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Today, we are going through exceptionally strange and difficult times. Covid-19 is reshaping the world as we know it and no one knows what awaits us on the other side. Here at DIFF, we are trying to keep our spirits afloat by turning once again to cinema to inspire and encourage us. The deep humanism and artistic insights that inform the best of cinema are as relevant in the age of coronavirus as they have always been.

With this in mind, we reached out to DIFF alumni and requested them to make their films available for screening online on the DIFF website. The response from our filmmakers was overwhelmingly positive, although some, understandably, were unable to share their films due to contractual obligations. We are deeply grateful to all the filmmakers who rallied to our call.

The DIFF Viewing Room, a specially curated selection of DIFF alumni films available for online streaming, all for free, and all available to our extended DIFF family around the world was updated every two weeks.

Here are the films that were available from 31 March to 7 July 2020:

5 Broken Cameras (Dir. Emad Burnat & Guy Davidi | 2011)

48 Years: Silent Dictator (Dir. Hiroshi Sunairi | 2017)

Abu (Dir. Arshad Khan | 2017)

Afternoon Clouds (Dir. Payal Kapadia | 2016)

Amma Meri (Dir. Tarun Jain | 2017)

Bebaak (Dir. Shazia Iqbal | 2019)

Chauthi Koot (Dir. Gurvinder Singh | 2015)

Court (Dir. Chaitanya Tamhane | 2014)

Days of Autumn (Dir. Mukul Haloi | 2016)

The Dossier (Dir. Zhu Rikun | 2014)

Ee Ma Yau (Dir. Lijo Jose Pellissery | 2017)

Eye Test (Dir. Sudha Padmaja Francis | 2017)

The Fish Curry (Dir. Abhishek Verma | 2017)

A Gesar Bard's Tale (Dir. Lharigatso & Donagh Coleman | 2014)

Girni (Dir. Umesh Kulkarni | 2004)

Her Mother (Dir. Yoshinori Sato | 2017)

Jallikattu (Dir. Lijo Jose Pellissery | 2019)

Jamnapaar (Dir. Abhinava Bhattacharyya | 2017)

Journey to Nagaland (Dir. Aditi Chitre | 2010)

A Korean in Paris (Dir. Jeon Soo-il | 2015)

The Last Adieu (Dir. Shabnam Sukhdev | 2013)

Lo Sum Choe Sum (Dir. Dechen Roder | 2015)

Miss Lovely (Dir. Ashim Ahluwalia | 2017)

Mukti Bhawan (Dir. Shubhashish Bhutiani | 2016)

Nabarun (Dir. Q | 2014)

Nirnay(Dir. Pushpa Rawat | 2012)

Nooreh (Dir. Ashish Pandey | 2018)

Placebo(Dir. Abhay Kumar | 2015)

Ralang Road (Dir. Karma Takapa | 2016)

The Shepherdess of the Glaciers (Dir. Stanzin Dorjai Gya & Christiane Mordelet | 2015)

A Syrian Love Story (Dir. Sean McAllister | 2015)

Tashi & the Monk (Dir. Andrew Hinton and Johnny Burke | 2014)

Tripoli Cancelled (Dir. Naeem Mohaimen | 2017)

Turup (Dir. Ektara Collective | 2017)

Vietnam The Movie (Dir. Nguyen Trinh Thi | 2016)

When Hari Got Married (Dir. Ritu Sarin & Tenzing Sonam | 2012)

With You Without You (Dir. Prasanna Vithanage | 2012)

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Today, we are going through exceptionally strange and difficult times. Covid-19 is reshaping the world as we know it and no one knows what awaits us on the other side. Here at DIFF, we are trying to keep our spirits afloat by turning once again to cinema to inspire and encourage us.

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Erschreckende Prognosen zu Corona-Zahlen in Indien

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Erschreckende Prognosen zu Corona-Zahlen in Indien

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Nachdem Indien früh den Lockdown verkündete, steigen die Fälle mit den Lockerungen dramatisch - Experten befürchten mehr als 300 Millionen Infizierte bis Ende Juli. Was das für das ohnehin lückenhafte Gesundheitssystem bedeuten würde.

Nun müssen sogar Eisenbahnwaggons herhalten. Die Zahl der Covid-19-Fälle schnellt in der indischen Hauptstadt Delhi in die Höhe, sodass die Zentralregierung nun schon 500 Züge bereitgestellt hat, deren Abteile in Corona-Quartiere verwandelt werden sollen. Mahesh Misra, ehemaliger Leiter der Hochschule All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIM) in Delhi, hat allerdings Zweifel, dass die Waggons in dieser Jahreszeit geeignet sein werden, um kranke Menschen aufzunehmen. "Jetzt wo die Hitze vor dem Monsun drückt und es keine Klimaanlagen in den Waggons gibt, sollten sie nur eine allerletzte Notlösung sein", sagt Misra am Telefon.

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Nachdem Indien früh den Lockdown verkündete, steigen die Fälle mit den Lockerungen dramatisch - Experten befürchten mehr als 300 Millionen Infizierte bis Ende Juli. Was das für das ohnehin lückenhafte Gesundheitssystem bedeuten würde. Nun müssen sogar Eisenbahnwaggons herhalten.

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Heuschreckenplage durch Klimawandel, besonders in Jaipur.

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Das Coronavirus, ein Zyklon und jetzt Heuschrecken: Eine Serie von Plagen sucht derzeit Indien heim. Die Tiere fressen ganze Ernten. Viel hängt jetzt von der Regenzeit ab. Von Silke Diettrich, ARD-Studio Neu-Delhi
Sie hängen an Luftschächten, Stahltreppen und Balkonbrüstungen. Auf der Terrasse von Ashish Kumar ist kein einziges Stückchen Fliese mehr zu sehen. Der Boden ist ein wimmelndes Braun, dicht an dicht haben die Heuschrecken sich hier abgesetzt.

