My musings on law and order, under nationwide lock down. #COVID-19 #quarantine

Prologue

I write this from my home where I grew up in Mumbai India, where I arrived on March 5th to meet my family, but am in a lockdown, as Indian government imposed a nation-wide curfew starting March 22nd until April 14th to prepare for the fight against COVID-19. I am not sure when I will be able to secure tickets to fly back to the US and meanwhile have ample time to ponder over Aristotle's thoughts on “Law is order and good law is good order”, as I see related events unfolding across the country.

Aristotle's perhaps implied that unless good laws are explicitly spelled out, good order is difficult to maintain. This was especially true in 4th century BC when concepts of Civil law were at a nascent stage and evolving, and to prevent law from being applied arbitrarily, some sort of structure was desired. Perhaps a commonly held belief must have been that how could kings and emperors enforce order without good law? 

At the same time, Aristotle was cautious of the fact that a great multitude cannot be orderly. This was evident in the growth of Roman empire from Aristotle's time of present day Italy to the entire Europe in a few centuries. This also bears resemblance in case of many other great empires like the Mughal empire in India to British empire comprising colonies across the globe. Their growth often brought tremendous economic success but great difficulty in enforcing order. 

With this observation I would like to discuss the Government of India’s response to the growing threat of COVID-19 and examine the effectiveness (and drawbacks) of law in order to establish order. 

Background to this decision

India has 30 million NRI’s (non-resident Indians) i.e. people of Indian origin living outside India. This is probably one of the biggest for any country and also means that there is a lot of international non-tourism related travel. As of March 22nd, India had about 300 confirmed COVID-19 cases. However, the government still had to take the drastic measure to lock down 1/5th of the world's humanity (1.3 billion people) to prevent the dreaded Stage-3 where community transmission starts.

Analysis

Section 144 of Indian Penal Code prevents 4 or more people from gathering and has been routinely and successfully deployed to control crowds, riots etc in the past. It is a form of enforced social distancing. This along with complete shutdown of international flights and sealing international borders meant that safeguards were in place to prevent infection from international travellers, who were most suspect to the virus. On March 22nd i.e. first day of lockdown, all non-essential services, public transport etc were brought to a screeching halt. As of March 28th, there have been 873 cases so far and nearly all are not from community transmission. This might appear to be a good news and reinforce our belief that lockdown is working in our fight against COVID-19 among a few other factors.

A passive observer might conclude that good laws often translated into good order - a critical tool when you have to fight against a virus that relies on human to human transmission. If this is extrapolated to 1.3 billion people, there is bound to be confusion, panic and chaos and that is what has been the observations from different parts of the country. 

Air India arranged a dozen reparation flights to bring back stranded Indians from different parts of the world. On the other side there were thousands of daily wage earners fleeing capital New Delhi to their hometowns in rural heartlands forced to walk hundreds of miles with families including small children as public transport was shut down. The purpose of social distancing was defeated in some places when mass panic led to crowding and buying of essentials despite repeated assurances that there would be no shortages. 

This begs the question whether there was too much law applied or too little? Whether good law would indeed help bring good order or it generally fails after a certain threshold. Advocates of too much law say that there is still ambiguity in terms of what should be allowed and what shouldn't be. This results in chaos and thus in emergency measures like this, there is a need to explicitly spell out everything. Particularly in a country like India which is way too diverse all levels. Critics say that we have enough laws and problems lie in the interpretation and implementation. This is again compounded by the diverse nature of the country, huge population and the limitation of state resources. 

The conflict lies at various levels. Firstly, like the US the government's politics tend to be viewed as right leaning or left leaning and along with it comes a set of prejudices against it. This current right-leaning government and Prime Minister Modi have been known for passing and enforcing unprecedented laws right from amending constitution to withdraw special status to Kashmir, invalidating 95% of the country's currency overnight to proposing a national register for citizens. This has been bolstered by 2 back to back full majorities in the general elections, unseen since at least 3 decades. This immense popularity has given the Prime Minister immense power. Critics say that this has led to marginalizing of opposition and subduing voices of dissent at certain levels. Can law bridge this gap when it itself is seen as unjust or partial?

Secondly, the vast economic disparity means that law is interpreted differently and impacts different people based on whether they are rich or poor. Daily wage earners tend to be the worst hit with no safety net and typically are the first to panic and ignore advisories like social distancing in their need to secure essentials. The whole idea of social distancing in fact, typically impacts non-white collared workers more as they cannot work from home. This results in leave without pay and potential job loss. If law impacts rich and poor differently, can we rely on more law to bridge this gap?

Thirdly, is the problem of scale. What works in a household or a small community may not work in a huge country of 1.3 billion diverse people. This raises a question whether law be applied uniformly at a large scale?

I choose to write about this particular event as the nature of the problem and our reaction seems unprecedented (at least to this generation). This has called for draconian measures to fight the pandemic and establish order. There will never be enough laws to meet this requirement and thus a “least bad” option does seem an extremely pragmatic one. This is particularly more evident from the fact that we have shifting goalposts and a threat that is evolving on a day to day basis. This demands a certain flexibility in how we tackle it and also creative solutions. Going by the book at all times and being rigid may not help restore order.

In sum, Lady justice, often depicted in blind fold with sword and a balance, depicting moral force is an apt representation of the spirit of law and enforcing national shutdown may be the least bad option here.