Perspective and commentary

A high-pressure situation generally brings out the best and worst in people. The COVID-19 pandemic is no different. It has underlined various prejudices, ignorance and visceral divisiveness amongst people around the world. While more than a million people around the world cutting across race, religion, gender, and other superficial differences have been affected by COVID-19, people have still found ways to target specific communities to blame for the pandemic.

Perhaps the most famous and public expression of prejudice was US President Donald J Trump referring to COVID-19 as ‘Chinese Virus’. This was echoed by several right-wing leaders and media-persons with such political leanings. In practice, this led to a racial backlash against persons of Chinese origin who were blamed for the pandemic.

India too has been susceptible to this trend. There are numerous cases of racial prejudice faced by Ladakhis and persons from the Northeast India, in the Indian plains. Perhaps the most common expression of this prejudice and ignorance is when people from Ladakh and India’s Northeast are being taunted with racial slurs. There were several cases of Ladakhi students being asked to vacate their rented spaces. There are numerous cases where this ignorance has taken a more unpleasant expression. There are cases of people hurling abuses, spitting and threatening physical violence against people from Ladakh, the Northeast or others with similar racial and ethnic features.

In addition, in India the Muslim community has also faced the brunt of prejudice and discrimination with many blaming members of the community for spreading the virus in the country. The COVID-19 pandemic has taken on a communal hue in India after news of the Tablighi Jamaat convention in New Delhi became public. In the midst of a generally professional approach to a pandemic, there were some disturbing news reports of some doctors refusing to treat Muslim patients because of their religion. Islamophobic memes started to appear on social media and hash-tags such as #CoronaJihad and #TablighiVirus were trending on social media.

Former Chief Minister of the erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir state, Omar Abdullah condemned the communalisation of the pandemic through a tweet on 31 March where he wrote, “Now the #TablighiJamat will become a convenient excuse for some to vilify Muslims everywhere as if we created & spread #COVID around the world.”

Many of these prejudices have been evident in Ladakh. In early March as the first cases of COVID-19 were reported in Ladakh, it emerged that the patients had returned from a pilgrimage in Iran. While there was no overt expression of discrimination, many people privately expressed their prejudices with regard to the Muslim community for bringing COVID-19 to Ladakh. People, including highly educated individuals and religious leaders, would freely cite un-verified claims circulating on social media and television to justify their prejudices.

Furthermore, migrant labourers in Ladakh were at the receiving end of prejudices as fear of COVID-19 peaked in Ladakh. Many Ladakhis were being thrown out of their rented spaces by landlords who feared contracting COVID-19 from them. Each year hundreds and thousands of migrant labourers from different parts of India and Nepal arrive in Ladakh by March; and have played a pivotal role in building Ladakh. However, this year, many of them were forced to leave their rented spaces in Leh, Changthang, Nubra, Sham and Lalok. Furthermore, landlords in two neighbourhoods of Leh asked even their Ladakhi tenants to leave and return to their villages.Such actions left many migrant labourers and Ladakhi tenants in a lurch. The district administration tried to counter these actions by warning landlords of legal action, while also providing ration and financial support to some migrants to return home. The UT Ladakh administration has also put social media group administrators on notice for the content being shared and discussed on their groups.

It is unfortunate that Ladakhis, people from the Northeast and Muslim communities have had to bear the brunt of people’s prejudice and ignorance. However, it is equally unfortunate that many people in Ladakh too acted on their prejudice, ignorance and fear to target vulnerable groups of people, especially migrant labourers and people from rural Ladakh. At a time when containing the virus should be our collective priority and when unity is a necessity, people around the world have submitted to their deeply held prejudices and fears. In contrast, coronavirus does not differentiate on the basis of race, class, caste, religion, gender, or for that matter age. We will hopefully develop a vaccine for COVID-19 and other such viruses. But how will we find a cure for the prejudices, ignorance and deep-seated hatred we seem to be nurturing within ourselves?

By Tashi Lundup and Sunetro Ghosal

Tashi Lundup and Sunetro Ghosal are part of the editorial team at Stawa.