Jede einzelne von ihnen sei rund 15 Zentimeter lang, sagt der Geschäftsmann aus Jaipur. Ashish Kumar hat viele Handyvideos gedreht und sie in den sozialen Netzwerken geteilt. Am Telefon sagt Kumar:

"Von jetzt auf gleich waren sie plötzlich in unserem Viertel. Es müssen Millionen gewesen sein - so viele, dass wir sie nicht zählen konnten. Sie fliegen nebeneinander her, aber es kamen immer mehr. Ein Schwarm vorneweg, ein anderer hinterher." Zwei Stunden habe es gedauert.

Ein Quadratkilometer Heuschrecken

Ein Schwarm erstrecke sich über 1000 mal 1000 Meter. Darin fliegen rund 40 Millionen Heuschrecken, sagt Anil Sharma. Mehr als 25 Jahre hat er im Ministerium für Landwirtschaft gearbeitet. Sein Spezialgebiet: Wüsten-Heuschrecken,

"Wegen des Klimawandels haben wir dieses Problem jetzt in diesem Ausmaß. Die Heuschrecken werden alles auffressen, was grün ist und auf ihrem Weg liegt. Das kann in einer Krise enden. Weil sie die Ernten auffressen, ist die Nahrungssicherheit für die Menschen gefährdet."

Ernten in Gefahr

Schon ein kleiner Schwarm der Insekten kann theoretisch an einem Tag so viel vertilgen wie 35.000 Menschen. Die Bauern im Norden von Indien haben ihre Ernten wegen der Ausgangssperre in den letzten Wochen nicht verkaufen können und sie daher draußen gelagert. Die Heuschrecken haben sie in wenigen Stunden einfach aufgefressen.

In den Städten und auch auf dem Land versuchen die Inderinnen und Inder die Heuschrecken mit Lärm zu vertreiben: Sie klopfen auf Töpfe, rufen laut. Aber das wird keinesfalls reichen, sagt Heuschrecken-Experte Sharma. Pestizide müssten in der Nacht versprüht werden, um die Population der Schwärme zu minimieren. Aber jetzt, in Zeiten der Corona-Pandemie, sei es noch schwieriger, gegen die Heuschrecken vorzugehen:

"Seit Wochen haben wir in Indien eine Ausgangssperre. Viele Fabriken sind geschlossen. Wir stehen jetzt vor der großen Herausforderung, wie wir an alle Mittel herankommen können, um die Heuschrecken zu töten."

Verborgene Generationen

Wissenschaftler der Vereinten Nationen sagen, dass die Heuschreckenplage in diesem Jahr besonders groß sei, weil die Schwärme lange Zeit nicht entdeckt worden seien. Sie führen die derzeitige Plage auf Wirbelstürme aus den Jahren 2018 und 2019 zurück.

Starker Regen auf der Arabischen Halbinsel habe begünstigt, dass mindestens drei Generationen von Heuschrecken herangewachsen seien - in einem unvorstellbaren Ausmaß. Von dort hätten sie sich nach Südasien und Ostafrika aufgemacht.

Schutz der Sommerernten

Die nächsten Tage und Wochen in Indien seien nun entscheidend, sagt Anil Sharma: "Wenn wir die Schwärme nicht unter Kontrolle bekommen, bevor die Regenzeit beginnt, dann stehen wir vor enormen Problemen."

Die Heuschrecken würden sich dann schnell vermehren können, weil die Bedingungen gut seien: "Viele frische und grüne Pflanzen wachsen in kurzer Zeit heran. Die dann allerdings komplett aufgefressen werden könnten. Die gesamte Sommerernte wäre dann verloren."

Das könnte im Juni der Fall sein. Dann beginnt der Monsun im Norden von Indien.

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Das Coronavirus, ein Zyklon und jetzt Heuschrecken: Eine Serie von Plagen sucht derzeit Indien heim. Die Tiere fressen ganze Ernten. Viel hängt jetzt von der Regenzeit ab. Von Silke Diettrich, ARD-Studio Neu-Delhi Sie hängen an Luftschächten, Stahltreppen und Balkonbrüstungen. Auf der Terrasse von Ashish Kumar ist kein einziges Stückchen Fliese mehr zu sehen.

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Of the 69 countries around the world that still criminalize same sex relationships, 32 are in Africa. In many countries, violence and discrimination is a part of the every-day life of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) people and LGBT activism is banned.

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We created the first ever Bollywood music video for gay rights with our Equality Champion Celina Jaitly to promote a Free and Equal world. It's a beautiful reminder that everyone should be warmly welcomed by family, no matter who they are or whom they love.

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https://storyweaver.org.in

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खोया पाया Learn Hindi with subtitles - Story for Children "BookBox.Com"

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Falls es jemanden interessiert: Hier der Sprachkurs über den ich in zwei Wochen berichten werde. Wie gesagt, es ist ein kostenpflichtiges Programm, mit CD ROMs und Buch.

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Neuer Memrise-Kurs zum Üben von Obliquus und Imperativ (und Hindi Bolo Vokabeln ab Lektion 5 zum Tippen in Devanagari-Schrift - in Progress)

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Neuer Memrise-Kurs zum Üben von Obliquus und Imperativ (und Hindi Bolo Vokabeln ab Lektion 5 zum Tippen in Devanagari-Schrift - in Progress)

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Bei Fehlern oder wenn du etwas hinzufügen willst, gerne kommentieren 😊

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DuoLingo ist ein geprüfter Sprachkurs, bei dem es sehr viele Levels für verschiedene Themen wie "Pluralformen", "Familie" oder "Zeitangaben" gibt. So ist für jedes Niveau etwas dabei.

