Aug 16 2023 to Aug 16 2023 6:30 p.m.

EVENT HAS ENDED

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

The summer of 2021 saw a massive rise in the number of infections and deaths from Covid-19 in India. Even by conservative estimates, at least 1.5 million people had lost their lives by June; several times the official figure. As in the first wave of the pandemic, this time, too, the chaos and suffering were in large measure, as Harsh Mander shows, due to mismanagement by an uncaring and cynical state. The first part of his book, Burning Pyres, Mass Graves and a State That Failed Its People, describes the grave humanitarian crisis of 2020, which pushed the urban poor to the brink of starvation. It shows how this was a direct consequence of public policy choices that the central government made, particularly imposing the world’s longest and most stringent lockdown, with the smallest relief package. The second part of the book records the horrors of the following year when everything from hospital beds to oxygen and essential medicines fell disastrously short. Combining ground reports with hard data and first-hand knowledge, Mander chronicles the greatest humanitarian catastrophe India has faced in a century, the effects of which will be felt for decades. This powerful book is a necessary record of a national tragedy that too many of us want to forget when remembering is our only defense against a similar disaster in the future. The panelists will discuss the issues raised in the book.

A Q&A with the audience will follow.

Speakers Harsh Mander Writer, Teacher & Human Rights Worker

Harsh Mander is one of India’s most trusted and courageous social justice and human rights activists. He is also the author of several acclaimed books on contemporary India, among them, Looking Away: Inequality, Prejudice and Indifference in New India; Ash in the Belly: India’s Unfinished Battle Against Hunger; Fatal Accidents of Birth: Stories of Suffering, Oppression and Resistance; and This Land Is Mine, I Am Not of This Land: CAA–NRC and the Manufacture of Statelessness.

Arvind Narrain Lawyer & Author

Arvind Narrain is a visiting faculty at Azim Premji University and the National Law School. He is the author of most recently, India’s Undeclared Emergency: Constitutionalism and the Politics of Resistance. Priya Ramani Journalist Priya Ramani is a Bangalore-based journalist. She is the co-founder of India Love Project and on the editorial board of the news website Article-14. She is a columnist for BQ Prime and The Hindu Sunday Magazine