Right from the beginning of 2020, the people of Ladakh have been forced to come out on the roads to demand safeguards for their newly-born Union Territory (UT).More than eight months have passed since UT Ladakh was carved out of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir and was granted UT status without a Legislative Assembly. A series of discussions, debates and protests have been going on in and outside Ladakh for the past eight months with student community taking the lead.

The protests intensified in the wake of the Ministry of Home Affair’s categorical refusal to include Ladakh in the Sixth Schedule of the Indian Constitution, despite an explicit recommendation to this effect from the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST). The stated reason, as mentioned in the Parliament, was that the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Councils (LAHDCs) have more powers than autonomous councils under the Sixth Schedule. Even a passing effort to fact check this claim reveals that this argument has no truth either in its logic or actual ground reality.

The people of Ladakh are demanding constitutional mechanisms to safeguard their interests including protection of land, environment, jobs, and culture to conserve the unique ethnic identity of the region. Demography-related changes are a potential challenge as Ladakh has a large surface area in relation to its relatively small population of around 300,000 people. Considering these issues, people in Ladakh are exploring various provisions and constitutional measures to protect the interests of the tribal communities that make up 98% of Ladakh’s population and gain a degree of autonomy over administration and legislation.

The silence broke when Ladakh student communities learnt of short-sighted changes that had been ‘imposed’ on the region. What started out as whispers among educated Ladakhi youth inside and outside Ladakh soon turned into loud roar with people demanding justice and protection of their interest.

The lack of access to quality higher education in Ladakh has resulted in the mass migration of students from Ladakh to various universities and colleges across India. Every year hundreds of Ladakhi students enrol at various colleges, universities and institutions partly through open categories and partly through reservations explicitly meant for Ladakhis. Such measures are based on the principle of ‘Positive Discrimination’. Many colleges and universities such as government medical colleges, government engineering colleges, University of Jammu and others are now under the jurisdiction of UT of J&K. If students from Ladakh are not allowed to enroll in these colleges and universities from the next academic session on account of being categorised as ‘outsiders’ i.e. not the bonafide residents of UT of J&K, then it is grave injustice for these students. There are no medical and engineering colleges in Ladakh as of now and the government degree colleges in Ladakh are not yet at par with colleges in J&K. The ambiguous status of University of Ladakh does not help this situation either.

This has also fuelled apprehensions about possible loss of public employment opportunities within the newly-formed UT Ladakh. Unemployment continues to plague Ladakhi society, which is still developing. The number of public sector employment opportunities that Ladakhi students enjoyed in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir is going to reduce drastically in UT Ladakh.

In the erstwhile state of J&K, J&K Public Service Commission and J&K Service Selection Board used to advertise a large number of gazetted and non-gazetted posts at the state, divisional level and district level to cater to the needs of 1.25 crore (12.5 million) people of the former state. Apart from these two recruiting agencies, various other departments would also advertise jobs. The two LAHDCs would also advertise jobs at the district level that were explicitly meant for bonafide residents of their respective districts apart from seats reserved for Scheduled Castes.

Tribal communities account for around 98% of UT Ladakh’s population. They enjoyed reservations in accordance to the J&K Reservation Act, 2004 in government jobs, which has benefitted the people of the region. Under this act, reservation for STs was 10% while the national mandate for reservation for STs 7.5%. Reservation benefits through the Residents of Backward Areas (RBA) category were also available to the people of Ladakh. The J&K Reservation Act, 2004 was rather progressive. It had a provision that if a sufficient number of candidates from any reserved category were not available during the recruitment process, the post would remain vacant and carried forward to the next recruitment process. Thus, the people of Ladakh had many viable options to get a government job in the erstwhile state of J&K: open merit basis as well as ST and RBA categories for state, divisional and district level jobs.