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Duolingo is the world's most popular way to learn a language. It's 100% free, fun and science-based. Practice online on duolingo.com or on the apps!

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Hier ein einfach zu bedienendes Online-Wörterbuch  (bitte nie, nie, niemals mit Google translate übersetzen. Danke! Monika Freier)

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Namaste ! Welcome to Bolti dictionary

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Navigate the dictionary You can get a translation by using the search engine. Say a word or phrase in the search engine or get it in 3 clicks. Begin search Learn with the locals Thousands of hours of audio recorded by professional Indian speakers.

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Fifty Best Hindi Podcasts For 2020. Latest was Episode 54 : Hindi Song (Bhajan) - Tum Hamare The Prabhuji. Listen online, no signup necessary.

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Learn Hindi Online with Podcasts - HindiPod101

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The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Hindi and Hindi culture. Start speaking Hindi in minutes with audio and video lessons, audio dictionary, and learning community!

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Listen to Learn Hindi with LinguaBoost on Spotify. Boost your fluency in Hindi with LinguaBoost! You can download the entire audio course (30 lessons), including a pdf book with all the phrases, on our website: www.linguaboost.comEach lesson contains useful everyday phrases related to a specific topic.

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Listen to Learn Hindi On The Go on Spotify. This podcast is created by Jaibodh, Shraddha & Ritansh- a family of online Hindi teachers. Jaibodh, the writer of the podcast has four decades of teaching experience & has written five books on contemporary Hindi language learning, which are among the best in the world.

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COVID-19 had, by late April 2020, affected 2 931 710 people worldwide. As of April 26, 203 590 people have died. The Global North has not been spared by this crisis. The United States, with 960 896 cases and 54 265 deaths, is the most affected country in the world, followed by Spain, Italy, France, Germany, and the UK. The pandemic has further swept across the Global South, with India, for example, registering 26 496 cases and 825 deaths, and South Africa with 4 361 cases and 86 deaths.

We need to view these statistics carefully, however, because of the differences in registration in each country, ie. many people are not able to get tested, or state bureaucracies do not have the capacity to register COVID-19 cases correctly. Countries in the Global South in particular, have huge problems controlling major epidemics due to deficient public healthcare systems as well as continuous exploitation by the Global North. This precedes the crisis and is a result, among others, of a colonial history.

Continuous Exploitation after ColonialismFrom the Early Modern Period to the beginning of decolonisation (1450-1950) European colonial powers like Spain, Portugal, England, and Germany participated in colonial expansions by means of "civilising" missions. These imperial metropoles needed raw materials such as cotton, sugar, tea, silk, oil, coal, natural gas, and metals, like gold and silver to feed the added productivity of modern factories during Europe's Industrial Revolution. These raw materials were not available locally, and had to be found abroad. Europe has possessed various forms of colonies like no other continent. Other non-European countries like Japan and the United States undertook similar colonial expansions and committed crimes of slavery and theft of indigenous lands, but never matched European expansionism, which, at it's peak, directly controlled over 80% of the globe, as Ania Loomba pointed out in her work Colonialism/Postcolonialism (2015).

Theft of indigenous land and indigenous people's resources along with the enslavement of indigenous peoples as cheap labour laid the basis for global trade, the expropriation of the commons in Europe, and the worldwide creation of a landless proletariat who were, and still are, forced to sell their labour power in order to survive. It is through colonialism that capitalism and imperialism emerged as an out-of-control global economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and private production of commodities for profit.

Towards the end of colonialism, in the course of anti-colonial independence movements, European motherlands mostly left their colonies to "independently" deal with disaster and ethnic rivalry. This often lead to brutal civil wars and partition (for example in India, Sri Lanka, China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Indonesia etc.), as well as to continued economic exploitation by the Global North in a newly structured post-colonial neoliberal system. InFrantz Fanon theorises how the national bourgeoisie in formerly colonised countries will consolidate their own class interest and capitalist power within the country by serving foreign, often Western, capitalist business even after independence.

Countries in the Global South are still politically and economically dependent on imperialist powers like the United States and the European Union, even after the formal colonial period. Many former colonies receive so-called development aid because they were ' under d eveloped' by the imperial G lobal North during colonisation and later imperialism. These development aids continue the vicious cycle and reproduce economic and political dependencies. They are nothing but another project to stabilise and foster the rule of Western capital in the Global South. In reality, what these development projects try to do is to temper some of the consequences of capitalism, so as to avoid popular sympathy for any anti-capitalist change, like a socialist revolution as a response to the constant crisis of capitalism.

With international trade, labour mobility has increased and imperialist, neo-colonial exploitation has continued and takes on new forms. Cheap labour comes from abroad - from the Global South and from Eastern Europe - to the metropoles of imperialism. This cheap labor force, these guest and migrant workers, usually do the "dirty," physically and mentally exhausting jobs, and are the most oppressed subjects of the impoverished working class.

In capitalism, these underdeveloped countries, most of them former colonies, cannot develop themselves independently because they are under the restrictions of the capitalist world market. For example, former colonies need to export their natural resources at a fixed price that the global market dictates and forces upon them.

Multiple Crises in the Global SouthColonialism remains visible in the Global South in many different forms - psychologically, politically, and economically. The COVID-19 crisis amplifies all of these effects. The crisis is affecting capitalist systems dramatically and people are losing their jobs on a mass scale. Even imperialist countries, such as Germany or the United States for example, struggle in this crisis; their health care s ystem s are over-extended and millions of people have l ost their jobs.

