow of Rs 9,148 crore in March
alone. Franklin Templeton says that in
this scenario, this is the best possible
way to safeguard the interest of inves-
tors and is the only viable means to
secure an orderly realisation of port-
folio assets.
Hence from April 24, 2020, the trus-
BUSINESS/MARKET JITTERS
tee and the asset manage-
ment company (AMC)
have: (a) ceased to carry on
any business activity in
respect of the schemes; (b)
ceased to create or cancel
units in the schemes; (c)
ceased to issue or redeem
units in the schemes.
The impact of the furore
was instant: The RBI on
April 27 announced a special
liquidity facility of Rs 50,000
crore for mutual funds in the
wake of the winding up of
the six debt funds by
Franklin Templeton. Banks
can avail of the 90-day funds
from the RBI’s repo window
and use it to lend exclusively
to mutual funds or purchase
investment grade corporate
papers held by MFs. The
scheme will be available from
April 27 till May 11. This is
third instance when the cen-
tral bank has opened a special
window for MFs.
Joseph Thomas, head of
research, Emkay Wealth
Management, says, “The ero-
sion in investor confidence
usually results in more
redemptions and may lead to
liquidity problems for the
mutual fund industry, when
many of them already have
negative cash in debt funds. So,
more than a crisis of liquidity,
it is a crisis of confidence.”
Though the RBI may have announced
opening of a special window to help
debt MFs to tide over liquidity prob-
lems, the after-effects of the low-rated
credit risk fund portfolios may haunt
mutual funds for some more time to
come because of the economic slow-
down and the resultant sluggishness in
economic activity emanating from the
pandemic, Thomas adds.
Amit Singh, Head, Investica, the
online MF platform powered by
Choice Broking, says, “The FT MF
development has come as a shock to
the entire mutual fund fraternity.
This is clearly a casualty of COVID-19.
Debt markets have been facing a lot of
liquidity issues over the last month
even in the high-rated papers. In low-
rated credit papers, liquidity pressure
was higher. But at the same
time, this does not impact the
Mutually Inquisitive entire universe of debt mutual
funds. Funds with high-quality
pen ed to Fran klin Tem plet on’s papers have seen steady
What just hap
yield-orie nted cred it fund s? growth during this period. RBI
Fran klin Tem plet on ann oun ced the winding is also doing its bit to maintain
down of six of its debt funds (which
had credit enough liquidity in the debt
risk)—Franklin Low Dura tion , Fran klin Dyn amic markets. Our recommenda-
klin Cred it Risk Fund , Fran klin Sho rt tion to investors is to stick to
Accrual, Fran
Inco me, Fran klin Ultra Sho rt Bon d Fund, debt funds which invest only
Term
s Fund —
­ with imm edia te in high-rated debt papers.
and Franklin Income Opp
These are uncertain times
effect.
and financial advisors can
ents ? Can we help you navigate through
What happens to our investm
this period”.
withdraw our money? In situations like this, any
a lock dow n. Thes e sche mes will
This is similar to portfolio with exposure to
purc hase s
not allow any further transactions, credit risk debt instruments
me beco mes a
or redemptions. The entire sche have risk of liquidity and will
e six sche mes in tota l
segregated portfolio. Thes be adversely impacted.
ent) of over
have an AUM (assets under managem Further, debt funds are domi-
now stuc k.
Rs 28,000 crore. This entire AUM is nated by corporates and high
thei r resp ecti ve
Investors like you cannot redeem net-worth individuals (HNI)
you cann ot with draw
investments. Simply put, from the investment side and
any money right away. most corporates have liquid-
gon e with the ity issues due to the lock-
Does this mean the money is
down and are therefore
closure of these schemes? aggressively redeeming debt
work like
Not at all. The closed schemes will MFs to meet cash
get any
a segregated portfolio—the day they requirements.
holdings it will
interest or maturity from any of the Retail Investors should be
s.
distributed to all on proportionate basi prudent while investing in
debt funds and should always
Will we get our money back soon? look only for the quality of
instruments
As and when the underlying portfolio the portfolio and should
money back
mature or the scheme receives the completely ignore past per-
they will pay it back to investors. formance, big names and big
brands while making invest-
ments, Singh says.
“Investors affected by the current
crisis have no choice, but to wait so
that the liquidity gets back to the lower
end of the system as and when the
lockdown is over and economic activi-
ties restart. Only then the AMC will
pay back the realisable money,” says
Omkeshwar Singh, head, RankMF,
Samco Securities.
FT has always maintained its image
of managing low-credit high-yield
debt funds. Many retail investors
opted for these funds to get higher
The RBI announced a returns. Now that these schemes have
special liquidity facility shut down, existing investors cannot
do any transaction in these schemes.
of Rs 50,000 cr for MFs. At the same time, no expense ratios
Banks can use it to lend will be charged for these funds.
Investors will get redemptions in the
it to the MFs. future when the underlying bonds
M AY 1 1 , 2 0 2 0 | OU T LOOK 13
BUSINESS/MARKET JITTERS
mature or when they pay interest.
Hence, existing investors can expect
partial amount credits in their
accounts if there are investments in
any of these six schemes.
Investors’ confidence towards credit
risk funds was never high but, coupled
with the uncertainty spawned by the
lockdown as to the full resumption of
the economy, that weak conviction
dwindled further. Investors started
redeeming in force, FT had to liquidate
their holdings and eventually the
scheme was left with illiquid, low-
rated and thinly-traded papers.
Explains Bhavesh D. Damania,
founder and chief caretaker,
Wealthcare Investments: “The situa-
tion doesn’t seem to be the same with
other fund houses and their schemes.
Most large players have already
cleansed their books since default of
IL&FS, DHFL, Zee etc. So I do not fore-
see similar run on other AMC’s credit
risk funds. Even if they face huge
redemption pressure like FT, most have
already increased allocation to AAA,
G-Sec and raised cash levels to combat
such a situation. I feel now is the time to
consider credit risk funds in a staggered
manner. Volatility will be very high in
credit risk funds and one should live
14 O U TLOOK | MAY 11, 2020
with that. Existing investors should
examine their portfolio and take action.
Many debt fund categories are safer and
stable, which can be considered in case
one is fully risk averse”.
Indubitably, the development has
shaken up the debt mutual fund indus-
try. Coming on the heels of a series of
NAV write-downs/segregation by vari-
ous fund houses due to downgrades/
defaults by investee companies, this
will not do any good for the risk-on
sentiments of retail and HNI investors.
The FT episode once again highlights
the weakness in the secondary debt
“Investors shouldn’t
chase returns
disregarding the risk.”
DEEPAK JASANI
HDFC Securities
Frankly, Temptation Print ads
by FT during better days.
markets in India as they tend to get
illiquid by small bouts of micro and
macro negative news.
Deepak Jasani, head of research,
HDFC Securities opines, “Despite the
categorisation by SEBI, a lot of debt
schemes take on risks that are not
reflected in their scheme risk-o-meter
or their category names. Fund
managers with a view to generate
higher return tend to take higher risks
in the portion of other investments
permitted in even safe, low-risk
categories. Investors would also do
well to desist from chasing just
returns without taking into account
the risk taken by the respective
schemes. AMFI (Association of
Mutual funds in India) should educate
investors on how to assess this risk.
On a higher level, faster legal
resolutions/recoveries will help in
development of buying out of stressed
assets and improving the depth and
liquidity in secondary debt markets”.
With the RBI’s swift action to forestall
any turbulence, there is hope that this
is a one-off case, though the economic
wheels are yet to roll out of this difficult
phase. A sharp liquidity crunch can only
be remedied by the solid, guttural roar
of running engines. O
Outlook Wellbeing