It is clearly stated in the J&K Reorganisation Act, 2019 that the Union Public Service Commission or UPSC will cater to the administrative needs of UT Ladakh. This has already exerted a lot of pressure on Ladakhi students aspiring for jobs as recruitment for posts in Ladakh through UPSC may put Ladakhis at a disadvantage. One only needs to look at the abysmal success rate for UPSC applicants from the erstwhile state of J&K. The success rate for Ladakhi applicants in these examinations is worse than that of the other two regions of the former state. The level of competition is very high and students face intense pressure to perform; which has pushed many of them into acute depression. The absence of a private sector in Ladakh and the lack of safeguards for job reservation for Ladakhis will only aggravate this situation.

When we compare employment prospects in the erstwhile state and UT Ladakh, one finds that the current framework undermines opportunities for Ladakhi youth. Government employees of the erstwhile state of J&K were given a choice of choosing either of the two UTs to continue their duties. Many people hailing from Ladakh who were posted in Jammu region and Kashmir valley opted to serve in UT Ladakh. In many departments, staff strength has exceeded the necessary strength. The transfer of non-Ladakhi government employees to UT J&K may address this issue to an extent. At the same time, we must remember that this can be further complicated by the absence of proper legislation to regulate recruitment. In its absence, employment remains open to non-residents of Ladakh, which will undermine the employment prospects of Ladakhi youth.

Like other Indian states and Union territories, Ladakh must work out legislative mechanisms to ensure fair job opportunities in the region for local communities. It urgently needs to formulate its own reservation policy to ensure that the brightest minds in this region do not miss out on opportunities due to lack of support. The reservation policy for Ladakh should be based on economic, social and demographic characteristics of the region itself. Moreover the formation of Ladakh Public Service Commission could be one step to organise the employment sector in the region and coordinate every government job in the UT to ensure fair opportunities to the youth and students of Ladakh.

The scope of public employment opportunities in Ladakh is not very lucrative but it needs to be reserved to protect the interest of the resident population. There is an urgent need to address this issue. Policymakers, parliamentarians and other decision-makers must keep the plight of Ladakhi students in mind before they make any laws related to domicile status and job reservation. Till we have high quality medical, engineering, and other colleges and universities in Ladakh, students from the region should be allowed to enrol in institutions of UT J&K. We need to maintain status quo till UT Ladakh develops its own recruitment policy. Similarly, Ladakhi students must be permitted to apply for jobs in UT J&K till these issues are ironed out.

There are provisions in neighbouring states like Himachal Pradesh that reserves certain jobs for students who have completed their matriculation and secondary school education (10 + 2) from Himachal Pradesh for jobs advertised for residents of the state. This can easily be replicated in J&K as a majority of Ladakhi students have completed their education under the JKBOSE system.

In the current circumstances, many students are facing a lot of stress and anxiety due to the lack of employment. We must develop a harmonious working environment for governmental services between the two UTs. The mandarins in Delhi must consider the consequences of their action before they formulate new laws or policies.

Editor’s note: This article was written before the new domicile law for Jammu and Kashmir came into effect in March 2020.

By Ghulam Mustafa

Ghulam Mustafa is a doctoral scholar in the Department of Economics at University of Jammu.

On the night of 23 March, Prime Minister Modi abruptly announced the nationwide lockdown for 21 days. At the time, I was in a village about 50 km from Leh and was worried about returning home. I can’t even start to imagine the feeling of people I see on the news who are walking 700 km with their children on their shoulders.

There was also a tinge of nostalgia when I heard the announcement. It reminded me of 8 November, 2016 when the Prime Minister announced demonetisation in a similar manner. He is known for his bold decision-making and this was the boldest of them all.

Many have praised him for this move and rightly so. A lockdown is the only known strategy to contain the pandemic. Everyone is trying to ‘flatten the curve’ and practising social distancing to counter the spread of the virus. However, I cannot help but wonder if a country like India can afford such a lockdown at such a short notice. Is it only delaying the spread of the virus?

One of the main factorsis our economy that has been in shambles even before this crisis. The economic growth rate had fallen to4.7% in the last quarter, which is the lowest it has been in the last six years. Itis expected to fall another 2.4% in the next quarter (January to March),and to make matters worse, there are reports that we are likely to increase our borrowing for 2020-2021 to INR 7.8 trillion with Reserve Bank of India directly buying these bonds. Our fiscal deficit has increased to 7.5%, which is more than Vietnam (4.4%) and Bangladesh (4.8%).