This means that the countries that have already been the backyard of the imperialist Global North are disproportionately facing deeper odds. Crises in countries of the Global South are multifaceted and numerous, meaning that the realities of struggle cannot be homogenised. But there are some similarities at hand. Thousands of people in the Global South are dying during this crisis, not necessarily just due to falling sick of COVID-19 itself, but primarily because of the consequences of decades of colonisation and capitalism in its imperialist form. This has resulted in miserable healthcare systems, limited access to medicine and healthy food, no easy access to hygiene products like hand sanitisers and masks during lockdown, etc.

The Haitian government, like all other governments, is officially promoting confinement and social distancing in spite of the reality that people continue to struggle to feed themselves while avoiding an infection. The unemployment in Haiti is already high, with 6 million of Haiti's 11 million citizens living below the poverty line of $2.41 a day. In Haitian slums, the population density is so high that social distancing is not a feasible solution in order to survive this crisis. South Africa is another example of these dynamics. South Africa boasts a very high unemployment rate of 29%, 50% of which is made up of young people. This is a social catastrophe in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is similar to the situation in India and its neighbors Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The majority of people in India, about 81 % of the working class, work in the informal sector. The 21-day curfew is a major problem for the poorest of this population.

Social distancing and self-isolation are individual privileges and cannot be the solution for underdeveloped countries. We need to have a deeper look at living conditions of the poor working class, how they live (in slums for examples), how they go to work (overcrowded rickshaws, taxis, trains, buses), how they get food, if they have access to essentials like running water in their informal settlements or houses, and also, how they survive with their meager incomes.

COVID-19 as a global capitalist issue The Global North is focused on rescuing only itself rather than rescuing everyone. The United States, for instance, offered German scientists working on a coronavirus vaccine a lot of money to give the US exclusive access to their results. While the imperialist countries consistently fail to take responsibility for their colonial crimes, what we do need is a global public health strategy, because similar disease outbreaks are likely to re-emerge in the future.

COVID-19 is a crisis that is global in nature, and the Global North - which looked at epidemics and catastrophes as a problem of "dirty, dangerous, strange others", problems of queer people, Black, Brown and indigenous peoples, peasants and poor migrant and working class people from developing countries - is not immune to this outbreak. Epidemics or pandemics are inevitable in times of globalisation and industrial food production, where international and intercontinental travel is highly connected. In the article ' Political Economy of COVID-19', Indian activist Manish Azad traces the COVID-19 outbreak to the meat production in Wuhan, China. He explains in detail how much the USA and other European countries have at stake in the World Meat trade of about $ 945 billion.

The Global North needs to understand that viruses will not only emerge in developing countries, in the so called "Third World" but that viruses emerge within this capitalist system and so it is a global issue that effects the global community.

Global Public Health Strategy and Opportunities A universal healthcare system and a global pharmaceutical industry that serves people, not profit, could successfully counter pandemics like COVID-19. Any future COVID-19 vaccine needs to be offered to everyone for free. Access to healthcare, water, and food should be a human right for everyone and everywhere. All private hospitals, healthcare systems, companies and businesses should be nationalised, as is already partly the case in countries like Spain, Ireland, and France, and most importantly, be put under workers' control. The Global North needs to take responsibility for the public health crisis it created with the remnants of colonial power dynamics and the exploitative capitalist mode of production it introduced to its former colonies.

To quote Edna Bonhomm e: "The Global South is not the source but the frequent victim of outbreaks aggravated by capitalism [...]." However, it does not mean that poor workers and peasants from the Global South have no self-organised resistance, creativity or local knowledge to counteract this crisis. Examples of self-activity, mutual support, protest and unrest are expanding from Asia, across Africa and Latin America.

After the COVID-19 crisis, neoliberal politics will prevail. Exploitation will go on. The Global South, as well as all the migrant workers, refugees, and working poor will continue to be over-exploited. The capitalist bosses are the real gangsters, as philosopher Cornel West has famously put it, and will not stop stealing the surplus labour of workers worldwide.

But the COVID-19 crisis provides the opportunity to strengthen the worldwide working class and peasant consciousness in their position as the essential labour forces, on which the capitalist system and its bosses are relying.

This can be a start, not only in African countries, but also applicable in other countries of the Global South. Although these economic reforms will lead to only minor cosmetic changes within the capitalist mode of production, they will open up possibilities for working people all over the world. Once this crisis abates, workers worldwide have the opportunity to deepen their organising around how to mobilise and organise in order to take back the wealth that is concentrated in the hands of the few. Activists and scholars need to prepare for our own tasks as internationalist workers and intellectuals in the coming months.

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The Effects of Coronavirus on the Global South

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COVID-19 had, by late April2020, affected 2 931 710 people worldwide. As of April 26, 203 590people have died. The Global North has not been spared by thiscrisis. The United States, with 960 896 cases and 54 265 deaths, isthe most affected country in the world, followed by Spain, Italy,France, Germany, and the UK.

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COVID-19 is raging throughout the entire globe, and all politicians of the bourgeois establishment are effectively telling us: "we are all affected," "stay calm," and "we have it under control." There are obvious differences between the authoritarian answers, of governments like the Kenyan, Indian and Peruvian, the liberal answers of countries like Germany, or the massive downplaying by the US government. However, there is one thing all countries have in common: the global Corona-pandemic hit immigrant populations, the poor, and Black and Brown people the hardest.
Coronavirus: "the great equalizer"?
As one of the richest and most powerful countries in the history of the world, the United States had ample time and resources, after its first officially confirmed case on January 21st, to structure a response to the virus. But by April 12th, the United States became the country with the highest number of confirmed COVID-19 deaths globally. As the virus spread, the governor of New York State, Andrew Cuomo, called the coronavirus "the great equalizer." However, the fantasy of a virus equally affecting people regardless of class, 'race', or immigration status has not been the reality of the pandemic in the United States.