&

With

Vicky Ratnani Lachmi Deb Roy

Celebrity Chef Assistant Editor,
Outlook magazine

Join us on
May 1, 2020 (Friday), Time: 6 pm
LOCKDOWN/MICROFINANCE
Where Credit Is Due
Reviving microfinancing
activity is key to economic
recovery
Lola Nayar and Jyotika Sood
T
HE television set plays the news
on mute at a microfinance
executive’s home in Noida. A
prime-time panel of experts is having a
spirited debate about an exit strategy—
how to ease coronavirus restrictions,
find a way out of the pandemic, and
revive the battered economy. The
executive watches silently, without
blinking, eyes glued to the ticker scroll
running at the bottom of the screen. The
branch manager of a microfinance
company and his field officer were
assaulted and arrested in Sarangarh
district of Chhattisgarh for breaching
stay-at-home orders. They were trying
to recommence field operations of
lending and collection of dues. Another
such assault was reported from West
Bengal. At the heart of any revival plan is
the nation’s microfinance market, the
largest in the world, catering to more
16 O U TLOOK | MAY 11, 2020
than 120 million homes that have no
access to financial services. Indian
micro, small and medium enterprises
(MSMEs) and the farm sector are the
biggest beneficiaries of the microfinance
institutions (MFI). And these sectors
have clearly suffered a one-two punch
and cannot afford any missteps. But
instructions from the Centre and states
to let MFIs resume limited operations
aren’t clearly percolating down to local
administrations. The Chhattisgarh and
Bengal cases are grim reminders.
As the uncertainty over the lockdown
extending beyond May 3, raising fears of
more wage, job and business losses, the
RBI recently offered a ray of hope with
its second tranche of liquidity and regu-
latory measures. The package offers a
As the MSMEs,
self-employed, casual
labour etc would have
drawn heavily from
savings due to lockdown,
MFI role is critical now.
PHOTOGRAPHS: PTI
special refinancing facility of Rs 50,000
crore to NABARD, SIDBI and NHB. This
raised optimism for businesses and agri-
culturists seeking funds. But will that be
enough for thousands of MSMEs, local
businesses and the agriculture sector to
restart operations after shuttering their
doors for more than 40 days?
Incomes have dried up and people are
dipping into their savings to remain
afloat. The MFIs are one of the intended
beneficiaries of the RBI’s move with 10
per cent of the targeted long-term repo
operations funds raised by banks ear-
marked for them. This is expected to
help a cross-section of businesses and
individuals lacking access to banks.
However, P. Satish, executive director of
Sa-dhan, an umbrella organisation of
MFIs, is unhappy that the RBI largesse
will not benefit a large number of their
members who serve the most deprived.
“As the RBI has made investment grade
paper floated by MFIs a condition to
avail the earmarked funds, it will benefit
only the top half a dozen MFIs that fulfil
the criteria of having investment grade
rating,” says Satish. That means the bulk
of MFIs will be excluded. Of the 145
MFIs that are Sa-dhan members, about
LOCKDOWN/MICROFINANCE
95 have an asset size of Rs 200 crore
or below, but they cater to nearly 3
million clients.
“Pooling of assets across a range of
investment grades will be required
so that a wide set of institutions can
avail of this fund,” says Mathew
Titus, managing partner at Market
and EcoSystem Advisory and an
MFI expert. Encouraged, however,
by the RBI governor’s statement that
“he will do whatever it takes” to
push credit off-take and boost eco-
nomic growth, Titus is hopeful that
more will be done to help the MFI
sector, which fulfils many needs,
including one of the most critical—
consumption smoothening.
According to KPMG in India analy-
sis, this industry has evolved over the
past two decades and reached over 25
per cent penetration level in the total
addressable market in 2019.
Microfinance lenders aim to provide
easy access to formal credit to cus-
tomers who need it the most and
would not typically be eligible for
bank credit. A vast majority of bor-
rowers are women just above the
poverty line and striving to improve
their household’s living conditions.
The critical importance of MFIs in
uplifting the financially excluded “is
evident from their contribution to
improving financial inclusion, par-
ticularly in semi-urban and rural
locations,” states a recent KPMG
report, which also points out that the
microfinance loan portfolio (35 per
cent) is the highest in eastern and
northeastern India. MFIs are also the
largest contributor of new-to-credit cus- have been requesting all banks to sup-
tomers among banks, SFBs and NBFCs.
Satish points out that people in some
rural areas tend to depend on MFIs to
get funds due to lack of access to banks.
The need for MFIs is critical at this
juncture as MSMEs, self-employed,
casual labour and people engaged in
agriculture-related activities would
have drawn heavily from their savings
due to the impact of lockdown.
Harsh Shrivastava, CEO,
MicroFinance Institutions Network,
hopes banks will pass on the benefits
of lower interest rates to MFIs so they
can pass it on to their borrowers. But
he is also apprehensive because the
moratorium of three months
announced by the RBI was not
MONEY MATTERS
MFI operations have been frozen since mid-March
with less than 10 per cent of the normal lending
and payment collection happening online..
Out of 175 MFIs that report
their data, just 25 have portfolio
of over Rs 500 crore
Midsize and small MFIs
cater to around 3 million
borrowers
Demand for 52% 33% 25-
MFIs can be 30%
gauged by their
2017- 2018- 2019-
growth 18* 19 20**
* after the dip due to demonetisation
** estimated growth
Source: Sa-dhan
extended by some banks to MFIs. “We
port the industry at this critical time.
It is only fair to pass on the benefits to
MFIs as they have already committed
to support their own BOP borrowers
with the same,” says Shrivastava.
The high interest rates charged by
many MFIs remain a concern. After
the RBI stepped in a few years ago, the
bigger MFIs have been charging
around 18-19 per cent interest, while
the small and medium size ones charge period was almost 90 per cent lower
around 22-24 per cent. Veterans say
this is due to the interest rates MFIs
have to pay the banks and the cost of
operations, including collection of
interest and repayments.
For most MFIs, the ticket size is Rs
30,000 to Rs 50,000 and EMI is
dependent on what schedule a bor-
rower adopts—daily, weekly or
monthly. The EMI usually ranges
from Rs 2,000 to Rs 3,000 with
repayment time of one to two years,
explains Rakesh Kumar, executive
director and CEO, Light Micro
Finance Pvt Ltd. “The biggest chal-
lenge is that the collection cannot
be done digitally, unlike in urban
India,” says Kumar. In rural India,
collection by MFIs is still done door
to door through agents, which has
stopped due to the lockdown.
“Some MFIs managed to collect
their March installment, but not
April onwards,” he adds.
Ramesh Arunachalam, an interna-
tional development finance expert,
says the RBI should appoint a broad-
based special national committee
with executive powers, comprising
civil society, independent domain
experts and other stakeholders, to
monitor and evaluate the real-time
effectiveness of its various instru-
ments and measures. “This will help
provide on-course corrections as
well as enhance the effectiveness of
implementation of various meas-
ures, especially by identifying and
removing bottlenecks in real time,”
says Arunachalam, who also stresses
the need for making working capital
and term loans available to MSMEs
at reduced interest rates, with the
RBI rate cuts being passed on fully.
In the normal course, the first quar-
ter of the year used to see less uptake
of credit, except in the case of banks
predominantly lending to the agricul-
ture sector. Khariff lending used to start
in the last week of May or the first week
of June, while non-agriculture lending
would pick up only after July. But due to
the lockdown impact, demand for loans
from the unorganised and informal sec-
tor, non-agricultural sector, animal hus-
bandry and other farm-related sectors is
expected to pick up sooner this year.
Data collected by Sa-dhan shows
credit demand during the lockdown
than what is normal in March. During
the first part of April, apart from digital
transactions, credit off-take was less
than 10 per cent of what is normal.
This is at a time when harvest activi-
ties are in full swing and work for the
next season’s sowing begins. O
M AY 1 1 , 2 0 2 0 | OU T LOOK 17
 INTERVIEW
SAHAKAR-22
FOR DOUBLING
FARMERS INCOME
In line with the Prime
Minister’s call for a New
India, SAHAKAR-22 has been
launched to double the farmers
income. The focus is on primary
cooperatives which have a
bigger role to play in the post-
pandemic era economic boost.
Interview with Shri Sundeep K Nayak, MD, NCDC
Q What are the aims and objective of the NCDC?
National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC) is
the foremost development financing institution for the
cooperative sector. It has been set up under an Act of the
Parliament in 1962. It provides assistance to almost all types
of cooperative societies as per mandate given in the Act of the
Parliament.
Activities of NCDC cover the complete value chain from
“farm to shelf ” including production, processing, marketing,
storage, cold-chain, for agricultural and allied produce
besides other inputs such as fertilizer, seeds banking etc. and
other sectors such as energy, rural housing and forest
produce. It also provides assistance for capacity building and
upgradation of skills of personnel involved in the
cooperatives.
NCDC functions under the over-arching principle of
Sahakar-22 for a New India and for Doubling the Farmers
Income. The benefits flowing from activities of cooperatives
flow ultimately to the individual members, small and
marginal farmers.
Beginning with a meagre disbursement of Rs.2.36 crore
in 1963, the year of its formation, NCDC disbursed Rs.27699
crore in 2019-20 and the cumulative release as on 31.03.2020
stood at Rs.152590 crore most of which has taken place in the
last six years accounting for 70% of total disbursements.
Q What are the criteria for
the NCDC assistance?
NCDC assistance is geared towards
development of cooperatives based on
viable business plans. The assistance can
be short or long term in the form of
investment loans for infrastructure,
margin money, working capital and
capacity development. Well laid out and
transparent eligibility norms determine
sanction of loans to cooperatives either
through direct funding route or through
the State Governments. Quantum of
assistance depends on viable business
plans. There is no minimum and
maximum limit for assistance.
Q How can one apply for
the assistance?
A prospective applicant cooperative
society can apply to any of the 18
regional offices of NCDC spread across
the country or to the head office. The
details of NCDC schemes and pattern of
assistance, eligibility norms, general
criteria for availing NCDC funding,
Common Application Form etc. are
available on NCDC website www.ncdc.in
Q How NCDC is promoting the
primary level cooperative?
Aligned with Hon’ble Prime Minister’s
call for a New India, mission mode
activities titled SAHAKAR-22 have been
launched by NCDC for cooperatives for
achieving the goal of doubling the
farmers income. The focus is on primary
cooperatives which play a critical role in
the economy of the country. In the
ongoing pandemic era and the years that
would follow, primary cooperatives have
to play a bigger role. NCDC has
embarked upon an interim target of
reaching out and nurturing 1 million
NCDC fuNCtioNs
uNDer the over-
arChiNg priNCiple of
sahakar-22 for a New
iNDia aND for DoubliNg
the farmers iNCome.
the beNefits flowiNg
from aCtivities of
Cooperatives flow
ultimately to the
iNDiviDual members,
small aND margiNal
farmers.
members in 5000 primary societies a
year, targeting 5 million primary
cooperative society members in the
coming years. NCDC officials have
already visited in person, 4911 primary
cooperatives to assess their needs,
aspirations and capacities. Some of the
newly launched schemes of NCDC such
as YUVA SAHAKAR, similar to Start
Ups in the corporate world, are focused
on primary cooperatives. Under the
stewardship of NCDC, Co-operative
Sector Exports Promotion Council
(COOPEXCIL) has been recently set up
with the membership of different
stakeholders to give a boost to exports by
cooperatives.
Q What kind of steps is taking
NCDC to promote the training for
farmers and agri industries?
NCDC has a dedicated network of
capacity development infrastructure
under its institution, the Laxmanrao
Inamdar National Academy for
Cooperative Research and Development
(LINAC) headquartered at Gurugram,
Haryana. LINAC along with its six
regional training centres spread across
the country, designs and delivers need-
based programmes for key functionaries
of cooperatives. A highlight of such
capacity development programmes has
been the focus on farmers, fishermen/
women, dairy sector, livestock sector,
value chain based processing etc..
LINAC has covered about 25000 persons
in 900 programmes so far. In the
pandemic period, LINAC has been
conducting online video based
programmes for cooperatives and
NCDC personnel.
Q How much loan has been
disbursed by NCDC in 2019-20 and
what are the future targets?
Beginning with a meagre disbursement
of Rs.2.36 crore in 1963, the year of its
formation, NCDC disbursed around Rs.
27700 crore in FY 2019-20. The
cumulative disbursement by NCDC
since its formation, is around Rs.152600
crore at the close of FY 2019-20. During
the last six years about 70% of the
cumulative disbursements, have taken
place. NCDC aims to play a key role in
the contribution to the economy by
assisting the cooperatives.
Q Bad Debts are posing big threat
to banks but NCDC has a different
story, how NCDC has managed
their loan?
NCDC has a ZERO NET NPA status. It is
an ISO 9001:2015 certified organization.
We adopt meticulous, stringent, needs
appropriate and transparent processes for
our appraisals, sanctions, disbursals,
monitoring and evaluation of projects.
Working closely with the cooperatives
with a human touch has been the guiding
philosophy of NCDC. We initiate timely
corrective action for laggard projects. We
have a multipronged mechanism for
recovery of overdues. Our recovery rate
is above 98%.
Q What are the new schemes of
NCDC for the young generation?
NCDC has launched the YUVA
SAHAKAR– Cooperative Enterprise
Support and Innovation Scheme. The
scheme aims at enabling Start-Ups in the
cooperative sector covering all types of
activities with liberal financing modes.
The scheme aims at encouraging newly
formed cooperative societies with new or
innovative ideas. It is more liberal to
cooperatives in Aspirational Districts
identified by NITI Aayog, cooperatives
with 100% women / SC / ST/ PwD
members. Another new scheme, apart
from the facilitative role through the Co-
operative Sector Exports Promotion
Council (COOPEXCIL) is SAHAKAR
MITRA, targeted at professionally
equipping educated youth to take up a
career in cooperatives through paid
internships.
LOCKDOWN/JUDICIARY

Higher
Resolution
The SC’s decision, and the high courts’ adoption, to hear matters of
“extreme urgency” via virtual means face questions of transparency
and efficiency. And the lower courts lie helplessly inert.

Puneet Nicholas Yadav Congress chief Sonia Gandhi. The SC hearing by the SC much before
Registry scrutinised Goswami’s Goswami continued to wait. Advocate

A
T 8.07 pm on April 23, Arnab
Goswami, the editor and owner
of Republic TV, moved a
petition in the Supreme Court
demanding an urgent hearing to quash
multiple FIRs filed against him by
Congress leaders in various states. The
FIRs had sought Goswami’s arrest on
various grounds, including inciting
communal hatred and making
derogatory remarks against interim
petition post-haste and listed it for
hearing before a two-judge bench of
Justices D.Y. Chandrachud and M.R.
Shah at 10.30 the next morning.
With the SC having laid down stand-
ard operating procedures for listing
and hearing only extremely urgent
cases through video conferencing dur-
ing the ongoing lockdown, the alacrity
with which Goswami’s petition was
heard raised eyebrows. More so, since
scores of petitioners who sought a
Reepak Kansal filed a complaint with
the secretary-general of the SC, alleg-
ing “discrimination” and demanded
corrective steps against the “pick and
choose policy adopted by the registry”.
Kansal tells Outlook, “I had to wait for
11 days to have my matter (regarding
supply of rations to stranded migrant
A three-judge SC bench, headed by CJI
S.A. Bobde, conducts video hearings

00 O U TLOOK | MAY 11, 2020

LOCKDOWN/JUDICIARY
Ten Indonesians, arrested for attending
the Tablighi Jamaat in Delhi, are produced
before a magistrate’s court in Bandra
workers during the lockdown) heard
but Goswami’s case was listed for hear-
ing through a supplementary list
released by the registry within an hour
of his lawyers filing the plea.”
The past month has demonstrated
afresh the misery of the poor as well as
migrants who have borne the brunt of
the devastating economic fallout of the
coronavirus crisis. Add to this the
Muslim community that continues to
be blamed for the spread of the virus
from the Tablighi Jamaat. If the lock-
down-fired cauldron of injustices isn’t
bubbling yet, there are other examples
to consider too: police excesses against
those who “defied the lockdown”; doc-
tors who pleaded helplessly for PPEs;
job losses and pay cuts in the private
sector despite PM Narendra Modi’s
request against it; government serv-
ants pressured to contribute from
their salaries to the PM-CARES fund.
And Kashmiris, for whom the lock-
down is only a continuation of curbs
on civil liberties and the Anand
Teltumbdes, Umar Khalids, Safoora
Zardars, Masrat Zehras and Gowhar
Jeelanis who must battle charges
under the draconian UAPA.
T
HE role of the judiciary as
parens patriae for each of these
citizens cannot be emphasised
enough. Therefore, the arbiters of jus-
tice must adapt swiftly to a lockdown
and post-lockdown situation with
greater swiftness than other pillars of
democracy.
The SC was, in a sense, the first ins­
titution that realised the need for a
paradigm shift in its functioning. A
day ahead of PM Modi’s announce-
ment for a countrywide lockdown on
March 24, Chief Justice of India S.A.
Bobde decided that the court would
conduct hearings through video con-
ferencing. The high courts soon fol-
lowed suit, though a majority of
district courts across the country
continue to struggle.
With the lockdown extending
beyond its initial deadline of April 14,
the SC had, as on April 26, been opera-
tional for 17 working days, heard 593
cases (203 of which were connected
matters), pronounced 41 judgments,
decided 84 review petitions and con-
vened 87 benches. A laudable feat?
Perhaps another data set would put this
in perspective. As on March 1 this year,
the total number of cases pending bef­
ore the SC stood at 60, 649—over 550 of
these are constitutional matters (inc­
luding connected cases) listed before
benches of strength varying between
five and nine judges. This massive back-
log is despite the fact that the SC today
“On an average
Monday, about 70
cases are heard in
each of the 14 SC
courtrooms...980
on just one day.”
MENAKA GURUSWAMY
Senior advocate
has 34 sitting judges—its highest sanc-
tioned strength in 70 years. Senior adv­
ocate Menaka Guruswamy adds
another dimension, explaining, “On an
average Monday, about 70 cases are
heard in each of the 14 SC courtrooms
and so even without factoring in cases
heard on other days, there are 980 cases
heard on just one day”.
The wheels of justice are infamous
for rolling ever so slowly in India. The
massive backlog of cases across all lev-
els of the judiciary—3,22,74,096 cases
at the district and taluka level courts
and another 48,16,011 cases across
high courts are a testimony to this. It
is, thus, surprising that CJI Bobde, in
an interview to The Hindu on April 26,
claimed that “there is much less pres-
sure on the courts (during the lock-
down) as very few actions are being
taken…which normally generate liti-
gation.” Given the staggering backlog,
the assertion—by the CJI no less—of
“much less pressure on the courts”
sounds like a cruel joke on lakhs of
waiting litigants. Indeed, of the 3.22
crore cases pending across district and
taluka courts, over 27 lakh cases have
been pending for over 10 years, while
over 8.76 lakh fresh cases were filed
last month alone. The sharp decline in
matters being heard by the SC or high
courts presently and the total shut-
down in lower courts deprived of
video conferencing infrastructure
threatens to constrain access to jus-
M AY 1 1 , 2 0 2 0 | OU T LOOK 21
LOCKDOWN/JUDICIARY
tice even further. This merits the
question if the courts could have uti-
lised this period of “less pressure” to
dispose of cases pending only for pro-
nouncement of judgment. Arghya
Sengupta, research director, Vidhi
Centre for Legal Policy, tells Outlook,
“At the trial stage or in cases where
evi­dence has to be led, virtual hearings
are not viable but courts could have
utilised this period better by deliver-
ing judgments in cases where all other
stages have been completed… doing so
would have reduced the backlog.”
Much of the present discourse over
how the judiciary is coping under the
lockdown has revolved around the
promptness with which CJI Bobde dir­
ected hearing of extremely urgent
matters through video conferencing
and the rapidity with which HCs repli-
cated the move. Yet, every plaudit lav-
ished upon virtual courtrooms has
been qualified with the dire need to
make the system more efficient, trans-
parent and accessible. Indeed, in light
of Goswami’s case, a major criticism
has been about hearing only matters of
“extreme urgency”. Senior advocate
Kapil Sibal tells Outlook that the apex
court must lay down “clear and precise
processes for identifying urgent mat-
ters so that court gossip over arbitrari-
ness of listing matters is contained”.
Virtual hearings have also been
plagued by technical snags. “Thrice
during my submissions, the judges
22 O U TLOOK | MAY 11, 2020
(Justices N.V. Ramana, S.K. Kaul and
B.R. Gavai) told me that I was not
audible; later my connection got dis-
connected…by the time I logged in
again, the judges were already reading
out their order,” says Kansal. The SC
hearings use the VIDYO App hosted by
the National Informatics Centre.
Sengupta says the “lack of uniformity”
in the platform that lawyers must acc­
ess across all courts for video confer-
encing too needs to be resolved if
virtual courtrooms are to become a
“Clear processes
to identify urgent
matters needed so
that court gossip
over arbitrariness
is contained.”
KAPIL SIBAL
Senior advocate
Your Honour: The Bombay, Odisha and
Meghalaya high courts got new Chief
Justices in Dipankar Datta, Mohammad Rafiq
and Biswanath Somadder respectively, who
took oath during the lockdown
regular feature. “The SC currently uses
the VIDYO App while platforms like
Zoom, WhatsApp and Webex are being
used in some high courts. In J&K, the
continued suspension of 4G services
has made hearings on video confer-
ence impossible,” Sengupta says. There
have also been some unintended but
hilarious instances­­—on April 24, a law-
yer appeared for a video conference
hearing before Justice S.P. Sharma of
the Rajasthan HC’s Jaipur Bench
wearing a vest. The judge reprimanded
him for not being in uniform and adj­
ourned the case till May 5.
These glitches, however, sound like
lesser problems when compared with
the pressing need for other systemic
reforms. Senior advocate Abhishek
Manu Singhvi says the COVID-19
crisis has highlighted the “need for
innovations and new paradigms in the
administration of justice” but rues
absence of the best technology and
equipment available to facilitate daily
hearings by all sitting judges of the SC.
With only limited benches presiding
over select matters daily, cases pend-
ing before constitution benches have
been put on the backburner. Each of
LOCKDOWN/JUDICIARY