In all of this, it is the floating population of migrant labourers that are worst affected. These are workers in the informal sectors in our country who roughly make up about 80% of the total workforce. Of this, 8.8 million of the household are scattered across congested urban slums with an average income of INR 150 rupees per day.

According to a report published by World Health Organisation in 2016, India spent about INR 4,500 per person on health care, whichis six times less than what China spends. Our public health expenditure is about 1.2% to 1.6% of India’s total GDP between 2008-09 and 2019-2020, which is about USD 9.7 billion compared to USD 66.7 billion that India spends on defence. Budgetary allocation for healthcare and related research is so poor in India that 97% of this budget is directly allocated to the Department of Health and Family Welfare. In contrast, governing establishments such as the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) received only 3% (INR 21,000 million) of the medical budget in the 2020-2021 financial year and according to national health profile of 2019, the per capita of the public health expenditure was INR 1,657 in 2018-2019, which is three times lower than Indonesia and significantly lower than Sri Lanka.

I think our government takes solace in its historic successes such as eradication of smallpox. However, there are issues of concern such as the continued epidemic of tuberculosis in India for several years.WHO estimates that there are 2.8 million people in India who are affected by tuberculosis and the number continues to rise. Some 480,000 people die each year in India from tuberculosis, which works out to more than 1,300 per day. This number is significantly higher than the number of deaths occurring due to HIV/AIDs in South Africa. Though tuberculosis is less deadly than HIV/AIDS and remains curable, the Indian healthcare system is still struggling to cope with it. One of the main reasons for this shortcoming is that the healthcare system in India is spread thin across its vast population.

Dr Zarir Udwadia, a pulmonologist who researches drug-resistant tuberculosis, has stated in his 2010 study that many prescriptions given out in the small privatised sectors are inappropriate. He added that this contributes to amplifying the spread of drug-resistant tuberculosis and aids in strengthening the virus rather than killing it. Our fight against tuberculosis is nowhere near over and now diseases like COVID-19 have taken precedence. Can the healthcare system cope with this challenge?

We are currently in the midst of a pandemic. Our country already has the lowest rate of testing for COVID-19.Though it has a capacity of testing about 8,000 samples per day, the government was initially only testing around 90. This number has increased slightly very recently after the testing criteria was broadened to include people without travel history.

The first COVID-19-related death was reported on 11 March. It was a 76-year-old man from Karnataka, who was initially turned away by a private hospital due to his medical condition. His test results were received only after his death.

The concern over the lack of facilities provided by Government of India was expressed by Chhattisgarh Health Minister, T.S Singh Deo when he wrote to Union Health Minister Harsha Vardhan. In this letter he mentioned that only one centre was performing the tests and requested for more testing kits to scale up the testing. Kerala was an exception as it managed to expand its guidelines on testing to include a wider population much earlier than other states.

Dr S.P Kalantri, medical superintendent at Kasturba Hospital in central India, told Vox that he expects 55% of India’s total population to be infected with COVID-19. This is around 300 to 500 million individuals over the next four to five months with about one to two million deaths from it in a year. These are daunting numbers and reflect how our healthcare system is structured.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development reports that there are around 0.5 hospital beds for every 1,000 people in India. In comparison, Italy has 3.2 and China has 4.3.The National Health Profile, a compilation of all the data that India’s Ministry of Health Ministry has at his disposal, reports that India has a total of 11,54,68 registered allopathic doctors of which only 1,16,756 doctors are eligible to carry out current tests. This means that there is one doctor for every 10,926 individuals in India. WHO recommends a standard ratio of one doctor for every 1,000 individuals.In addition, a 2016 report by Reuters states that every country needs more than 50,000 critical-care specialists while India currently has 8,350.

We must also understand the manner in which our healthcare system is structured. The private sectoraccounts for about 70%, while the remaining is public sector. However, a very small percentage of our population can afford private health facilities. Now every Indian state is scrambling to acquire new beds, increase the capacity of their Intensive Care Units, life-saving ventilators and so on.