If the coronavirus was going to be "the great equalizer," one would expect to see a widespread pattern of devastation in NYC, one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the United States. But, this is not at all the case. Data from the New York City health department showed that "the death rate from COVID-19 for Black and Latino New Yorkers is roughly twice that of white New Yorkers." Of course some are quick to blame the death rate in certain communities on the "lifestyle" of the people living there. But as Democracy Now reported, the "greater number of underlying health conditions, such as diabetes and asthma, lack of access to testing and healthcare, and poor conditions in public housing" are only helping the coronavirus spread. Of course, the racial disparities are not only limited to New York City. For example, the reports from Richmond, Virgina show that all of the deaths in the city were of African American citizens despite the fact that less than 50 percent of city is Black, or in the state of Louisiana where the majority of the deaths were from the African American community when they only make up 32% of the population. We can't act surprised that neglected, underfunded, and vilified communities are being ravaged by a public health crisis. The reality of the situation is that this pandemic is just another crisis to add on to the already crippling burden of neoliberal, racist policy throughout the United States. The pandemic has proven to affect some communities more than others and continues to show the consequences of a racist capitalist system that hurts us all.
Innovating out of the crisis or Who gets to stay at home?
Of course one of the starkest divides of the pandemic is seeing who gets to stay home and be bored versus who has to show up at work despite the risks involved. With an overall ability to work from home of roughly 30% as of the data from 2018, many workers in the US don't have the types of work that lets them be on their computer in their pajamas and avoid the virus safely. The US Bureau of Labor statistics shows that "Thirty-seven percent of Asian Americans and 30 percent of whites said they could work remotely. But only 20 percent of African Americans and 16 percent of Hispanics said they had that ability," which shows that some of the groups that have faced the most consistent marginalisation in the United States have no choice but to be physically present at work. Due to the lockdown and the lack of a comprehensive human-centric economy, the types of layoffs happening tend to impact racial minorities more than other groups in the United States. According to Data for Progress, 45% of African Americans have lost their jobs, lost hours at work, or have been put on leave, compared to 31% of white respondents. This disparity makes sense when you see that Black and Latino communities are over represented in industries like Transportation, Hotels, Landscaping, and Restaurants. So the economy has already been staked against minority communities being pushed into precarious jobs and now the same economies and policies that created these circumstances can't be expected to protect these very communities.

Of course, the other side of racial disparities are the reclassification of so-called unskilled workers as essential workers. Previously, supermarket workers were people to be pitied but now we find ourselves dependent on these individuals during the crisis. In the epicenter of the crisis, 75% of the frontline workers, as defined by the NYC government, are people of colour. Frontline in this case means Healthcare, Public transit, Grocery Stores, and Building Cleaning Services. So not only do Black and Brown essential workers have precarious, badly paying jobs in the first place, also they are now more likely to bring the virus home to their families. Also, from health workers to all other branches of sectors, essential workers have to deal with a lack of protective gear, for weeks now. Management, that is more geared toward maximising profit (e.g. most minimal staff possible) per store, does generally not consider workers' "well-being." In addition to the thousands of individuals picking and packing our food everyday. People previously derided for their immigration status, criminalised and terrorised by immigration authorities, are putting themselves at risk to pack meat, fruit and vegetables for the rest of the country.

While the virus may be affecting certain communities differently, the pandemic makes a strong case of removing the profit motive from healthcare in the US. If the healthcare system was geared toward the best outcome for all people regardless of economic background, then the crisis would not be so deadly for the most vulnerable - in this case working class Black and Latino people. Better yet, the notion of healthcare should expand beyond just when people walk into the door of a hospital. If we thought of creating a health system that helps people achieve the best for them nutritionally, medically, with sufficient pay, and adequate living conditions then maybe we could actually be prepared when things start to fall apart.

Germany is widely considered a stable, welfare state with open arms for refugees. Ever since chancellor Angela Merkel did not close Germany's borders in the summer of 2015, the world has hailed her for her "anti-racism." In reality the conservative politician of the Christian Democratic Party only decided to keep the borders open to avoid the likely scenario of German police officers shooting at refugee children and their families, seeking refuge from war and poverty from places previously equipped with weapons from the German war industry (like Syria, Afghanistan or Kurdistan). Dead refugee children at the border would not have been helpful for Germany's PR, though politicians of Germany's far-right AfD party publicly saluted the idea.