these—petitions challenging the

Centre’s abrogation of Article 370,
those against the controversial
Citizenship Amendment Act or the
clutch of petitions over gender dis-
crimination in places of religious wor-
ship listed before a nine-judge
bench—deal with substantial questions
of the law and constitutionally guaran-
teed fundamental rights. It is worth
asking how long their resolution would
be held hostage to the lockdown since
each of these petitions directly affect
the civil liberties of lakhs of citizens as
opposed to problems faced by a
high-profile, pro-government editor.
Guruswamy, who is appearing for peti-
tioners in two constitution bench mat-
ters—the Sabarimala and CAA
petitions—tells Outlook, “I am sure the
judges are thinking about how to res­
ume hearing these cases under the
current circumstances.” Sengupta bel­
ieves that a way out could be to ask all
lawyers to give written submissions in
advance and then be allotted strict
time slots to put forth oral arguments
via video conferencing.
PTI

L
EGAL luminaries caution that
even if the lockdown ends, or is
eased, on May 3 it would take
“months before complete normalcy
ret­urns to court functioning”. Sibal
says, “Unless we develop herd immu-
nity, regular functioning of courts will
be handicapped because courtrooms
are extremely crowded; with the risk of
a highly contagious virus, many judges,
lawyers and petitioners may not want
to be present for hearings”. His fears
are only too genuine: the deadly virus
has made its debut in the hallowed
precincts of the apex court, with a
staffer testing positive for COVID-19
on April 27 and two registrars being
asked to self-isolate. Sibal warns that
the challenge will be enormous at the
district and lower courts, particularly
in remote areas.
A senior advocate tells Outlook
that the absence of concern over the
lockdown’s impact on lower courts and
the shrill advocacy for virtual court-
rooms as a way of the future “smacks
of an elitism typical of our justice del­
ivery system which places judges and
lawyers of appellate courts or the SC
on a high pedestal”. The advocate adds,
“Given high levels of corruption and an
equally poor emphasis on implemen-
tation of schemes,” it is no surprise
that “allocations worth over Rs 1,000
crore” made over the years for digitisa-
tion of court records and setting up
digital infrastructure at the lowest
level of our judiciary haven’t yielded
desired results. “If you visit a lower
court in Chhattisgarh, Odisha,
Haryana or the Northeast states, you’ll
see that neither lawyers nor judges can
operate a computer properly. You can’t
just flip a coin and move to virtual
courtrooms,” he adds.
What is also perplexing is how
proceedings in over a dozen tribunals
have come to a grinding halt during the
lockdown despite these judicial bodies
being equipped with video conferenc-
Could the courts
not use this period
of ‘low pressure’ to
dispose of
cases pending
pronouncement
of judgment?
Tens of thousands of migrant workers have
been left stranded—without food, shelter,
cash, jobs—during the lockdown
ing infrastructure. Bhopal-based law-
yer Yadvendra Yadav says, “The central
zonal bench of the National Green
Tribunal had been hearing matters
through video conferencing for nearly
two years, but stopped functioning
since the lockdown”. Yadav, also a
counsel for the MP government, says
the public will pay a huge price for this
stalemate as the NGT had stayed work
on some key government-funded
projects and with proceedings now on
hold, cost escalation for these projects
would eventually be passed on to
common citizens.
The judiciary had a golden opportu-
nity—it still does—to envisage a justice
delivery system that could function
unhindered at all levels during any
emergency. The lopsided approach of
higher echelons of the judicial system,
which account for just about 15 per
cent of all litigation and 13 per cent of
the backlog, however, places justice
under lockdown. A swifter reprieve for
Goswami while others wait in virtual
queues deepens this perception. O

M AY 1 1 , 2 0 2 0 | OU T LOOK 23
 O P I N I O N / Pradip Phanjoubam
Dissent, Corona’s Next Victim
Questioning the Manipur government’s handling of the
COVID-19 crisis could land you in jail
MANIPUR’S fight against
COVID-19
has been
peculiarly
bipolar. While many have come
forward to contribute to the efforts to
contain the contagion, others are
indulging in hate-mongering and
paranoia on social media. If this divide
can broadly characterise the
psychology of the people, in the
government’s actions too, the split has
become quite apparent.
Like other states in the Northeast,
Manipur has been quite successful in
containing the novel coronavirus. It
has seen just two cases—the first, a
student returning home from London,
tested positive on March 24 and the
other was a participant of the Tablighi
Jamaat congregation at Nizamuddin,
New Delhi. Both have now recovered
and with fears of widespread infection
receding, the state began relaxing the
24 O U TLOOK | MAY 11, 2020
EDITOR OF FPSJ REVIEW
O F A R TS A N D P O L I T I C S
Clean Slate The
two people who
tested positive
for coronavirus
in Manipur have
recovered
lockdown from April 21 onwards. Manipur shut down on March 21, five
days ahead of the national lockdown, partly in anticipation of public
unrest at the selection of Manipur’s titular king, Leishemba Sanajaoba,
as the BJP candidate for the Rajya Sabha election. The election was
scheduled for March 26, but has since been postponed indefinitely. The
state’s landlocked geographical remoteness also probably helped in pre-
venting the spread of the disease.
The government has been lauded for providing rations and monetary assis-
tance to the people of the state stranded in other parts of the country. In a
video conference with PM Modi on April 11, chief minister Nongthombam
Biren Singh raised the issue of discrimination against people from the
Northeast in other states during the lockdown. But amid this onerous battle,
which, to say the least, is far from over, the
Chingiz Khan, state government has also been clamping
down on voices of dissent. Even suggestions
a JNU research regarding where the administration could
be going wrong in handling the crisis are
scholar, was dealt with a heavy hand.
arrested for an Since the government came to power
three-and-a-half years ago, it has not hesi-
article on the mar- tated to go after critics. Its strategy has
ginalisation of the been two-pronged. If an established
media organisation is perceived to be the
state’s Muslims. offender, the strategy is filing cases that
 O P I N I O N / Pradip Phanjoubam

could be characterised as strategic

lawsuits against public participation
(SLAPP). These are lawsuits against
detractors with the intent to censor,
intimidate and silence critics by bur-
dening them with cases that consume
their money, time and other resources.
In 2018, Imphal Free Press published a
report that termed the government’s
victory celebrations “a bit premature”
after a TV channel ranked Biren Singh
third among chief ministers across
India in one of its episodes but omitted
his name altogether in subsequent epi-
sodes. The state sued the publisher,
editor and a reporter of the newspaper.
When it is an individual, mediaper-
son or blogger writing social media
commentaries against the govern-
ment, the response has increasingly
been unwarranted arrests under laws
such as Unlawful Activities
(Prevention) Act and even National
Security Act. In November 2018, TV
anchor Kishorechand Wangkhem was
arrested under sedition charges for
criticising the CM and BJP. When the
judiciary rejected the sedition charge
After the arrests, Devabrata (Bobby) Roy Laifungbam—a doc-
tor by training who runs the NGO Centre for
as untenable, he was rearrested under a coalition of Organisation, Research and Education—was
NSA. Only after the Manipur High picked up by the police for a Facebook post
Court’s intervention was Wangkhem human rights advising the CM not to waste valuable time
released in April 2019. organisations in and resources politicking and instead con-
In September 2018, Popilal centrate on the fight against COVID-19.
Ningthoujam, a youth activist of People the state appealed Konsam Victor Singh too was detained after
Resurgence and Justice Alliance he published a Facebook post enquiring
(PRJA), the political party founded by
to the NHRC to about the amount the CM had contributed
Irom Sharmila, was arrested for throw- intervene. to the CM Relief Fund during the pandemic.
ing eggs on the portraits of the PM and Takhenchangbam Shadishkanta and
CM in a protest against a police raid at Phajaton Kangjrakpam of Youth’s Forum for
Manipur University. He was released Protection of Human Rights were arrested for a press release critical of the
on bail a month later after signing a per- government’s management of COVID-19 and for a plan to build a quarantine
sonal recognizance bond of Rs 70,000. centre by requisitioning a stretch of paddy fields.
In December 2019, R.K. Ichan Thoibi, a These arrests and repressive measures have prompted Civil Society
young and popular Youtube blogger, Coalition on Human Rights in Manipur and United Nations (CSSHR), a con-
was arrested for a satirical sketch on the glomerate of nine human rights organisations in the state, to make an earnest
CM. She was released on bail after 10 appeal on April 4 to the National Human Rights Commission for intervention.
days in custody. But it’s not only common folk bearing the brunt for speaking out. Even
This repression has only intensified deputy chief minister Yumnam Joykumar was stripped of all his portfolios
during the COVID-19 lockdown. So far, on a dispute arising out of rice quota earmarked for MLAs for distribution
five people were taken by surprise by as COVID-19 relief to the people. Joykumar allegedly made irreverent
police visits. On April 8, Chingiz Khan, a remarks against the CM when some women in his constituency complained
JNU research scholar from Manipur, to him about not receiving the promised amount of rations during the lock-
was arrested at his home in Mayang down. Indeed, free rations received by beneficiaries in different constituen-
Imphal, West Imphal district. This was cies have been varied in amount for whatever the reason.
after a Manipuri translation of an article The media in Manipur is already grappling with the severe blows dealt
he had co-written in English for The by the pandemic and the ensuing lockdown. There is barely any business
Pioneer, New Delhi in 2019 on the mar- and many smaller organisations are going through an existential crisis. In
ginalisation of Pangals (Manipuri such a dire scenario, the repressive measures of the government might
Muslims) under the BJP government, end up sealing their fate for good. O
was published in a Manipuri daily. (Views are personal)

M AY 1 1 , 2 0 2 0 | OU T LOOK 25
 S E T H I T E A C H E S S O C I O L O GY AT N A L S A R U N I V E R S I T Y,
O P I N I O N / Manisha Sethi H Y D E RA B A D , A N D I S AU T H O R O F K A F K A L A N D : L AW,
P R E J U D I C E A N D C O U N T E R -T E R R O R I S M I N I N D I A

Enemies of the State

UAPA, the anti-terrorism law being used against anti-CAA
protestors, hollows out the citizen’s right to life and liberty

THE Delhi Police is insistent

that investigation into the
Jamia Millia Islamia and
Northeast Delhi violence
is proceeding ‘fairly’ and ‘impartially’,
guided by ‘forensic and scientific evi-
dence’. Even in a world where words
have seemingly lost all meaning, this
statement still manages to sting you
with its insincerity. The Delhi Police
seems to be mocking us all, rebuking us
in fact, reminding us that words and
phrases like rule of law, justice, victims
and fairness shall be defined only in the
manner that the government pleases.
For, immediately after offering us
these platitudes, the Delhi Police
invoked Sections 13, 16, 17 and 18 of the
Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act
(UAPA) against arrested student lead-
ers and activists involved in the pro-
tests against the Citizenship
(Amendment) Act (CAA). Make no
mistake, the State has thus deployed
the mightiest weapons in its arsenal
GETTY IMAGES
against dissent. Sections 16 to 18 of the
UAPA refer variously to ‘punishment lenge the mainstream national narrative
for terrorist act’, ‘raising funds for ter- Delhi Police seems to the overflowing category of unlawful.
rorist act’, and ‘conspiracy etc’ related to be reminding Sections 16-18 were seeped into UAPA
to a terrorist act. And Section 13 per- from the Prevention of Terrorism Act
tains to punishment for ‘unlawful us that rule of law, (POTA) when the latter was repealed in
activity’—a term that denotes some- 2004 following mounting evidence of the
thing simultaneously vague and all-en-
justice, fairness etc way in which that law was used to target
compassing, just like ‘terrorist act’. shall be defined political dissidents and marginalised sec-
‘Unlawful activity’, for example, tions, including adivasis and Muslims. It
includes bringing about or supporting the way the govern- is this terrible legacy that has been
secession, disclaiming, questioning or ment pleases. absorbed into UAPA. The same impreci-
intending to disrupt the sovereignty sion that attached to POTA’s definition of
and territorial integrity of India, or terror afflicts UAPA too. It is defined pri-
causing or intending to cause disaffec- marily through intent (“intent to strike terror”), others things being
tion. It is thus on the slippery terrain same. It duplicates a range of criminal law offences, such as causing death,
of ‘intention’, ‘support’, ‘questioning’, injuries, damage to public property, disrupting essential services, use of
‘disclaiming’. And because violence is firearms, explosives etc—all of which are otherwise also covered under a
not even the key ingredient of unlaw- range of laws. This provides latitude to the executive—both police and
ful act—which embraces everything government—to subjectively choose what to designate as terror, and what
from act or words, either spoken or to dismiss indulgently as ordinary violence. It is in their power then to
written, even “signs or visible rep- decide when to invoke the draconian provisions of UAPA, and when to
resentation or otherwise”—the law apply (and in some cases, never to apply) ordinary criminal law.
allows the government to consign And this is precisely the seduction of laws like the Terrorist and
political and social struggles that chal- Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA), POTA and now the UAPA.

