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COVID-19: Impact on Indian Politics
MMAKAS in association with NGPL and ORF held an online panel discussion on 3 May 2020.
The Panellists:
* K Pandiarajan Hon’ble Minister for Tamil Language, Culture Government of Tamil Nadu
* N K Premachandran Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha (Kollam Constituency)
* PTR Palanivel Thiagarajan Member of Legislative Assembly, Tamil Nadu
* Prime Point Srinivasan Chairman & Managing Trustee DiJAI moderated the discussion.
Extract from the Panel Discussion:
Mr N K Premachandran, Member of Parliament
Mr Premachandran said that no disaster brought more misery to humanity than the Second World War. Although Covid has brought in a high level of misery, it is a matter of pride that the entire nation of 1.3 billion people are united in their fight against Covid19. This is a unique political experiment, thanks to Covid19 management.
According to him, the Indian political scenario has to be dissected and analysed in three distinct phases—the preCovid phase, the current phase and the post Covid phase. He said that the state of Kerala has learnt a lot of lessons from its own practical experiences.
Lockdown
Blues He cautioned that people’s compliance to lockdown should not lead to authoritarian governments at the Centre and States. “The civil rights, political rights and even the fundamental rights are being infringed upon, because of the pandemic situation,” he said.
He suggested that each State has to focus on selfsustainability through sustainable development.
“As Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of the Nation, said, the soul of India lives in its villages. More attention needs to be given for agriculture and rural development,” he felt.
Migrant Labour and Returning NRIs
Regarding the movement of migrant labourers and return of NRIs, he strongly felt the need for effective intervention. He said, “Most of the returning NRIs will be above 40.
Whether they will be able to work here is a delicate matter. Definitely we have to find some ways to rehabilitate the foreign returnees.”
On the muchtouted Kerala model of governance, he said, “People talk about the Kerala model of governance where the power is decentralised up to the local panchayat level. This has been made possible by raising the standard of living, thanks to the remittances made by NRIs so far. Therefore, at least now, we have to think about rehabilitating the returning NRIs.”
Mr Premachandran expressed his opinion that management of the pandemic will be a major issue in the next elections. “PostCovid, India has to take headon two vital issues namely unemployment and poverty and without addressing these, any growth in terms of figures will only be notional,” he summed up in a nutshell the agenda for the government.
Mr K Pandiarajan, Hon’ble Minister for Tamil Language, Culture, Government of Tamil Nadu
Mr Pandiarajan felt that we need to debate on issues like the unipolar world attempt by China in the geo-political transition, the political realignment of the world and if India will matter in the comity of nations emerging either stronger or weaker post-COVID.
He listed out as the second dominant theme in his mind, the nature of jobs. “What will happen to jobs, especially in the unorganized sector? We say India is highly entrepreneurial and almost 18% of the people here earn a living by doing something on their own. How much support, freedom and push can the governments give to different sections to engage in entrepreneurial activity?“ he wondered.
Tamil Nadu and Covid Management
“The Tamil Nadu government will be engaging with the industry on restoring normalcy,” he promised. He argued for more autonomy to the States and decentralisation of power.
He listed out the steps taken by the Tamil Nadu government in tackling the pandemic—serving free food to the public through Amma Canteens, increased testing and tracing, gearing up the entire government machinery, organising a task force for tapping FDI investments and doing continuous course corrections.
Regarding FDI, he said that the state government has set up a task force at the instance of five countries—Japan, Korea, Singapore, the US and Taiwan and hoped that they will deliver results. “PostCovid19, I believe India will emerge stronger. We have a strong national identity today. That will drive us,” he said.
Mr PTR Palanivel Thiagarajan, Member of Legislative Assembly, Tamil Nadu
Mr PTR Palanivel Thiagarajan said that we are all shaped by our experiences. He recalled his own experiences with multiple kinds of seismic events. “I was in the World Trade Centre when the planes hit on 9/11. I was a senior executive running the subsidiaries of Lehman when the global financial crisis started. I was part of India and the demonetization that crippled our economy,” he said.
Drawing a parallel from the 9/11 crisis, he said there were no elaborate screenings in the airport before 9/11 incident. “Things changed drastically after that. Similarly, postCovid, we may encounter multiple screenings in airports. We have to live with the new normal.”
Alluding the Covid outbreak to a watershed event, he said that this crisis is a before-and-after kind of separator. “Only 10% of the impact is known to us now. The consequences of shutting down the economy even partially are going to be so humongous. This is an era of change or era of shifting events,” he said and shared his views on a range of issues.
Focus on Governance
"This crisis changes people's expectations of politics as opposed to governance. We are seeing a fundamental distinction between the kind of campaigning and sloganeering and rabblerousing as opposed to actually governance; Covid will change the nature of people's expectations of the learnedness of their politicians.
One of the reasons that Germany has been such an effective handler of the crisis is that their leader is a scientist. She understands complex models and is able to use that in decision-making. The speed at which leaders react and the nature in which they react is going to shift after this crisis,” he said.
On devolution of power, he commented, “The notion of centralized versus distributed models of governance is going to become very starker. We can see the difference between Tamil Nadu and Kerala. In Kerala, the devolution has been all the way down to the panchayat level. The average panchayat level executive or committee or councillor in Kerala is significantly more empowered than the one in Tamil Nadu and that is a fundamental component of the outcome that they've been able to achieve.”
On talks of likely FDI inflows, he opined that it could be misplaced optimism.
“I hear of companies exiting China and about the scope for India and Tamil Nadu. I am an exinvestment banker. I've run large trading business with hundreds of billions of dollars balance sheet and transactions a year and I find it hard to imagine a scenario in which we can attract FDI with this much uncertainty in the world and the lack of execution skill that India has shown. How long will it take for FDI to have an impact on employment? This is not a realistic shortterm solution,” he said.
Old Order Should Change
He added, “Politics is not only about learning, but also driven by people who have compassion. Politics is not a lifelong career; the system needs change and evolving leadership. The grassroots level politicians stay put for too long, choking the pipelines and thus blocking fresh blood."
In his opinion, the governments —both in Delhi and Tamil Nadu— have one main task: to find the poorest and weakest sections of the society and try their best to revive demand and bring back their balance sheets to some level of neutrality.
“If we don't do that, we are going to see consequences for years to come,” he cautioned on a serious note.