With the first positive case of Coronavirus in the southern state of Bavaria on January 27th, Germany has slowly taken lockdown measures that can be understood as quite liberal. With cases jumping to over 1300 confirmed cases on March 10th, the local governments started taking some measures, like closing cultural establishments. By March 14th in most federal states, schools and day care centres were closed. Employers were asked to close down their businesses and allow workers to work from home, if possible. Since Germany is a federal state, all so called health and security measures to limit the spread of COVID-19 were quite different from state to state. In Berlin, people are allowed to leave their homes for individual exercise or going for a walk. Restrictions are set for the number of people that can gather in public (2 at a time with 2m distance), who do not live under one roof (and being able to prove this via the address on their ID). Additionally, the German government has offered a variety of loans for big and small businesses and direct cash payments for freelancers who have been previously registered as such. So for German white-collar workers, the Coronavirus pandemic has not had a major impact on their lives. But for all other workers, Coronavirus is having a devastating impact economically and psychologically.
Immigrants most affected - also in Germany
Like in other parts of the globe, the sectors doing all essential work toils under precarious working conditions, also in Germany. Immigrants in Germany and their children and grandchildren (about ¼ of Germany's population) make up a disproportionate amount of the essential worker sectors. Of those legally employed workers with a foreign nationality, 31.9% work in building cleaning, 31.7 % in food production and processing, and 31.1% in the meat industry and agriculture, as Ramsis Kilani recently pointed out in one of the few articles in German on the effects of the Coronavirus pandemic on migrant communities in Germany. And this does not take into account non-white German citizens, as the category 'race' is not asked by polls. Further, immigrants earn on average down to half of what Germans earn in the same job, with the same qualification. The risk of living in poverty is twice as high for immigrants and their descendants in Germany as for people without a migration history in their immediate family. This risk increases for those who belong to the Coronavirus risk group of people over 64 years of age. In this age group, 31.4% of people with a so-called migration background are affected by poverty. Kilani concludes: "By comparison, the figure for non-migrant Germans is 11.5%. In 2016, more than a third of the homeless people recorded had a migration background. Almost half of the unemployed have a migration background and because they are self-employed more often than average, the Coronavirus crisis has made many migrants unemployed virtually overnight."

And of course, the detention centre system for refugees in Germany, where those seeking protection are forced to live with up to 12 people in one room for months and years under conditions unfit for human living - even before Coronavirus times - has become one of the hotspots for COVID-19 to spread rapidly amongst the most vulnerable layers of the population in Germany. Guarded by private security companies, and at times dozens of police officers, quarantine measures have been forced upon whole detention centres across the country, without respective healthcare or social distance measures for the refugees inside.
The hazard of being a migrant worker
Poor migrant workers from the Global South, or the European periphery (like Eastern Europe) are some of the most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide. In India for example there are more than 40 million migrant labourers out of its population of 1.3 billion people, who move from small villages to find work and a livelihood to the bigger cities. Mostly they work in the essential sectors such as construction, domestic work, textiles, transportation, mines, or agriculture. Indian capital highly relies on this mobile, rural labour force. Thus migrant workers contribute enormously to the national income. These jobs which are seen as undignified and that have been referred to lower caste people for centuries, are essential and the very fundament for capitalist mega cities like Delhi, Mumbai or Kolkata. These migrant workers mostly toil under very harsh working and health conditions, where they face discrimination, racism and human rights abuses on a daily basis. Little is done, in return, to ensure health or work security for them. During the COVID-19 crisis, migrant workers in India are especially vulnerable, suffering immensely during the repressive lockdown since March 24th. People lost their income, cannot pay rent, and go hungry.

Thousands are walking thousands of kilometres on foot back to their villages of origin, since all public transport has been suspended. Scenes of rural migrants forming caravans from the cities to head back to rural areas, amidst the fear of starvation, have multiplied all over the world, like in Peru.

In Germany, immigrant workers are disproportionately found among the poor, as explained above. In the agriculture sector, 95% of the 300 000 seasonal workers are foreign nationals. Hundreds of thousands of Eastern European labourers work in the German health sector and in the construction sector. The majority of the care workers are employed in home care, but are not statistically recorded - many working without a legal contract. As an article in the German language Lower Class Magazine from April 12th stated:
"The Federal Statistical Office has calculated that in 2017,[immigrant workers will make up]over 30% of cleaning staff, almost 30% in food production, over 20% in warehousing, building construction and delivery, and almost 40% in system catering[...], compared to slightly over 4 % in journalism, 3.7% in the justice system, and around 3 and 2% respectively in finance and administration."
With the official border closures, the German healthcare, construction, and agriculture sectors face a massive shortage of cheap workers with low unionisation rate (those who capitalism likes the most). But the establishment politicians and the lobby of the agriculture industry in Germany have found ways to satisfy the needs of German capital by flying in Romanian workers, who are considered "healthy" and not in the risk group of COVID-19. On April 26th the national television channel ZDF aired a piece, showing how agriculture industrialists are willing to violate workers rights, put workers' health at risk by cramming them up in crowded bunk-bed facilities, and keeping their passports to avoid the workers from leaving their workplace.

Poor migrant workers worldwide, from Eastern European workers in Germany to Indian or Peruvian rural migrant workers, indeed do have different realities, but their jobs are all physically demanding, mentally exhausting and, poorly paid. Their workday is characterised by discrimination and disrespect from their co-workers, bosses, and clients. Because migrant workers are particularly difficult to unionise (due to language barriers and the often informality of their working conditions), there is a lack of a strong lobby or a perspective of collective resistance. Thus, this strata of the working class can be easily put under pressure, and if needed replaced in no time. Because these people are at the frontline, they are most likely to get infected by the virus as well, since they have to expose themselves to larger gatherings of people and need to keep working even under lockdown conditions.
Racism on the rise worldwide
The Global North is reacting with xenophobia and racism to the pandemic. Traditionally the West has treated epidemics and natural catastrophes as problems caused by "the others", by Black, Brown and/or queer people in "exotic," far away and under-developed countries. For example in the 1980, when HIV/AIDS was ravaging though the United States, the virus was perceived as a disease of homosexual, queer, Brown and Black folk. Also, the Ebola epidemic has been connected to anti-Black hate crimes in Western countries. Firstly confirmed in 1976 simultaneously in two places (in Nzara, a town in South Sudan and in Yambuku, Democratic Republic of Congo), Ebola outbreaks have occurred intermittently in tropical regions of sub-Saharan Africa until 2013. In total till 2013 there has been 24 outbreaks. Another example is the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) Virus (SARS-CoV) outbreak in 2003 with more than 8000 cases, first discovered 2002 in Guangdong province of southern China in 2002. The SARS epidemic affected 26 countries, including Canada, Singapore and Vietnam, but it was East Asian bodies in general, which were primarily associated with the virus again.