26 O U TLOOK | MAY 11, 2020

 O P I N I O N / Manisha Sethi
What the UAPA hollows out is the
constitutional guarantees of fair trial
and right to life and liberty. It thus per-
verts the very notion of rule of law
beyond recognition. Check Section
43D(5) of the UAPA, which deals with
bail provisions. A replica of Section
49(7) of POTA, it makes it practically
impossible for an accused to secure bail.
Under this section, bail cannot be
granted till the public prosecutor has
been heard, and it can be declined if the
magistrate concludes, upon reading the
chargesheet, that the charges are true.
So, in effect, an accused has to demon-
strate her innocence, that too at the
start of the trial, in order to be even
granted bail. UAPA thus explicitly—and
legally—denies the presumption of
innocence. Which, of course, is the very
bedrock of modern law.
Secondly, through its sheer arbitrari-
ness, it allows the marking out of ‘ene-
mies of the State’, who can then be
quarantined and neutered. These are
both political ideas and groups (‘urban
Naxals’, for example, most recently),
and categories of people defined by
religious or ethnic markers.
The figure of the anti-CAA protestor
condenses both a dissident politics and
a suspect religious category. A Muslim
out on the streets speaking politics and
rejecting the communalisation of citi-
When No Means No
An anti-CAA protest
in Delhi
zenship—from Sharjeel Imam to
UAPA consigns Safoora Zargar—is then a threatening,
political struggles dangerous ‘Other’ par excellence.
Read, for example, what the notorious
challenging the FIR in the Delhi violence case says: it
mainstream nation- speaks of a ‘premeditated conspiracy’ of
rather apocalyptic proportions. It
al narrative to the involves—as alleged links in the chain
leading up to rioting—young student
overflowing category leaders who gave speeches against CAA
of unlawful. and the National Register of Citizens
(NRC), protesting women and children
who blocked roads under the Jaffrabad
metro station, and all ordinary Muslims who did not send their children
to school knowing that violence would break out!
Imagine that sweep. It is not even simply those who have been arrested
who are criminalised here…(and that’s a widening lasso that has already
netted Jamia alumni association president Shifa-Ur-Rehman). The real
effect goes way beyond that. In one stroke, the conspiracy is shown to be
one in which the entire Muslim community was complicit, women and
children included. ‘Instigator’, ‘conspirator’, ‘rioter’: every Muslim is guilty.
This is no ordinary FIR. Its narrative burden is more than simply to
criminalise a democratic movement—a movement that was as peaceful
and inspiring in its form as radical in its content, a movement that simply
sought adherence to the Constitution. It is to pathologise an entire com-
munity. And by extension, to wipe out the fact that the victims of the
February violence—now designated as a terror act through the applica-
tion of UAPA—were overwhelmingly Muslims.
Would terror charges have been invoked if a different set of accused had
been booked for the Northeast Delhi violence—say, those whose speeches
openly threatened violence against anti-CAA protestors? That such a
prejudiced document is the basis of the present investigation and prose-
cution should give us all, and the judiciary, ample cause for alarm. O
(Views expressed are personal)
M AY 1 1 , 2 0 2 0 | OU T LOOK 27
 O P I N I O N / Mrudula Bhavani
Dr Kafeel Khan and the
Story of Another Epidemic
The expertise the imprisoned doctor offered to the fight against COVID-19
comes from a self-driven struggle with encephalitis, which kills thousands
THE Supreme Court directed
on March 23 that all pris-
oners, under trial or con-
victed and jailed for less
than seven years, be considered for
release on a six-week parole, in the
wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. On
March 28, Dr Kafeel Ahmed Khan,
twice-suspended paediatrician from
Gorakhpur BRD Medical College, too
was supposed to get released. But at
the last minute, his parole order was
suspended. “All other prisoners on the
list were released,” his brother Adeel
Khan told this writer. His was a special
case, of course.
The Kafeel Khan story is usually told
as one that speaks of polarised times
and a hard, carceral state—the easy
scapegoating of an innocent with the
wrong kind of name, dissent being
criminalised, acquittal being followed
by a harsher charge, bail being fol-
lowed by more prison…. But there’s
another track to the story. A medical
one, which connects the present con-
text of COVID-19 to that of another
deadly epidemic.
On January 29, a day before India’s
first COVID-positive case was
reported, Dr Kafeel was arrested from
Bombay airport, this time on a political
charge. He had already been warning
the government and public about the
looming health crisis. In fact, he had
made awareness videos just before his
arrest—explaining what the coronavi-
rus is and how the symptoms would
show up. From jail, he wrote two let-
ters. His first letter again warned peo-
ple not to take COVID lightly and
spoke of the dangers of Stage 3
transmission.
The second letter, written on March
19, was addressed to PM Narendra
Modi: Dr Kafeel requested that he be
released so he could lend his energies
to the fight against the pandemic, cit-
28 O U TLOOK | MAY 11, 2020
M R U D U L A B H AVA N I I S A F R E E L A N C E J O U R N A L I ST
ing his expertise in the area. He suggested that India move towards mass
tests, ramping up the supply of testing centres, ventilators and ICU beds.
There was no response. Ironically, the same evening the PM addressed
the nation and asked Indians to clap and clang bells to express gratitude
towards doctors. That duly happened on March 22. Soon, India entered
lockdown and a doctor’s lockup got indefinitely extended—on April 14, an
advisory board refused to revoke the NSA charges on him.
But what is the “expertise” Dr Kafeel cited? Let’s briefly reprise the his-
tory of his incarceration. On August 10-11, 2017, children in the Japanese
encephalitis (JE) ward of BRD Medical College started dying in a cluster.
For want of oxygen—the supplier had not been paid. Dr Kafeel, off duty on
the day, rushed to the hospital with a few cylinders he had personally
arranged. He was hailed for a day as a hero, when the CM warned him for
“trying to be a hero”. The story turned
there. He saw nine months in prison,
before the court gave him bail for want of
evidence. “I squarely blame the national
media,” Dr Kafeel had told this writer in
August 2018. “Those journalists who sit in
Delhi and Mumbai didn’t even come down
to the ground to ask who I was before
damning me.” Final acquittal, by depart-
mental inquiry, came in September 2019—
but was immediately followed by another
suspension, vengefulness writ large over it.
But all the dramatic headlines had taken
the focus away from JE—which killed in
The annual toll the thousands for decades in that region.
The annual toll of 5,000-6,000 that JE
exacted by JE exacted around Gorakhpur—up to six-
around Gorakhpur seven times what COVID-19 has done
across India till now—stood as an alarm-
is six-seven times ing signpost to India’s public health frail-
ties. A non-communicable viral disease
what COVID-19 transmitted by infective mosquito bites,
has done so far JE shares nothing obvious with COVID
beyond a zoonotic link (pigs, rats, water
across India. birds are carriers). Specifically, it does not
transmit from human to human. But there
are commonalities: no specific treatment
or vaccine is available for JE; the only possible cure is prevention.
We do not yet know how COVID-19 may interface with classic Indian
vulnerabilities—the physiological ones of our rural populations, and the
structural ones of our public healthcare. But JE, first appearing in Madras
in 1955 and endemic to the Gangetic belt around Gorakhpur since the
1970s, has a clear class bias. “It is a disease of the poor,” says Dr Kafeel,
who spent many months after his release tracking JE’s epidemiological
map on the ground. “Some 99 per cent of the kids who die are below the
 O P I N I O N / Mrudula Bhavani
poverty line. They live in huts. They
don’t have good sanitation, safe drink-
ing water, education. And they don’t
have food. Malnourishment equals low
immunity,” he told this writer in an
interview in May 2018.
His experience turned Dr Kafeel into
something of a driven man. He visited
hotspots from Kerala to Bihar and
Assam, conducting free medical camps,
tracking data…trying to see how India’s
slothful public health machinery can
be primed to deal with epidemics. His
focus expanded from JE to the wider
pool of diseases bundled under Acute
Encephalitis Syndrome (AES). Their
causes could be diverse: viral (like JE),
bacterial (like scrub typhus), or even
fungal or from toxins. But the effects
are always “dramatically acute”: fever,
extreme neurological impairment (sei-
zures, delirium) and quick death. The
data was worrying: Dr Kafeel found
that, against a pattern of decline from
2013, the numbers had started increas-
ing since 2016. In 2018, each month
had seen at least 250 deaths, he told
this writer.
A
FTER the 2017 incident, the
government has “woken up”
and pumped in a lot of money,
says Dr Kafeel, but he would like to see
a definite strategy. “The BRD in
Gorakhpur is only one medical college
and it caters to half of Bihar, half of
Nepal, half of Purvanchal. It’s no good
improving the infrastructure only in
BRD. You have to work on the peripher-
ies. Encephalitis doesn’t give you much
time: if you don’t act as soon as the fever
starts, the child goes into coma, and
then it becomes very difficult.... To act
early, we need a functioning peripher-
al-level health system in UP. What we
have is a white elephant…buildings, but
no staff, no medicines,” he says.
On September 22, 2018, Dr Kafeel
went to examine the ‘mysterious dis-
ease’ that had killed 70 children in 45
days at Bahraich district hospital. He
entered the hospital (with prior per-
mission) to talk to the parents of
affected children, and zeroed in on
encephalitis. But before he could hold
a press conference, he was taken and
kept in illegal custody for 18 hours.
Sections of the IPC were soon evoked:
it was another month in jail. When released, he spoke of having heard
cops discussing a staged encounter. Life had been harsh of late—in June,
shots had been fired at his younger brother, Kashif Jameel.
In June 2019, Dr Kafeel camped with a few other doctors in
Muzaffarpur, Bihar, where the ‘chamki bimari’ had created panic. The
death toll had touched 300; a majority were Mahadalit children. Its
cause was commonly, if contentiously, taken to be hypoglycaemic toxins
present in the litchi fruit acting on malnourished bodies. This is Bihar’s
litchi-growing hub—and poor children were often making do with just
that fruit for dinner. Dr Kafeel’s fact-finding team, which diagnosed the
symptoms as classic encephalitis, listed seven major causes: poor per-
sonal hygiene, lack of clean drinking water, malnutrition (which they
want recognised as a health emergency), overpopulation, poor vaccina-
tion, extreme heat and humidity, and poor sanitation. Not to speak of
public health: Union health minister Dr Harsh Vardhan had promised a
virology institute and encephalitis treatment centre for Bihar in 2014.
What they saw was a 120-bed hospital with 260 patients admitted.
Dr Kafeel’s primary concern is that the government does not reveal the
real data about child deaths, making it difficult to assess progress—or its
lack—in ensuring health rights to citizens from the most vulnerable sec-
tions. Others agree. “Dr Kafeel Khan’s arrest is unjustifiable, a vendetta.
He must be allowed to continue his
work,” says paediatrician and public
health specialist Dr Binayak Sen.
“Acting early against Manoj Kumar Singh, an independent
journalist from Gorakhpur, also says
JE depends on UP’s the government hides AES deaths.
peripheral-level “After 2017, they are cagey. They claim
to have reduced the encephalitis men-
health system, but ace by 70 per cent...the national vec-
tor-borne disease control programme
we have only build- shows a decrease for the last two years.
ings…no doctors or But data is being manipulated. Many
cases are recorded as Acute Febrile
medicines,” says Dr Illness, even if their symptoms are dif-
Kafeel Khan. ferent. My ground reporting reveals no
big difference in the situation.”
Meanwhile, the story on the legal
track proceeds to script. He was
already deemed too vocal on social media…that had already been cited
as a reason in his second suspension. Now, as he made his way to a
Shaheen Bagh-like protest in Mumbai, they used an anti-CAA speech he
made at AMU to net him. He had spoken of a ‘Health for All’ campaign
where he and several others had approached ministers, MPs and politi-
cians across India, seeking help to rebuild a shambolic health infra-
structure. “Our demand for food, clothes, shelter, health and education
is 70 years old. This is everyone’s demand, the poor people’s demand.
But they will talk about Bajrang Bali, Kashmir, Ram mandir, CAB, NRC.”
Those words from anyone else would have been seen as the everyday
content of dissent, the sort that fills social media. But for Dr Kafeel Khan,
it brought jail. Even after an Aligarh court found freedom of speech
supreme and granted him bail, the UP government created a new norm
and kept him in custody for four more days, at the end of which loomed
the NSA. His wife, Dr Shabista Khan, met him in jail after that and fears
for his well-being. The Supreme Court had transferred his case to the
Allahabad High Court on March 18…but it never even got listed. Another
pandemic had come in the way. O
(Views are personal)
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Grief. Joy. Love. Loss.