The proportion of doctors and infrastructure in relation to population in India’s largest states is rather alarming. Maharashtra,which is home to more than 126 million people, has 450 ventilators and 502 ICU beds in public hospitals.Chhattisgarh,which has a population of 32 million, has 150 ventilators and 25 specialists. Assam has 200 ventilators of which 36 are not functional and Telangana has 1,000. India Railways has pitched in and has prepared 7,000 beds and 500 ventilators in their hospitals across the country. There are an estimated 40,000 ventilators in the Indian inventory.

The Indian government has now released INR 15,000 crore to meet health expenditures. Interestingly, this is INR 5,000 crore short of budget for the Central Vista being developed in New Delhi. The latter project is meant to develop and beautify prominent buildings in Lutyens’ Delhi. The money allotted to meet health expenditures accounts for less than one percent of the country’s GDP, while countries like the UK, Spain and Germany have allotted around 20% of their GDP to meet these expenses.

It’s difficult to say how things will develop in the coming days and how our country will respond to these challenges, given the vulnerable state of our healthcare system. I hope we are able to contain the outbreak but that does seem like a far-fetched notion right now.

Writer and journalist, Vidya Krishnan has written an article in The Atlantic in which she describes the dire and frightening condition of the Indian healthcare system. She concludes with a reference to a quote by epidemiologist Ramanan Laxminarayan where he draws an analogy between a pandemic and a tsunami. “Imagine that you’re standing on the shore and you’re watching the tsunami come in. If you are going to just stand there, and watch the tsunami, you are finished. If you can run as fast as you can, you have a better chance.” Vidya Krishnan ends the article ominously by stating, “India is not running fast.” Here I would pose a question, “Is India even capable of running fast?”

By Tenzin Jamphel

Tenzin Jamphel co-founded the mountain-biking company, Unexplored Ladakh and holds a master’s degree in communication.

Nowadays the world is at battle to combat a virus called Coronavirus Disease 2019 or COVID-19. This is infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) that belongs to a group called Coronaviridae. The disease was first identified in 2019 in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province in China and has since spread globally and resulted in the 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic.

Given the lack of reliable information about COVID-19, I am listing well-researched information of what is currently known about this virus and the disease it causes.

What is the origin of the virus?

In nature, bats are the natural reservoir for many such viruses. The virus replicates inside bats and somehow finds its way to other species. When the virus crosses the species barrier and jumps to humans it is called zoonosis. The first transmission to humans is believed to have occurred in Wuhan and then started passing from person to person when an infected person coughed or sneezed. It is said that a single cough can spray around 3,000 droplets that can travel several metres.

How long does it stay active on a surface?

The droplets from a cough stay suspended in the air for up to 10 minutes. If it manages to land on a person’s face or body, it increases chances of direct transmission of the virus through inhalation. If the droplet lands on a surface such as cloth, it remains active for up to three hours. On other surfaces such as plastic or metal, it has been known to remain active for two to three days.

What happens to your body when it is infected?

The virus uses the outer spike proteins that surround its core, which has given it the name corona (crown) to attach to receptors in the epithelial cells of the lungs via Angiotensin Converting Enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptors. The virus then fuses its membrane with the cell’s membrane and releases its RNA into the cell. A study found that the virus is able to enter more in cells that have an acidicnatureas its entry is based on pH-dependent endocytosis.It then takes advantage of the lung’s cellarchitecture to duplicate its RNA and capsid and envelope proteins. Once thousands of new RNA and proteins have been replicated, they are assembled into thousands of new viruses in golgi bodies and endoplasmic reticulum.

What is the incubation period for the virus?

In the beginning, when the virus is replicating,the infected persondoes not exhibit any overt symptoms. The period between first exposure to an infection and appearance of the first symptoms is called the incubation period. In the case of this virus, the incubation period is believed to be four to fourteendaysin which the virus replicates itself and produces thousands of copiesof itself.

What are the symptoms?