Scapegoating racial minorities is a strategy in a postcolonial, imperialist world. In world history, we have seen this phenomena quite often, for example after 9/11, where the whole Muslim world was held accountable for Islamic terrorism.

Now during the current pandemic, it was first East Asians and people appearing East Asian who bore the brunt of racist media coverage, discrimination (like, not being allowed to step into a doctor's office), verbal and physical abuse. All over February and March reports from countries like Germany, France, Australia, Great Britain and the US have shown a steep rise in anti-Asian racism worldwide. But soon after, also other racial minorities have been targeted; racist slurs being combined with "Corona" when attacks on Black and Brown folk have happened. Now that China is reopening it's economic and civil life, it is Black people - migrant workers, residents and students - who have been arbitrarily targeted by their landlords, the local government and neighbours in China. Also, in colonial tradition, two French doctors have discussed publicly on French TV testing COVID-19 vaccines on African people first, igniting a huge shitstorm on social media by Africans, the Africans Diaporas in Europe and anti-racist groups all around the globe.

A global pandemic doesn't create inequality and racism. It only enhances it on a massive and brutal scale. The current situation could be a wake-up call for workers in all of these crucial sectors, to understanding their position as an essential labour force - as the multiple health worker and teacher strikes all over the world in the past months and years have shown over and over again. It is the people in the key sectors of the economy, who create essential parts of societies' wealth and can thus, withholding their labour power, force the capitalist production to its knees. If the world economy is critically based on cheap, dirty and physically exhaustive labour, then it is the same workers who have a powerful collective potential and opportunity to actually destroy this system. The ugly bases of capitalism like racism, sexism, violence and exploitation will keep existing after the Coronavirus crisis and poor (migrant) workers will keep on being over-exploited and over-represented amongst the most precarious and most vulnerable strata of society.

Now, more than ever, it becomes clear that privatisation of resources, companies, hospitals etc. is lethal. The socialisation of hospitals, healthcare systems, pharmacy industries and big companies needs to be one of the first steps to counteract this crisis. Also demands of worker-controlled healthcare branches, as well as the stopping of all deportations and the legalisation of all people, wherever they happen to live are key demands pointing to a socialist society, where a democratic planned economy - not the deadly "free market" - will be able to provide everyone with all their basic health, educational and cultural needs, no matter what status.

None of this is to reduce the problems of racist discrimination and over-exploitation to just these particular issues. But we must recognise that past structural decisions that forced people into certain industries, closed hospitals and stigmatised skin colours, have very real material consequences. These disparities will only lead to a deeper and more profound crisis than we would otherwise have in countries where the economy was ordered towards the people and not corporations. The outcome of this crisis must be a society centered around and working to the benefit of the people who build it and support it every single day.

For now, as socialists and revolutionaries - of all cultural and geographical backgrounds - we need to spread reliable information about the situation of working class people and peasants worldwide, offering each other solidarity and support. Seeing similar patterns of exploitation in different realities of the capitalist mode of production, we encourage formulating collective internationalist demands towards the ruling governments. At the same time we need to plan for massive worker strikes in key sectors as well as mass protests - as students, feminists, migrants etc. - during and after the crisis.

The harsh experiences that working class people are facing during this crisis in comparison to the ruling elites are now in accentuated contrast (see for example celebrities all over the world video-massaging the globe on their "jail-like" conditions). This contrast can be one of the key indicators for mobilising and organising as working class people worldwide.

This Features and Analysis article was submitted on 30 March 2020 by Susheela Mahendran, Mugo Muna and Eleonora Roldán Mendívil.

Susheela Mahendran is a political scientist, artist and free journalist based in Kolkata, India. She has been a regular contributor to Lower Class Magazine, Klasse gegen Klasse and Die Freiheitsliebe. She co-organised Berlin's inaugural Anti-Colonial Month in 2019 and is active in internationalist, socialist-feminist spaces.

Mugo Muna is a Kenyan American data analyst by day and a 2D animator by night. He is one of many activists who helped to organise Berlin's inaugural Anti-Colonial Month in 2019. He has given talks on the relationship between surveillance and colonialism.

Eleonora Roldán Mendívil is an activist, scholar and educator working on racism, gender issues and capitalism from a Marxist point of analysis. She has published in Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, Analyse & Kritik, Lower Class Magazine, Klasse gegen Klasse and Revista Crisis amongst others. She co-organised Berlin's inaugural Anti-Colonial Month in 2019, has been active with the International Women's Strike and is now helping to build up an internationalist, socialist-feminist organisation in Berlin/Munich.

You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and Karibu! Online (www.Karibu.org.za), and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.

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Susheela Mahendran, Mugo Muna and Eleonora Roldán Mendívil

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Coronavirus and 'race' - Why the one's most harshly affected by COVID-19 worldwide are disproportionately Black and Brown

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COVID-19 is raging throughout the entire globe, and all politicians of the bourgeois establishment are effectively telling us: "we are all affected," "stay calm," and "we have it under control." There are obvious differences between the authoritarian answers, of governments like the Kenyan, Indian and Peruvian, the liberal answers of countries like Germany, or the massive downplaying by the US government.

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(aus dem Unterricht, 7/5/2020)

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Saare jahan se achcha | Hindustan humara | Epic climax (ending)

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Beelinguaapp für Kindergeschichten Hindi-Englisch

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"Animism is about what it means to be alive in the world."