This virus kills them all
Salik Ahmad

The most striking depiction of death that I

ever read was in one of the Harry Potter books. It
was the death of Sirius Black, a godparent to
orphan Harry. While fighting in a fierce wizardly
battle beside him, Sirius is hit by a powerful spell.
Curving into a ‘graceful arc’, his body levitates
and sails through the ragged veil of a mysterious
archway, disappearing behind it. Screaming
Sirius’s name, Harry dashes to pull him out of the

Salik Ahmad and Preetha Nair in Delhi

and Ajay Sukumaran in Bangalore
30 O U TLOOK | MAY 11, 2020
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doorway, but is grabbed by his well-meaning
teacher, “There’s nothing you can do, Harry... noth-
ing... he’s gone.”
Author J.K. Rowling doesn’t exactly say that Sirius
dies. But he’s gone. Harry struggles with all his
might to get out of the grip, to try and save Sirius,
the closest to family he had, but in vain.
Except for the very physical passage of bodies that
leave us, that is approximately how we feel and
perceive people exiting our world. They disappear
behind a veil, to the other side, of which we have not
the faintest clue, and from where there can be no
retrieval. Religions have guided our imaginations,
helped us conceive of an other side. Even the stern-
est non-theism restores us to primordial matter:
perhaps death is a bridge
between philosophies. But it
still does not illumine life.
Clueless about what to do
from this side, we often turn
A Chennai
to religion, like we do for all
things that lie beyond the fief
mob disrupted
of human capability. We per- a doctor’s burial
form the last rites as ordained
by religion, pray for the thinking it
departed soul. And for the
voiding that has happened, we would be like
come together and seek sup-
port in each other’s company. sowing the virus.
But what happens when you
can’t do that? The lockdown in
the wake of the coronavirus
pandemic is forcing many people into that very
marshy sphere of helplessness. A lady’s father passed
away in Assam, and being stuck in Delhi, she could
not go for the funeral. The void will remain forever,
she says. An elderly man’s sister passed away, just a
few kilometres from his house, and refusing all
advice, even putting his own vulnerability aside, he
went to see her that one last time, to touch her feet,
to pay his respects in person. It would have always
pricked him if he hadn’t gone, he says.
“We haven’t developed societies to live apart from
each other. Everything we have done, the way we
have built communities and cities and villages, it is
to foster connections,” explains Sabah Siddiqui, a
Pune-based psychologist who teaches at FLAME
University. “And coming together when somebody
dies has been a very important way of mourning.
We gather to celebrate the life that has passed, and
to look after each other…. The funerals have huge
religious significance too. Not being able to give
their loved ones a funeral they deserved causes a lot
of distress to people, because it’s seen as necessary
to allow them to move on.” Siddiqui works on faith
healing and has studied healing practices of shrines
for over 10 years.
The coronavirus has caused over 1,000 deaths in India
in the past two months. As purely a statistic, it’s paltry
because the country registers as many deaths every
one-and-a-half hours on any given day. Yet, the billow-
ing and malignant mist it has cast over everything far
surpasses any number one can put to it. Yes, it’s the high
possibility of contagion, the absence of antidote, indeed,
the complete domination of public discourse by the
virus…all that and something more has turned the
country’s atmosphere, rather much of the world’s,
paranoid and morbid. In some
cases, it’s even disturbing our
normal human responses to
death. We are normally prone
to according dignity to the
dead—even if they be strangers.
To say a silent prayer to the
passing cortege.
But signs of depravity are
entering even that sacred
space. Last week, a group of
50-60 locals in Chennai
attacked the ambulance car-
rying the body of a doctor
who died due to the virus and
disrupted his burial at a cem-
etery. Injured, bleeding, the
ambulance drivers drove the corpse back to the
hospital. A fellow doctor and two hospital ward
boys then buried the doctor elsewhere, in the thick
of the night, under watch of the police. The doctor’s
son and wife had come to the cemetery, but had to
flee to escape the mob. Rumour spread faster than
a virus, fear leached into the soil…would a burial be
like sowing the virus? That thought was enough for
a neighbourhood to turn into a mob.
In Meghalaya capital Shillong, leaders of the
Jhalupara locality did not allow the body of a doctor
who died of COVID-19 complications to be cremated
at the crematorium there fearing contagion. The
traditional local council of Nongpoh town on the
Shillong-Guwahati highway, where the ashes were
to be buried at his farmhouse, also refused saying he
was not a permanent resident of that place. Though
residents of Mawryngkneng, a village near Shillong,
offered to let the burial take place at the local ceme-
tery out of gratitude for his service to them, he was
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finally interred at a cemetery in Lawmali area of the
city about 3 km from the hospital he owned and
where he had breathed his last the previous day.
In Ludhiana, the family of a 69-year old woman,
who died due to the virus, refused to accept or cre-
mate the body. Officials said they called the family
twice and even assured them of providing protective
gear. Nobody turned up. Not even the woman’s son.
The body was finally cremated by the district author-
ities. The virus has truly subverted our long-endur-
ing, unstated covenants about how to treat the dead.
As if death, and its concomi-
tants, have attained new, puz-
zling meanings.
This extends to another
primal human event: birth.
The sprouting of life in the
middle of a disruptive dread
is almost certain to be a reas-
suring, even stabilising expe-
rience. Birth is a moment of
affirmation, Siddiqui says, of
not just that you are alive, but
that your future is also going
to be alive through this new
person. “It’s a promise of life,
and its significance is greater
at a time like this because the
How agonising
future looks uncertain and
dark.” Perhaps this is why
must it be for a
birth rates spike during a cri-
sis. In desperate times, people
COVID-positive
fall back on life itself, she mother to be
adds. Giving birth makes life
meaningful; gives more life to separated from
life, as it were. “My friend,
pregnant of five months, her newborn!
sounds much more positive
than I do,” says Siddiqui.
Earlier this month in Old
Delhi, a woman in her early fifties gave birth to
her first child through in vitro fertilisation. The
child had been conceived after many failed attempts,
and the family spent a huge amount on the process.
The woman’s husband is engaged in the handicraft
business and almost all their savings have been
exhausted in the past year. With businesses coming
to grief due to the lockdown, they have been further
squeezed economically. But they have a baby,
after years of marriage. In the thick of calamity,
amidst an all-encompassing morbidity, a couple’s
dreams came true.
Salik Ahmad and Preetha Nair in Delhi
and Ajay Sukumaran in Bangalore
32 O U TLOOK | MAY 11, 2020
Even hope has been a difficult emotion to reach
for. A lot of women struggled to access maternal
healthcare because of the lockdown. The regular
checkups and tests during pregnancy became an
ordeal as hospitals and clinics turned into high-risk
areas. As corona assumed centrality, it was as if
everything else had to be on pause. A woman in
Delhi was in fact stopped by the police on the way
to a clinic for delivery, and was only allowed to go
after a phone call to the doctor.
We also heard heartwarming stories of healthy
children being born to corona-
virus positive mothers. India’s
COVID-infected now number
in excess of 30,000; among
them are women who are ex-
pecting. There is an extremely
unsettling dimension there,
though. Owing to an almost
cruel medical necessity, the
newborns are immediately
separated from the mother to
avoid the risk of infection.
What an agonising and alien-
ating experience it must be!
To not be able to hold your
own baby, to be content with
seeing images on phone
screens, not knowing when
the time would come for the
mother’s touch, if at all.
Of the forces that govern us,
death is the real master, po-
tent and unpredictable. A few
years ago, I found myself
rep­orting on a story where a
birth and a death happened in
the family at the same time.
Umar Mohammed, a cattle
trader ferrying cows, was
waylaid and killed by a group of cow vigilantes in
Alwar. As his body went into post-mortem, his wife
went into the labour room. The funeral would
happen the next day. The baby wailed under a
thatched roof. A small distance away, Mohammed’s
father stood next to the body, facing the funeral
prayer congregation, and asked if his son owed
any­body anything. The only thing that hung in the
air that day was death. The wails of the newborn
had been eclipsed. There’s something about the
sight, and sound, of adults wailing. Hovering like a
djinn, the master was smiling. O
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S A N D I PA N C H AT T E R J E E

Send A Prayer
For Strength
A CHIRA Dev’s father was her best
friend. The 35-year old would ring
him up multiple times in a day to dis-
cuss the day’s events. She worked and
stayed in Delhi, while her parents
lived in Silchar, Assam. When things
would go wrong for Achira, or she
would be in distress, her father would
tell her, “Why do you worry so much?
Everything is temporary.”
Her best friend passed away on
March 31. She was in locked down
Delhi and could not go to see him. “I
couldn’t reach my father…my father
who did everything for me. I couldn’t
see him, feel him, touch him,” says
Achira, who last saw her father in
November, when she had gone home
for three weeks. “The void will remain
forever.”
Achira’s father had suffered from
bronchial asthma for a long time but
the condition had never become criti-
cal. It turned so during the lockdown.
“There were no flights, no trains, just
no way to reach home. I thought of
driving down, but it would have taken
four-five days, and there were so many
states to cross. I don’t even know if
they would have allowed me to.”
When she was finally faced with the
truth that she won’t be with her father
in this dire situation, Achira sat down
to pray for him, “All I could do was
pray.” Her father had always told her
to keep faith in God, especially when
things were difficult. Her brother, who
lives in Bahrain, could also not get
back home for the last rites. The fam-
ily members now speak to each other
on video chat and grieve over their
loss. “I feel it’s easier to mourn and
overcome the grief when your loved
ones are around you,” says Achira. O
—Salik Ahmad

I couldn’t reach my father … my father who did

everything for me. I couldn’t see him, feel him,
touch him, the void will remain forever.” ACHIRA DEV

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S A N D I PA N C H AT T E R J E E

Waiting For Deliverance “My dad’s

“D EATH is the only certainty in life and it’s inevitable,” muses Malay Kumar
Goswami, who lost his father in the middle of the pandemic. When he bid
a final farewell to his ailing father a month ago, Goswami had reconciled to the
funeral was
vagaries of life and death. However, the grieving son harbours a regret, which is
going to haunt him forever —not being able to perform his father’s final rites.
attended by a
Reconciling to the death of a loved one is hard, but coping with loss during this
unprecedented crisis can be harder, says Goswami. His father, Radha Kishore
few relatives
Goswami, a retired deputy magistrate, was his idol in many ways. The family
conducted his sparsely-attended funeral after he passed away on March 20. who reside in
“My dad’s funeral was attended by a few close relatives who reside in the city.
Those who live far couldn’t come,” says Goswami.
The final rituals, according to Hindu tradition, were to take place on the
the city, and
11th day after death. By that time, the lockdown was already in place in
Malay’s native town Uttarpara, near Calcutta, and the family was hamstrung
I couldn’t do the
by the restrictions in the city. The family tried frantically to arrange items
for the ceremony, but in vain. rituals for him.”
Goswami repents that he failed to fulfil his responsibility towards the departed
soul, “My father was a religious person and I couldn’t do the rituals for him,” he MALAY KUMAR
says. However, Goswami takes solace in the belief that he can offer the rituals on GOSWAMI
the first death anniversary of his father. “My father will accept it”, he says. O
—Preetha Nair

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To The
Boundless Deep
H ARMESH Kohli passed away on the
morning of April 8. It was her 80th
birthday. As is normal on reaching a land-
mark decade, wishes had been pouring in on
the family WhatsApp group from midnight
onwards. But Harmesh was unwell, gravely
so, and couldn’t sleep a wink the whole
night. A restless malaise had grown, then
tightened its grip on her gradually for the
past fortnight; that night had been unusu-
ally difficult. A day earlier, the family had
called up a nursing home but, with all
resources directed towards fighting corona-
virus, no doctor was available. A nurse heard
out the symptoms, told them it could be
intestinal gas, and prescribed medicines.
On the night before her death, Harmesh
had, with premonitory lucidity, told her
daughter how to deal with her belongings.
“She was 20 years elder, almost like a
mother to me,” says her younger sister,
Kusum Sachar, who lives seven kms away,
but could not see her one last time. “The
regret will remain with me throughout my
life,” whispers a distraught Kusum.
On hearing of her beloved sister’s death,
Kusum’s first impulse was to rush out. But
others in the family told her of the risks in-
volved. She could contract the virus if she
stepped out, was vulnerable herself due to
age, and could pose a threat to other senior
members in the family. But her brother,
who lives in the same house, was resolute
about going. “He said he won’t ever be able
to forgive himself if he didn’t go,” says his
wife Shashi. After much emotional dilemma,
the couple decided to go. They first went to
the police station, had a lockdown pass
made, and reached Harmesh’s house in
Tagore Garden. But, since all elderly citi- P R I YA N K A S A C H A R
zens had been requested to stay at a safe dis-
tance, he couldn’t enter the premises.
When the bier came out of the house, he “He said he won’t be ever able to
touched his elder sister’s feet. They were
barred from entering the cremation ground
too. “If he had not been there, it would have
forgive himself if he didn’t go,
always pricked his conscience,” says Shashi.
“Many could not come. We can only find con-
many couldn’t, only consolation
solation in the fact that she went peacefully,
and on an auspicious day.” Kusum remem- is the fact that she went
bers her sister as a pious, upright person. “I
see her peaceful face when I think of her
during meditation. I know she understands
peacefully.” BROTHER’S WIFE, SHASHI
our situation.” O —Salik Ahmad

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A Little Bundle
Of Hope
T RUE to her name, week-old
Arthisha has brightened the world
of her parents amid the gloom and
despair brought about by the insecu-
rity of the pandemic. Bringing Arthisha
into the world wasn’t a smooth ride for
Piyali Chattopadhyaya, but the new-
born’s sudden, toothless smiles have
helped the mother to tide over all the
tumult. “Arthisha means ray of light.
We hope that the world will rediscover
purpose and happiness soon, just the
way my daughter changed our lives,”
beams Piyali.
It was during the last leg of the preg-
nancy that her hometown Naihati
near Calcutta was locked down along
with the rest of the state. Her regular
checkups were cancelled as the gyne-
cologist discouraged Piyali from visit-
ing the hospital because of the risks
involved in getting exposed to infec-
tion. The crucial last trimester was
riddled with anxiety as basic tests
such as blood pressure and ultrasound
were not done, she says. “It was a
nerve-racking experience as there
were slight complications during the
pregnancy”. Though the expectant
mother raised the concerns with her
gynecologist, she was told to go either
to a nearby government hospital or to
wait for a week for the next
appointment.
The family was in for some anxious
moments when Piyali went into
labour on April 23, before her due date.
Her husband, Partha Pratim
Chatterjee says that they got lucky
after a private hospital agreed to admit
his wife. “Though there was the uncer-
“Though there was the
tainty of not having the familiar doctor
during labour, we were extremely
uncertainty of not having the
lucky to get the admission on time,”
says Partha Pratim, a researcher with familiar doctor during labour,
the higher education department.
With no relatives and friends around,
the first-time parents are missing the
we were extremely lucky to get
celebrations for the birth of their first-
born. “Relatives have seen the baby’s
the admission on time.”
photos on WhatsApp,” says Chatterjee PARTHA PRATIM CHATTERJEE
with a smile. O
—Preetha Nair

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A Quiet
Nativity
A MIDST a tedious churn of concern and
caution comes a burst of joy. Sadia Anwar,
23, gave birth to a boy on April 19 in Delhi. The
single mother named the boy Nawfal, after
Waraqah ibn Nawfal, a companion of the
Prophet. Anwar’s parents had gone to
UP’s Sultanpur, where they hail from, for some
urgent work, when the lockdown froze all
travel. On the date due for delivery, Sadia and
her brother were stopped on the way to the
clinic by the police, who let her pass only after
a phone call to the doctor cleared matters.
With all garment shops shut, finding clothes
for the baby is difficult; Sadia makes do
with old clothes of other, older babies in the
neighbourhood. Baby Nawfal awaits a
grander welcome. O —Salik Ahmad
FA R K H A N DA A S H FAQ

Suspending
Open Joy
R ITU Jain and Rakesh Bhansali had
their second child on April 25.
Bhansali, a Delhi-based stock trader,
says that when the first child was born
six years ago, there was no worry. “But
today,” says the visibly worried father,
“I have to worry about every little
thing. Even the packet of milk that I
bring home has to be doused with hot
water.” Bhansali, a native of
Rajasthan’s Nagaur, continues in the
same breath: “You don’t know what is
going to happen tomorrow. The fear
is constantly there…I can’t even be
happy with all my heart; it just feels
incomplete.” That sense of carefree
completion would only come from
normality, a state of being the world
waits for. ­O —Salik Ahmad

“You don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow.