The key symptomof the diseases caused by the virus is dry cough with fever and/or difficulty in breathing.

Who is at risk?

Everyone! Who doesn’t care about their health?However, people with chronic heart disease, chronic lung disease, kidney failure, and immuno-suppressed diabetic patients are at greater risk.

Can such a disease wipe out the human race?

No. But it can definitely cause severe damage. However, with each outbreak of such diseasespeople fear the extinction of the human race. Historically, infectious diseaseswere an existential threat to humanity and killed a large number of people.

Nowadays, science fiction has become our reality and we don’t even think about it. Some recent breakthroughs will change our lives and how we perceive normalcy. Human beings are evolving even as viruses change their strains.

Changes in genetic coding have an impact on the being that carries it. In the 1990s, in an effort to treat maternal infertility resulted in babies that carried genetic information from three humans, making them the first humans to have three genetic parents. This was impressive but also extremely expensive and complicated. This has now changed with a revolutionary technology called CRISPR (clusters of regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats). The cost has reduced by 99%. In this world, bacteria and viruses have been fighting since the beginning of life. The virus called Bacteriophageshuntsbacteria in the ocean and kills 40% of them every single day. The virus does this by inserting their own genetic material into the bacteria and taking them over for use of its own re-production. The bacteria tries to resist but generally failsas their protection tools are not strong enough.

Sometimes, a bacterium survives the attack and developsan effective anti-virus system. The bacteria save a part of the virus’ genetic material in their own genetic code in a DNA archive system called CRISPR. When the virus attacks again, the bacterium quickly makes an RNA copy from the DNA archive and arms a defensive weapon in the form of a protein called cas9. The protein scans the bacterium for the virus by comparing its genetic material with the sample in the archival memory. When it finds a 100% match, it removes the virus’ genetic material to render it useless and protect the bacteriumfrom the attack.

A scientific revolution started when scientists discovered that the CRISPR system can be programmed. In addition to being precise, cheap, and easy, CRISPR offers the possibility of editing life cells to switch genes on and off. In 2015 scientists used CRISPR to cut HIV virus from living cells of patients in a laboratory. This proved that such interventions were possible. A year later, scientists carried out a large-scale project with rats that had the HIV virus in their cells. By simply injecting CRISPR into the rat’s tails, they were able to remove more than 50% of the virus from cells in their body. The first clinical trial for a CRISPR cancer treatment on human patients was approved in early 2016. A month later, Chinese scientists announced that they would treat lung cancer patients with immune cells modified with CRISPR. With a powerful tool like CRISPR, we may be able to cure thousands of diseases. In 2015 and 2016, Chinese scientists experimented with human embryos and were partially successful in their second attempt. There are enormous challenges in gene editing embryos and scientists are working on resolving them.

Irrespective of your personal view of genetic engineering, this technology will affect you. As the technology evolves and gets more refined, more people may argue that not using genetic engineering is unethical as it condemns people to preventable suffering and death. However, as soon as the first genetically engineered child is born, a door will open that cannot be closed. If you make your offspring immune to Alzheimer’s, why not also give them an enhanced metabolism? How about height and muscular structure? Better hair? Why not throw in perfect vision?

As genetic engineering becomes more ‘normal’ and our knowledge improves, we could solve many of our biggest health challenges. Today, we produce many chemicals by genetically engineering life-forms. This includes life-saving clotting proteins/factors, growth hormones and insulin. Earlier, we used to harvest these chemical from the organs of animals.

Recently the Indian Council of Scientific and Industrial Research’s (CSIR) Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB) in New Delhi made a major breakthrough. It developed a CRISPR Cas9-based paper strip test to identify the RNA sequence of novel coronavirus in the samples of suspected persons and deliver result in 20 to 25 minutes. This test costs INR 500while the qRtPCR (quantitative Real time Polymerase Chain Reaction) test that costs INR 4,500 and takes hours to complete.

By Mohd Murtaza

Mohd Murtaza is a doctoral scholar in the Cytogenetic and Molecular Biology laboratory, Centre of Research for Development at University of Kashmir