The Coronavirus pandemic has changed our way of life in one large swoop. The entire world spent the last two months under lockdown, witnessing rapid developments in every corner of the planet. The aftermath of the spread of the virus has managed to display some shocking shortcomings in the political and social systems around the globe.
Shortly after the government declared a nationwide shutdown with only four hours of notice, terrifying photos of migrant workers marching hundreds of kilometres on foot to flee towns for their villages made headlines. These workers are mostly all daily wage labourers and were left stranded without food, shelter, or income, prompting an exodus of masses.
We are left with the question of identifying these groups of migrants? Why has the lockdown caused them to leave the cities and why didn’t the Center and states expect this? How can this reactive response from the State be strengthened, for now, and for the future? It is tempting to see this crisis simply as a result of one of Covid-19's challenges. Yet presenting the migrant crisis as an unintended by-product of the pandemic would be a mistake.
It took a serious pandemic to move our law-makers’ imagination from a purely international perspective towards the internal arena. We must now make sure that the attention does not wither away.
Social security- the feeling of belongingness and safety, is what any human would crave for during uncertain times such as this. A migrant, even more so. The migrants feel alienated in cities. They would rather die walking than stay quarantined with strangers’ in such harsh circumstances.
This alienation amongst migrant workers can be attributed to the communitarian nature of the states in India. A big challenge faced by the internal migrants is the cultural discrimination they experience, whilst being in their own country. When they move to a new city, their otherness is often pinned on them like the scarlet letter.
For instance, North-eastern natives face racial slurs and assaults in India. Within their own country, they were guilty of reverse racism. The absolute inability of ‘mainland India’ to see beyond its nose, to really consider and appreciate those who do not fit into what it is accustomed to is brutal.
Migration is often entangled in dirty politics and the presence of communitarian feelings within the leaders and people of a city/state. Anti-migrant politics are upheld by these nativist parties, as they claim that the different cultures might create an unhealthy clash and corrupt their community values.
For instance, the political party- Shivsena, gained popularity in Maharashtra by rallying against South Indian migrants and later the Muslim migrants.
It is alarming how excluded and out of home, an Indian migrant feels in another part of their own country.
Cosmopolitanism, like many concepts in political science, is a contested topic and can mean an idea within which people connect with others in discourse and comprehension so as to move past parochialism. It is additionally progressively observed as communicated in cultural phenomena, as in ways of life and personalities. Cosmopolitanism is a regulating perspective from which one encounters, comprehends, and makes a decision about the world resulting in a very open mind to different ideas, cultures and ways of doing things.
We would like to propose a community embedded perspective of this concept which is compatible with the theory of nationalism.
Like every macro-economic concept that can be adjusted and made fit to understand a micro concept, philosophical and social concepts can also be adapted in a similar way.
It is widely believed by many that one cannot have nationalist sentiments as well as cosmopolitan views. But it is possible to have the cake and eat it too because research proves that concepts such as cosmopolitan nationalism or ethnic cosmopolitanism can co-exist.
A cosmopolitan society espouses the morality of inclusivity, a mutual economic rapport, or a shared political framework made up of different subunits.
While multiculturalism simply identifies the existence of diversity, a cosmopolitan would work towards building an inclusive space and transforming the society from a tightly knit communitarian one into a diverse, inclusive city.
In a country as diverse and populated as India, if these sentiments of communitarianism are encouraged to grow, they have the potential to entirely eradicate a sense of nationalism that ties the country together in the first place. When we talk about the Khalistan movement or the insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir or the separatist demands of the North-East stemming from feelings of alienation, the need of the hour seems to be to yield the floor to these minority opinions in order to completely evolve within the idea of the aforementioned urbanity.
In a truly cosmopolitan state, the state governments have a need to recognize migrants as part of our cities and need to consider at least how the new policies will affect these populations. Actually, such an ex-ante understanding would have allowed the government to determine whether to use scarce resources to ensure a safe return or to hold migrants in cities. These migrants may not be able to go home for a long time, because of the virus. The state can collaborate and reach out to them and work on cutting down their anxieties. They can do so by pushing for a flexible registration programme that could help the government’s goodwill schemes reach all those migrants in need.
The pandemic of coronavirus is a study. It is a trial of the medical ability of the state as well as its political will. It is a test of courage and perseverance, and a measure of the strength of the moral decisions as well as the behaviour they manifest into.
The epidemic forces us to address profound questions of human life, questions so complex that the greatest thinkers have addressed them before, in many ways. It is a measure of where all human beings are. If we have any chance of saving all our lives, even the most vulnerable ones right now, it is through unity. Cosmopolitan ideas are our biggest hope to fight the pandemic and rebuild our lives and dreams, together.
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