The fear is constantly there…I can’t even be happy
with all my heart; it just feels incomplete.”
RAKESH BHANSALI

M AY 1 1 , 2 0 2 0 | OU T LOOK 37
 COVER
COVID-19
STORY

Tales From A
Leap Year
T WO-month-old Smaran will be among those who will
sit around their folks a few years from now, listening
wide-eyed to the details of a time when the world ground to
a standstill. And how he saved his parents a great deal of
hassle by being just on time. The family was expecting
Smaran’s arrival on March 14, about the time Bangalore
was starting to close down. But he came two weeks earlier—
not premature, but within a predicted range. “So he did us a
favour. On hindsight, I can thank him,” says the beaming
fat­her, K.R. Guruprasad, a techie. Henceforth, some close
relatives and friends were able to greet the newborn. Then,
a total clampdown. As a result, says Guruprasad,
“A lot of my family members still haven’t seen him.”
In a way, the lockdown was propitious for Guruprasad.
He’d been nearing the end of a five-day paternity leave—at than required, you kept thinking about the risk. But what
his in-laws’ place—when things were ordered shut and choice did one have?”
work-from-home kicked in. Thus, his time got seamlessly Yet, admits Guruprasad, “We’ve been very lucky.”
absorbed in baby-care. “Certain things just fell in place. But Currently, the family’s short only on baby clothes and a
some didn’t,” he says. For instance, he didn’t have his car cradle. Again, details that Smaran will probably hear about
with him when he needed it the most, to take the newborn while flipping through the family album years later. But
to the hospital for a vaccination on the 45th day. He man- even without a shutdown, the little one would have had a
aged to get a cab with some effort. Then, the anxiety of little tale of his own to tell—Smaran’s a leap-year baby, born
exposure. “Every minute you were at the hospital longer on February 29. O —Ajay Sukumaran

D ISTANCE, as the cliché goes, is relative.

Bangalore to Guwahati seems like a siesta—a
three-hour flight—when things are ‘normal’. In ext­
raordinary circumstances, like this lockdown, it’s
3,000 km of deep space. This una­ssailable emptiness
separates Gourisankar Bora from his wife and their
newborn child. “No amount of video calls can fill that
void,” says the first-time father, a senior analyst with
an insurance solutions company in Bangalore. He is
working from home—alone, anxious. Wife Himadri
agrees, although convalescing from childbirth (April
23) in the familiar comfort of her parents’ home has
been the couple’s plan. She flew to Guwahati in
January, with the baby due in April, while
Gourisankar would have booked a flight the day she
went into labour. All good until a rampaging virus
forced the entire nation indoors. The joy of hearing
“It’s a boy!” now feels like a painful gap in a tooth. O
­ Rituparna Kakoty
—

“I want to meet my son, cradle him in my arms…

but can’t say when I can go. It will be risky even
after the lockdown is over.” GOURISANKAR BORA

38 O U TLOOK | MAY 11, 2020

Is Federalism taking a beating in the
fight against Covid-19?

Neerja Chowdhury Puneet Nicholas Yadav

Political Commentator Assistant Editor,
Outlook

Dinesh Trivedi Bhavna Vij-Aurora Mirza Arif Beg

Rajya Sabha MP from Political Editor, Special Correspondent,
West Bengal Outlook Outlook

FACEBOOK & YOUTUBE LIVE

Join us on
May 2, 2020 (Saturday), 6:00 PM
 O P I N I O N / Annie Zaidi T H E M U M B A I - B A S E D AU T H O R W R I T E S E S S AYS ,
R E P O R TA G E , ST O R I E S , P O E M S A N D P L AYS

There Will Be No Hugging

What do you do now that all plans are off, all hopes are replaced
by the one hope that you will survive?

WE make plans, don’t we?

Dinner plans, holiday
plans, life plans. We don’t
usually plan against death.
Or, indeed, against the upsetting of our
plans for ourselves. Plan Bs are also
just more of the same—plans that will
allow us to envision success or indul-
gence or celebration or growth in a
particular direction. Some of us even
have plan Cs and Ds. Few of us have
the heart to plan permanent farewells
to the people we love, or indeed, to our
own recognisable selves.
In all innocence, the poet
(Mirza Ghalib) asks—
Maut ka ek din mu’ayan hai/ Neend
kyun raat bhar nahin aati
The day of death is preordained / Why
do I lie awake all night?

As if he didn’t know! The thought

that death is sure to come for us is not
what keeps us awake at night. It is not
knowing whether we will be able to
survive and acquit ourselves well in
the time that is given to us. It is being
afraid of wasting time, and of losing
the people we love, or failing to give
them the best version of ourselves
while we can. What keeps us awake is
grief, regret, and plans for salvaging
and restoring something while we may.
What do you do, though, now that all
plans are off? All hopes are replaced by
the one hope that you will survive, and
so will your beloveds, and hope is all
you have because cure there is none.
The novel coronavirus has stripped us
down to the basics—food, shelter,
clothing, including masks, gloves,
shoes. Ambitions and acquisitions
from two months ago feel hollow in
confinement. That smart linen jacket,
all that jewellery in the locker, that col-
league you were jealous of, that invita-
tion you were so thrilled about, that
destination wedding. At this point, a
wedding at the registrar’s office with
ten people in attendance seems like an
The virus has impossibility.
stripped us down Because you believe that this is tempo-
rary, you try out a few recipes and post
to the basics. pictures online. Or you look for courses
Former ambitions online, so you can spruce up your CV.
There will be new jobs to apply to. This
and acquisitions has to end—in six weeks, or eighteen
months max, right? You are telling your-
seem hollow in self to be patient. So many others have it
confinement. so much worse. For all the tedium, you’d
rather not venture out. Every time you
hear of an infection in your neighbour-
hood, you shudder. It is the worst possible outcome.
Being cut off from everyone you love and trust, breathless and fright-
ened and not even the touch of a hand on your forehead. If you die, it is
one of the worst deaths. Your family will not be allowed to touch you one
last time. Strangers might carry your bier and lower you into the grave, or
onto the pyre. The prospect of such an eventuality is too heavy to hold on
to for longer than a second. I cannot hold it myself. When I read stories
about elderly couples in Italy, possibly infected by COVID-19, choosing to
not even call the hospital but simply waiting for death in each other’s
company, I can understand. Better that than the other.
These days, whenever I see a death announcement on my social media

40 O U TLOOK | MAY 11, 2020

 O P I N I O N / Annie Zaidi
When people drop their guard, Yama takes
over...or sometimes a man playacting the
god of death reminds Calcuttans of the
consequences.
feed, I feel sorrier than I would have
than at any other time. It is a horrible
time to be among the bereaved.
Children, grandchildren, nieces—how
will they cope, cut off from each other
and from the sense of closure that
funeral practices bring?
We have always needed to touch or
watch over the bodies of departed kin.
Mourning is built into human civilisa-
tion, perhaps even into our natural
instincts. Chimpanzee mothers are
known to keep grooming dead chil-
dren. Monkeys and apes also partici-
pate in certain kind of mourning
rituals. So do other mammals like ele-
phants and dolphins. Human beings
have used their tools, their distinct and
expanding ability with language, craft,
and narrative and spatial imagination
to give shape and meaning to grief. In
various parts of the world, we have evi-
dence of cairns to signify burial.
Prehistoric humans had felt the need
to stack stones so the dead were
remembered and the doing of it was
perhaps a way to process grief. With
time, rituals and memorials got more
complex, including the creation of urns, mausoleums, steles, pyramids
and embalming. Lengthy journeys were undertaken to a river or to the sea
to immerse the ashes of someone cremated. Lavish feasts were hosted
and animals sacrificed.
Behind all funerary efforts and expenses is the urgent need to confront the
loss of someone with whom you had (and continue to have) a unique rela-
tionship. You acknowledge the person not just as blood and flesh but as some-
one who was at the centre of a distinct web of relationships, with a distinct
place in this world. The food, the sharing of memories, the travel helped the
bereaved move past the fact of a death and into the continuum of life.
During a pandemic, however, the last rites do not permit gathering and
rallying around. Old friends won’t be sending floral tributes, or condolence
cards. There will be no hugs. Grief will hover in the air. Like the virus itself,
it might cling to your breath, hair, clothes, the undersides of your shoes.
Yet, grief is not an event. It can’t be cancelled, or even postponed. It has
to be worked through, performed, acknowledged. Traditional rituals
might be performed at a later date. In the meantime, we must learn to fall
back upon the adaptability that has helped our species weather all storms.
If physical distance is the crisis, we must devise new ways to share memo-
ries so we can recover something of the self that is lost along with the
death of a beloved person who helped raise us, nourished us, or otherwise
made us who we are. Perhaps it will mean writing poetry. Or donating
food instead of hosting feasts at home. Perhaps it will mean feeding the
birds that come to our balconies, or leaving food out for stray animals.
Perhaps it will mean singing elegies. Perhaps it will mean working on fam-
ily histories, or sorting through old photo
albums, or finding lost connections every
day for ten days or forty.
Perhaps, by the Storytelling, singing and sharing food
have always been integral to grieving and
end of this recovering. These have also been integral
pandemic—or to joy, as at births and weddings. Many
people are chafing too at not being able to
even though it— share joy in tangible ways. The significant
thing about celebrations, grieving, or even
we will have to a long convalescence is that these bring
throw out all our routines to a pause; something changes.
You didn’t just carry on as usual after a
assumptions. major event. You found some way to wel-
come someone new into your life; you
struggled to let go of someone else as
respectfully as possible; you tried to get better and perhaps made plans
about what kind of life you wanted. This, at least, is still possible.
Perhaps, by the end of this pandemic—or even through it—we will have
to throw out all our assumptions. We might have to grieve for some of
them: the ease with which we shook hands with strangers, and even
danced with them; the group hugs; the long-distance relationships we
thought were entirely feasible and sustainable with weekend catch-ups.
We might have to reflect too: the insane proximity of ritual dancing in
tiny spaces with fake dim lighting when there was the great wide-open
outdoors with natural dim starlight and moonlight; the pressure to hug
someone you don’t like, yet simply because everyone else seems to hug
and kiss everyone else. We might have to decide whether we want to live
close enough to people we claim to love so that we don’t have to go into
quarantine every time we feel like meeting them, and whether or not we
want to bury or cremate them ourselves. And whether we will have
enough beloveds in the neighbourhood to share a feast with, whenever
we feel the need to host one. O
(Views are personal)
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Edge of Innocence

0 0 O U TLOOK | MAY 11, 2020

4 2 O U TLO OK | MAY 11, 2020 P H O T O G R A P H S BY J I T E N D E R G U P TA , S A N D I PA N C H AT T E R J E E ,
A P O O R VA S A L K A D E , T R I B H U VA N T I WA R I, S U R E S H K . PA N D E Y
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M AY 1 1 , 2 0 2 0 | OU T LOOK 45
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PTI

PA I N T I N G S BY:
LEENIT NIDHI

00 O U TLOOK | MAY 11, 2020

 SANS FRONTIERS
WORLD TOUR
AUSTRALIA Eight-year-old
Corona, bullied in school for his name,
ended up getting Tom Hanks’s
friendship and a Corona-brand type-
writer. Sharing his ordeal, he enquired
if Hanks and his wife were okay since
contracting the virus. “Friends make
friends feel good when they are
down,” the actor replied.
SAUDI ARABIA Flogging as a
punishment has been abolished in the
Gulf Kingdom as part of the reforms
initiated by Crown Prince Mohammed
bin Salman. It will be replaced by
imprisonment or fines. Salman, involved
in controversies, most notoriously in
journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s brutal
killing, is sprucing up his image through
the reforms.
UNITED STATES Donald Trump’s
suggestion that disinfectants could be
potential treatment for coronavirus has
led producers to sternly warn people not
to use it on their body. Reckitt Benckiser, a
leading disinfectant producer, said “under
no circumstances” should its products be
injected or ingested. Trump said he was
only being sarcastic.
FOREIGN
HAND
T
HE exit of Brazil’s justice minister Sergio Caption Caption
Moro from the cabinet has thrown space one or
President Jair Bolsonaro’s government into two lines caption
political turmoil. Moro, a popular, anti- comes here
corruption crusader, was a star politician.
Bolsonaro had earlier sacked health minister Luis Henrique
Mandetta, a votary of social-distancing to deal with the coronavirus
outbreak, an advice scorned by Bolsonaro. Speculation is rife
whether more resignations are in the offing in the coming days.
Moro had overseen Operation Car Wash—a probe into a multi-
billion-dollar corruption scandal that had led to the arrest of a
number of businessmen and politicians, including former president
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Moro’s resignation was followed by pot-
banging protests in cities across Brazil. Moro accused the president
of wanting to instal a new federal police chief who would provide
him with intelligence reports. Brazil’s public prosecutor Augusto
Aras has now asked the supreme court to allow an investigation into
Moro’s allegations of political interference by Bolsonaro.
The current row is likely to affect Brazil’s fight against coronavi-
rus. It has nearly 55,000 cases of the virus, with over 3,700 deaths.
On April 24, Bolsonaro had fired federal police chief Mauricio
Valeixo, an ally of Moro, without assigning any reason and replaced
him with the chief of the intelligence agency, Alexendre Ramagem.
Bolsonaro, alleges Moro, was interfering in police investigation on
corruption. He claimed Bolsonaro had told him that he was going to
replace Valeixo with someone whom he “could call, ask for
information, intelligence reports”. Moro felt that by firing Valeixo,
the president was giving the signal that he wanted him out. When
Moro joined the cabinet he was promised full autonomy for his
department, created by uniting the justice and public security
portfolios into a “super ministry”.
In a televised address, Bolsonaro said, “The appointment is mine;
the prerogative is mine and the day I have to submit to any of my
subordinates I cease to be president of the republic.”
Observers feel the departure of Bolsonaro’s most popular minister—
seen as an anti-corruption crusader--is a blow to the government.
Bolsonaro looks weaker now than ever, as the events of April 24 mark
one of the most dramatic days in Brazilian politics in recent years.
Though many believe that Moro harbours presidential ambitions,
it’s up to Brazilian voters to decide if they want to see him as a
replacement for Bolsonaro. O
M AY 1 1 , 2 0 2 0 | OU T LOOK 49

IRRFAN KHAN (1967-2020)
SAHEB SUPERNOVA
Giridhar Jha
B
OLLYWOOD is replete with super-
stars—the Rs 100 crore+ powerhouses
who roar at the box office with or without
talent. And then, there is a minuscule minority
of actors who stand out for their versatility and
unmistakable passion for the craft. Irrfan Khan
belonged to that rare tribe of performers who
brought respectability to Hindi movies with
performances riveting enough to get acclaim far
beyond Indian shores.
Straddling the diametrically opposite
worlds of Indian and international cinemas
with the ease of a trapeze artist, he deftly
switched sides with his ability to make
everything he did onscreen look organic. In
his demise at 53, not merely Bollywood, but
world cinema also has lost a talent who
belonged to that rare species of natural
actors. He gave his best shot to whatever he
did, never discriminating between a
Hollywood extravaganza and a low-budget
commercial kitsch back home, and stole
scenes by default, howsoever minuscule his
role might have been.
If Bollywood needed to turn over a new leaf
at the turn of a new millennium—the new-age
audience was averse to formula films—it found
a worthy flag-bearer in Irrfan. With movies like
Haasil (2003), Maqbool (2003), Life In A
50 O U TLOOK | MAY 11, 2020
Metro (2007), Paan Singh Tomar (2012), Saheb,
Biwi Aur Gangster Returns (2013), The
Lunchbox (2013), Haider (2014), Piku (2015),
Talvar (2015), Hindi Medium (2017) and his
swan song, Angrezi Medium (2020), he helped
create a parallel power centre of high-calibre
actors, such as Manoj Bajpayee and
Nawazuddin Siddiqui, who had been lurking
on the fringes before they burst on the scene.
Aided by a content revolution ushered in by a
new breed of auteurs, from Vishal Bhardwaj to
Tigmanshu Dhulia, they helped Bollywood
inhale fresh air with their refined sense and
sensibility as actors par excellence.
What set Irrfan apart from his peers was the
way he made an impact at the global level.
Even though he had bagged a small role in Mira
Nair’s Salaam Bombay! (1988) early in his
career, he arrived on the international scene
many years later with The Namesake (2007),
A Mighty Heart (2007), Slumdog Millionaire
(2008) and of course, Life of Pi (2012). With
Hollywood biggies The Amazing Spider-Man
(2012) and Jurassic World (2015), he shrugged
off the tag of crossover Asian actor, arguably
emerging bigger than any of his predecessors
or contemporaries from the subcontinent who
had tried their luck in Hollywood.
Nonetheless, success did not come to him on
a platter. Beneath his stardom lay years of
relentless toil. Even though he graduated from
It is a monumental the National School of Drama, good opportuni-
ties eluded him for long. In the 1990s, the par-
loss that Irrfan was allel cinema movement spearheaded by Shyam
Benegal, Saeed Mirza and others of their ilk
nowhere near his had run out of steam, while commercial movies
had no place for an unconventional-looking
peak when he actor like him. Bollywood was completely
under the sway of mushy, romantic musicals
chose to call his back then and an actor like Irrfan, barring an
occasional Ek Doctor Ki Maut (1990), hardly
final pack-up in life found anything of substance in that la-la land.
He turned to television to keep the actor alive
in him and made the most of his limited oppor-
tunities with serials like Chankaya (1992) and
Chandrakanta (1994). However, anyone who
could fathom the depth of his talent knew that
he was destined for bigger things. He finally
‘arrived’ in the new millennium, when the
audience began to get tired of bubblegum
romances and mindless action flicks, and
yearned for stories rooted in real life. Irrfan
rose to the occasion, never to look back again.
In retrospect, regardless of his awesome
repertoire, he still had a lot more in him than
what he could give to the audience and the
industry in his lifetime. It is a monumental
loss that he was nowhere near his peak when
he chose to call his final pack-up in life. It was
no time to go, man! O
 Turkish Airlines
draws the world’s biggest national flag in
the sky to honor the founding of the Grand
National Assembly of Turkey

T
urkey’s national flag carrier performed one of the most
significant flights on April 23, the 100th anniversary of the
founding of the Grand National Assembly, and National
Sovereignty and Children’s Day.
The TC-JJF registered Boeing 777-300 (ER) type aircraft,
which arrived in Ankara in the morning for this special flight,
took off from Esenboğa Airport on April 23 at 09:40, local time.
Representing the date 23 April 1920, flight TK1920 lasted ap-
proximately two hours and followed a route in which the cres-
cent and star symbols in the Turkish flag were drawn. After the
flight, which was followed by many through the live air traffic
site Flightradar24 that provides flight tracking data, a cres-
cent-star route emerged and passed into Turkish aviation
history.
The Captain and the First Officer who made this meaningful
flight that left its mark in the heavens, made a special an-
nouncement in the sky above the Assembly building itself,
which was opened 100 years ago. In the announcement refer-
ring to the statement of Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk,
“Sovereignty unconditionally belongs to the nation”, it was
emphasized that Turkish Airlines ensured that his legacy lived
on in the skies.
Turkish Airlines Chairman of the Board and the Executive
Committee, M. İlker Aycı said “The inauguration day of the
Grand National Assembly of Turkey, founded a hundred years
ago to represent the will of a nation which went great lengths
to ensure its freedom and independence, was gifted to our
children by its founder Ghazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk as “April
23, National Sovereignty and Children’s Day”, reflecting the
confidence in the next generation in the safekeeping of these
sacred values. As our country’s national flag carrier, we dedicate
today’s exclusive flight to our children, the guardians of our
future.”
Review / ART AND CULTURE
‘Our storytelling has changed because
we as citizens have changed’
Atul Kulkarni, a two-time Nation-
al Award-winning actor known for
power-packed performances in films
such as Hey Ram (2000), Chandni
Bar (2001) and Rang De Basanti
(2006), is back with The Raikar
Case, a murder mystery
streaming on Voot Select.
He talks to Giridhar Jha about
his latest web show, his
journey as an actor and his
charitable trust. Excerpts:
You are known to be
very particular about the
scripts you choose. What
made you sign The Raikar
Case, a web show?
> I always look for a story,
whether I sign a film or a
web show. I think we all go
to theatres or sit in front
of our laptops to watch a
great story. The Raikar Case
has a fantastic plot, which
moves on two fronts. One the
one hand, there is, a murder
mystery; on the other, it is
about complex relationships
within a family. It is very
intriguing, that is why people
are binge-watching it. I am get-
ting a lot of messages about it on
social media. I think we have been
successful in telling a great story.
As an actor, are you getting better
GETTY IMAGES
52 O U TLOOK | MAY 11, 2020
scripts these days than what you
used to 15-20 years ago? Are we in
an era of content-rich cinema?
> I think that any art should be looked
at in the context of the social, educa-
tional, economical and political jour-
ney of a particular region, country or
the world. In the past 15 to 20 years,
we as a country have gone through a
lot of changes. Art is just a reflection
of all these changes. Our storytelling
has changed because we as citizens
or audiences have changed. It has
always been like that. Films and other
mediums of art are changing fast
today simply because things like
technology are also changing fast.
For example, with the advent of web
shows, writing and the way people
consume these things have changed.
It is a dynamic period we are living in.
Do you think that big OTT players will
change the way we have traditionally
watched cinema?
> We don’t know yet. I think what
we can do is observe closely as to
what is going to happen next. With
technology changing by the day, we
just have to be vigilant and pragmatic.
We need to check on what is going to
happen and be prepared to respond
to the change.
From theatre to movies to web
shows, you have done them all. Do
you also have to change yourself as
Review / ART AND CULTURE

an actor in keeping with the Poetic Fiesta

requirements of different mediums?
> There are certain things that change, NATIONAL Centre of
but not much. We have to change the Performing Arts’
because the writing changes with every (NCPA) digital series,
medium. I have done 120-130-minute-long NCPA@home, is
films and now, I am doing web shows showcasing dance,
which are 250 minutes long. As an actor, music and presenta-
you have to adjust to the need of different tions across genres.
mediums, but the basics remain the same. One of its latest
Theatre, of course, is completely different, offerings is ‘Raag
with challenges of its own. Shayari: A Musical
How do you look back at your journey as Tribute to Kaifi Azmi’.
an actor? NCPA organised Raag
> I am not the kind of a person who looks Shayari on January
back and thinks, or for that matter, tries to 13, 2019 to com-
judge how things went. The fact is that I memorate the birth
am still living with the help of a profession I centenary of the poet
chose. That matters to me as of now. I have and lyricist, and will
never really thought about where I am. now be showcasing
You have been associ- the event on its You-
ated with a charitable Tube channel (May
trust working on edu- 8, 6 pm, available for
cation. Tell us about it? viewing till May 14). It
> We have been running features performanc-
an NGO called QUEST es by Zakir Hus-
(Quality Education sain, Javed Akhtar,
Support Trust) for the Shankar Mahadevan
past 13-14 years. We and Shabana Azmi. O
have 60-65 employees
and have reached 95,000 children with the
help of about 3,000 teachers in 22 districts
of Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Madhya Zaalima Patriarchy
Pradesh. We cater to primary education. I
believe that education is at the root of any SONA Mohapatra was offered to sing
social cause you take up. If you have the the last few lines of the romantic
right education system, you produce good duet Zaalima in the film Raees (2017).
citizens. That is why I chose the field of “But I couldn’t fathom why only the
education to work in. last few lines were reserved for the
Are you able to devote enough time female voice considering it was a
towards your cause despite your profes- duet,” she says. So, she released
sional commitments as an actor? a female solo reprise on her You-
> I have always believed that my profes- Tube channel with a quirky video
sion is not my life. The other things I do features kitschy animation. “Our film
are also part of my life. My profession is music has completely sidelined
important, but it is a small part of my life. It the strong solo female voice in the
is not that I have to take time out as such last decade and it’s time for all of us
for causes that are important to me. I give to notice. In these times, you realise
time to all things. that it’s mostly musicians who have
What are you doing during the lockdown? the craft and talent to deliver without
> I am in my village in Maharashtra, too many resources or people helping
from where my NGO runs. I have a house them. My DIY video should be taken
here, so I keep coming almost every with a pinch of salt although any good
week. Whenever I am not shooting, you comedy does come from a truthful
can find me here. So, not much has place,” says Sona. O
changed for me. O —Lachmi Deb Roy

M AY 1 1 , 2 0 2 0 | OU T LOOK 53
BOOK REVIEW
Mirrored Echoes
of Mourning
Chughtai’s last novel is suffused with intense
grief for the martyrs of Karbala, but its sharp
political allegory clearly skewers the Emergency
Radhika Oberoi
T
HERE are several ways to
read Ismat Chughtai’s Ek
Qatra-e-Khoon (One Drop
of Blood: The Story of Karbala),
her last novel. It is, ostensibly, a
reimagined narrative of the
historic battle of Karbala, fought
in 680 CE, between a tiny army of ONE DROP
the family and friends of Imam OF BLOOD IS
Husain, the grandson of Prophet
Muhammad, and the formidable A TIMELESS
warriors of the reigning Caliph, PARABLE, A
Yazid I of the Umayyad dynasty. LAYERED TEXT,
It is also a political allegory; its
allusion to the Emergency in
A LUCID NAR-
India underlined by the year in RATIVE. UNLIKE
which it was first published in CHUGHTAI’S
Urdu by Fan aur Fankar--1976.
That the allegory is as relevant
PREVIOUS
today is a fact that Chughtai WORK, IT IS
eerily foretold, in her preface: ALMOST AN
“This fourteen-hundred-year-old ISLAMIC
story is today’s story as well,
because man is still man’s MANIFESTO.
greatest enemy….” The story of
the battle is also one of inconsola-
ble grief. Its elegiac overtones
are a tribute to, and a rendition
in prose of, the marsiyas of the
19th century poet Mir Anis. The
narrative is turgid with grief,
even as it is preoccupied with
the politics of the caliphate of
Kufa, in Iraq.
This English translation by
Tahira Naqvi allows for these var-
ied interpretations, although one
might mistakenly believe that the
narrative is a mere clear-eyed
recounting of a historical con-
frontation between a righteous
iman and a debauched caliph.
The story begins with an inti-
mate portrait of the household of
the Prophet of God, Rasulullah,
54 O U TLOOK | MAY 11, 2020
better known as Naana Jaan to his grandsons Hasan and Husain.
With the arrival of their baby sister, Zainab, familial love and devo-
tion grows. The tenderest moments are also the most ephemeral, and
Husain’s idyllic childhood dissipates with the death of Rasulullah, his
beloved Amma, Fatima Zehra, the murders of his father Ali Ibn Abi
Talib and his elder brother Hasan. Husain refuses to pledge his alle-
giance to Yazid, insolent heir to Amir Mu’awiya, who has secured
Syria and crushed opposition in Kufa. The people of Kufa write a let-
ter to Husain: “You are the Prophet’s grandson and his people are
going through a catastrophic time. No one but you can come to our
rescue.” Husain prepares to leave Medina with Zainab and other
family members. The journey advances towards the treacherous
plains of Karbala and the impending battle.
One Drop of Blood is a timeless parable, a multi-layered text. Bilal
Hashmi offers one allegory in his Introduction here, drawing com-
parison between Yazid and Sanjay Gandhi; the punishment inflicted
upon Yazid’s adversaries, described as ‘ilaj,’ is, presumably, a refer-
ence to the forced sterilisation of the urban poor: “Or, perhaps, one
might translate that word, ‘ilaj’, more literally, as ‘treatment,’ which,
after all, was how Indira Gandhi described the Emergency--‘shock
treatment,’ she called it, a phrase coined by Milton Friedman, and
then very much in vogue in Pinochet’s Chile.”
The political implications of Yazid inheriting the caliphate after the
death of his father, Mu’awiya, and his demand for a pledge of alle-
giance from Husain, who, writes Syed Akbar Hyder in Reliving
Karbala, had “… accrued unmatched spiritual status and his alle-
giance was perceived by Yazid and his advisors as essential to the sur-
vival of their rule”, is perhaps the perfect allegory of a distraught age.
Husain’s supporters are persecuted; one gleans
from Hyder’s historical chronicling and
Ismat Chughtai’s retelling that dissenters were either
Chughtai bribed or snuffed out.
ONE DROP OF A lucid narrative and attention to detail not-
withstanding, One Drop of Blood swoons with
BLOOD: The Story
of Karbala | Tr. the cries of mourners. Unlike her previous
by Tahira Naqvi | work, in particular the 1942 short story Lihaaf,
for which she was charged with obscenity, One
Women Unlimited Drop of Blood is almost an Islamic manifesto.
| Pg 440 | Rs 575 “The novel contradicted her image as a secular,
rebellious progressive writer, never known to
be connected in any way to religious obser-
vance or belief,” writes Naqvi.
The story of the battle of Karbala is couched
in traditions of Islamic mourning and com-
memoration. For it is a tale of sacrifice and suf-
fering. In an interview with Jalil Baz Yadpuri in
Ismat Chughtai Naqad ki Kasauti Par,
Chughtai mentions being deeply moved by the
slaughter of Ali Asghar, a six-month-old boy.
She had read the marsiyas or masterful elegiac
poems of Mir Babar Ali Anis of Faizabad. “The
Urdu marsiya writers were heir to Persian lit-
erary traditions; and these traditions…pro-
vided ever new aspects to the images of
Karbala that were projected in the 19th cen-
tury,” Hyder explains in Reliving Karbala.
Chughtai’s One Drop of Blood is ultimately a
lamentation--a prolonged mourning for mar-
tyrs, a battlefield awash with tears. Its grief is a
relentless interrogator of history. O
 Chitkara University is the only University from
Punjab to make place in THE Impact Rankings 2020
Chitkara University, Punjab is the only university from Punjab and north India
as well to get featured in top list in the Times Higher Education (THE) Impact
Rankings 2020 with overall rank of 401-600.

Chitkara University, Punjab has been able to make 59th rank globally in SDG-07:
Affordable & Clean energy.

The university has been ranked 101-200 in SDG5: Gender equality, 201-300 in
SDG09: Industry, Innovation and infrastructure and SDG11: Sustainable Cities and
Communities for development for making progress in ‘social impact’ aligned with
the UN’s sustainable development goals.

The University participated in 8 SDGs and scored well in all the SDGs which is as
good as the scores of all mainstream IITs and other Indian Universities.

C
hitkara University, Punjab became the
only University from Punjab to secure
position in the in top list of the Times
Higher Education (THE) Impact Rankings
2020 released by Times Higher Education
during THE Innovation and Impact Summit
on 22nd April 2020.
The Times Higher Education Impact
Rankings are the only global performance
tables that assess universities against the
United Nations’ Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs). The rankings provide a
measure of the extent to which universities
are having a positive social and economic
impact on the planet; from climate action
and gender equality, to good health and
wellbeing,” the THE report said.
Chitkara University, Punjab has been
ranked 59th rank globally in SDG-07:
Affordable & Clean energy. Apart from SDG7,
the university has been able to secure good
positions other SDGs also, 101-200 in SDG5:
Gender equality, 201-300 in SDG09: Industry,
Innovation and infrastructure and SDG11:
Sustainable Cities and Communities for
development for making progress in ‘social
impact’ aligned with the UN’s sustainable
development goals.
The University participated in 8 SDGs
and scored well in all the SDGs which is as
good as the scores of all mainstream IITs and
other Indian Universities. Chitkara University,
Punjab is the only university from Punjab
and north India as well to get featured in top
list in the Times Higher Education (THE)
Impact Rankings 2020 with overall rank of
401-600.
How is the ranking created?
A university’s final score in the overall table
is calculated by combining its score in SDG
17 with its top three scores out of the
remaining 16 SDGs. SDG 17 accounts for 22
per cent of the overall score, while the other
SDGs each carry a weight of 26 per cent. This
means that different universities are scored
based on a different set of SDGs, depending
on their focus.
The score from each SDG is scaled so
that the highest score in each SDG in the
overall calculation is 100. This is to adjust for
minor differences in the scoring range in
each SDG and to ensure that universities are
treated equitably, whichever SDGs they have
provided data for. It is these scaled scores
that we use to determine which SDGs a
university has performed most strongly in;
they may not be the SDGs in which the
university is ranked highest or has scored
highest based on unscaled scores.
Scoring within an SDG
There are three categories of metrics within each SDG:
Research metrics are derived from data
supplied by Elsevier. For each SDG, a specific
query has been created that narrows the
scope of the metric to papers relevant to that
SDG. As with the World University Rankings,
we are using a five-year window between
2014 and 2018. The only exception is the
metric on patents that cite research under
SDG 9, which relates to the timeframe in
which the patents were published rather
than the timeframe of the research itself. The
metrics chosen for the bibliometrics differ by
SDG and there are always at least two
bibliometric measures used.
Continuous metrics measure contributions
to impact that vary continually across a
range – for example, the number of
graduates with a health-related degree.
These are usually normalised to the size of
the institution.
When we ask about policies and
initiatives – for example, the existence of
mentoring programmes – our metrics
require universities to provide the
evidence to support their claims. In these
cases, we give credit for the evidence and
for the evidence being public. These
metrics are not usually size normalised.
Evidence is evaluated against a set of
criteria and decisions are cross validated
where there is uncertainty. Evidence is not
required to be exhaustive – we are looking
for examples that demonstrate best practice
at the institutions concerned.
Timeframe Unless otherwise stated, the
data used refer to the closest academic year
to January to December 2018.
Phil Baty, the Chief Knowledge Officer at
THE given special mention: “It is great to
see Indian universities stand as world
leaders through their work towards the
UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, with
success in areas as diverse as clean water
and sanitation, climate action, affordable
and clean energy; and good health and
well-being.”
Globally, Australian universities
dominated the list with the University of
Sydney, Western Sydney University, and La
Trobe University in the top four.
 la
dolce
vita

Overpitched Delivery To Viv

The lockdown is playing out in various ways in different minds—new
disclosures, new fads, a hairpin turn to boldness. Thus, Kapil Dev
declares Viv Richards and M.S. Dhoni as his ‘heroes’ and, by way of
admiration, sports a careful stubble, well-shorn hair and a sharp
suit. Would Sir Viv ever wear a jacket a size short so that the puffs
out towards gully and square leg? Never in your life. But then, in
these locked days, where are you going Paaji? Never mind this
ill-advised sally, you remain our hero. Always.

We Don’t Wanna Pillow Fight

Yes, we know how to laud genuine achievement. Like this pillowy,
billowy look of actress Tamannah Bhatia’s curated answer to the ‘pillow
challenge’ that’s devised to keep idle celebrities in circulation. Oh, that
clasp around her virginal, textured pillow cover; ah, her cool, faux pose
of studied ennui. And ooh, those ruby-red stilettos ready to stab any
interloper daring to intrude on her reverie. No, she is not the progenitor of
the look—Halle Berry and Anne Hathaway were there earlier. But our girl
outshines them on effect.
 la
dolce
vita
Jackie’s Game
Jacqueline Fernandez’s course through Bollywood has
been a tale of conquering perceptions—from being seen
as a big-boned beauty of exotic looks to being accepted
as a part of Bollywood’s imagined, hip-swinging desiness.
So much so that even when she uses a lovely straw hat
to tease us in a sea-soaked dishabille state, any trace of
foreignness doesn’t cling to her. Only bits of sand do. Her
lockdown activities? Yoga, self-care and self-love.
That’s a load of work, what?

On a
Seventh Gere
Several years back, world leaders at a
meet—notably Vladimir Putin—expressed droll
appreciation for then septuagenarian Italian
PM Sylvio Berlusconi’s ability to stay in news
on account of his raging virility. We express
like feeling for Richard Gere, father for the third
time at 70. As his wife Alejandra Silva, 37, takes
care of their new boy, how will Gere fare
with fatherly duties? Listen up then: for a
man who has preserved his crinkly-eyed
handsomeness for ever—graduating
triumphantly from salt-and-pepper to
a shock of white—the question is
an insult.

M AY 1 1 , 2 0 2 0 | OU T LOOK 57
 RAMZAN
Ask For The Moon
The lunar cycle governs the Islamic
calendar. The two most anticipated
sightings of the moon are in the months
of Ramzan and Shawwal. The new moon
of Ramzan marks the beginning of the
holy month of fasting and the new moon
of Shawwal signals its end and the fes-
tivities of Eid al-Fitr. So, like everyone
else, on the evening of April 23, we were
glued to news channels and the flurry of
messages in our family groups to find
out if the moon had been sighted in
Delhi. By 8 pm, we found out that people
in Kerala and the Gulf had seen the thin
crescent, but alas, not in Delhi. We
would have to wait for another day—the
month of Ramzan would begin from
April 25 in the national capital. This
year, there was not much controversy
about the sighting of the moon. Many
insist that only a sighting by the naked
eye counts and cloud cover or pollution
can easily skew observation. That’s why
the date of the first day of Ramzan dif-
fers from place to place. Lately, in most
of India, the first day of Ramzan and Eid
have been usually celebrated a day after
the rest of the world.
Holy Tidings
As soon as the moon is sighted, we start
preparations for the next day’s sehri (pre-
dawn meal), which signals the start of the
fast. There are specific prayers to be
recited on the sighting of the moon on the
shab or eve of the first day of Ramzan.
Excitement builds as we prepare to spend
the holy month in spiritual pursuits. We
recite the Quran and try to finish the
entire book within the month, setting
goals for its completion. I too prepared
myself to achieve these goals.
What’s In A Name?
Barely does the controversy over the
sighting of the moon die down does
another one erupt, almost like clock-
work. For many years now, Indian
Muslims have been debating whether
they should wish each other Ramzan
58 O U TLOOK | MAY 11, 2020
Rana Safvi
is a historian, author
and blogger
Mubarak or the more Arabicised Ramadan
Mubarak/Kareem. My answer to this hairsplitting
is that a rose by any other name smells just as
sweet—we should concentrate on the piety and
spirit of the month, not the pronunciation. People
have become more aware of the Arabic variant
thanks to globalisation. In South Asia, we usually
refer to the month as Ramzan as Hindustani uses
the Persian pronunciation—the alphabet is
2020 pronounced ‘zwad’ in Persian and ‘dwad’ in Arabic.
2019 Beyond Food And Water
“O ye who believe! Fasting is prescribed to you as it
was prescribed to those before you, that ye may
(learn) self-restraint,” says the Quran. The purpose
of a roza (fast) is not to stay hungry and thirsty, but
to learn self-restraint. Thus, the roza applies to the
tongue too—one must not utter anything harsh in
anger, malice, spite or cruelty. The eyes must guard
against being attracted to evil and one should raise
one’s voice on witnessing oppression. The body
must not commit wrongful acts. The heart and
mind must remain engrossed in thoughts of God
and spirituality. Charity, an important tenet of Islam, assumes even more
significance during the holy month.
Banquet For The Soul
While all able-bodied adults are enjoined to fast, the sick and aged are
exempt. Due to certain medical reasons, I haven’t been fasting for the past
five years and give a fidya (compensation) based on the amount I would
spend on my sehri and iftar to the needy. However, I follow all the other
practices and spend my days praying and reading religious texts. Every year,
I used to do a series of posts on social media called #DastarkhwaneRamzan,
where I would post an easy to follow recipe for iftar. This year, things are
different—there is a lockdown, widespread economic distress and many
migrant labourers are still on the road and may not have access to iftar if they
are fasting. So, I have started telling stories on my Instagram page. I call them
#DastarkhwaneRamzan for the soul. It is my way of connecting with children
and adults. My afternoon goes in choosing and recording the story. These are
simple tales with a moral that entertain and inform people about Ramzan
and human values.
Unlike Any Other
Many of the activities in Ramzan emphasise communal sharing and
bonding. But this year, since we are in a lockdown, all prayers must be
performed at home. If the restrictions continue, we might even have to
offer Eid prayers at home. Since many people are going hungry during the
lockdown, we should refrain from unnecessary spending and use that
money for charity instead. This is the year to return to the basics: piety,
devotion and connecting with Allah in solitude, as Prophet Muhammad
did centuries ago in a cave in Mecca. O