Tim Ingold, in Graham Harvey, ed., The Handbook of Contemporary Animism, London & New York, Routledge, 2013, p. 224

The corona pandemic makes us understand that the earth is a commons, and that our lives are shared. This insight is not a rational concept, but springs from an emotional need. Individuals accept hardships by restricting their contacts in order to protect community. The understanding that we need to protect others has been able to override economic certainties within days. Humans chose to put reciprocity first. Reciprocity - mutual care - is neither an abstract concept nor an economic policy, but the experience of a sharing relationship and ultimately of keeping the community of life intact. This community of life englobes humans, but also other-than-human beings. Only if we understand that the metabolic process through which we participate in life is an act of nourishing a community shared with other beings, can we move away from treating others - human and non-human beings - as objects, which need to be dealt with efficiently. Sustainability politics, therefore, should include the experience of creating fertile life within a community, considering human and non-human beings as kin, and putting the other's wellbeing first. For millennia, and until today, this position has been taken by societies labelled as "animistic". From the perspective of a community of life, these lessons of animism need to be revalidated, as being able to inform our actions with etiquette of reciprocity in the great society of being.

1. Corona and the common good

In these April days of the global pandemic 2020, women and men in most parts of the world have stopped moving. The busy global economy has come to a halt - with consequences which cannot yet be foreseen.

What has stopped are some of the most prominent activities of the western way of interacting with the world: Extensive travelling, most of the world's air traffic, incessant trade and consumption, and a host of personal pursuits. Near to no planes in the skies above industrial centres, few cars on the streets, silence and an unusual clean air, in which city dwellers hear the vocalisations of wild animals with whom they cohabit, of birds and insects, for the first time in years.

Humans are asked to stop their activities in the name of something, which had not been much in the focus of western - and global - policy in the last decades: Community. Lockdown is not done in order to push the economy through individual competition, but to protect others. And in the ensuing silence, the wider community is felt: The silence of the stars at night, the buzzing bumblebees, and the Indian Myna's calls.

This is not a romantic moment, however. For millions in poorer countries, the stay-at-home-orders are an existential threat of misery and even of starvation. Many poor people and migrant workers do not even have a home where to stay. Humans, forced to sit and wait in an enclosed space with others are suffering from depression and "camp fever". Violence in families has surged.

The lockdown shines a light on the social nature of humans. It reminds of a fact neoliberalism continuously veils: The individual can only live if the collective, which she constitutes with all others, is able to thrive. The virus managed to have humans do what they were not able to do on their own: Sit down, be quiet, and behave so that others in the community are protected. We did not choose to do so, that's admitted, and we hope to get back to normalcy as soon as we can.

There is a very real danger in many parts of the world that the readiness of humans to stop pursuing their private goals - and even stop securing their livelihoods through work - will be exploited by totalitarian regimes. The reductions of freedom by the lockdown could be turned into permanent rules in some nations, including European ones. But this does not change the observation that here humans are not acting from a purely egocentrical standpoint. They are acting from the experience of connection, from the experience that each and any represents the collective.

The virus has temporarily changed human ecology. Instead of devouring everything that moves, we are slowed down, we grant others space (quite literally, queuing at a street kitchen in safe distances), we sit and listen. The majority of the world population thus responds to what is the most important, though often unacknowledged, problem of global western societies - namely how to relate to those who are weaker, who are more vulnerable, and, from an ecological viewpoint, even those who are not even human at all, but other living beings: Plants and animals, streams and forests, rocks and mountains.

Within a short time, the central pillar of our neoliberal world society has been turned over. Under an existential threat, something deeper emerges, a sort of an agreement about how to behave in order to protect life. We do not only protect ourselves, but the web of living relationships in which we are embedded. This is a very far-reaching gesture. It is an answer to the dilemma of how to treat the vulnerable other, which from a purely economic standpoint we were not able to find.

Now, however, under Covid-19, the answer has come about without much deliberation. Rather than following a technical plan or a long debate, it plays out before our eyes. We give the answer with our own vulnerable and contagious bodies, without allowing us much opportunity to consent or disagree. These bodies breathe, they set free, or inhale, invisible virus particles.

The lockdown, therefore, is not a political, but rather an ecological answer. The ecology has taken over the conceptual space. It turns out that we are inextricably linked to a living community. And the community we are acting within is bigger than the collective of humans. It includes the whole earth.

2. An ecological stress test

It has not yet been widely appreciated that humanity's global reaction to the coronavirus is an entirely ecological event. The outbreak is not only an ecological happening in itself, it has also an ecological source. The pandemic needs to be understood as an ecological disaster. The fact that every human is personally menaced by this catastrophe should not seduce us into thinking that the disease concerns only public health and, therefore, is a human-only problem. To the contrary.

There is little doubt that SARS-CoV2 is an animal virus that crossed over into humans. Crossovers of this kind happen because humans are in too close contact to animals, predominantly to rare and wild ones, hunted and sold as bushmeat. Another hotbed of emerging viruses is factory farming. The coronavirus outbreak, therefore, is a consequence of the destruction of habitats, of the mass consumption of animals from rare species, of the human encroachment on what is not human.

The coronavirus pandemic is the first global ecological disaster of the 21 st century. It threatens humans, but it has also been caused by humans through ecological destruction. As a consequence, the pandemic has caused an immediate change to our human ecology, to the ways we interact with one another, but also with the more-than-human living world. The change, at least for the moment, consists of granting others - humans and non-humans - space.

Ecological destruction is the opposite of granting other beings and species space. Its main driver is habitat transformation and industrial agriculture. Ecological destruction is the contrary of reciprocity. It is, therefore, the opposite of what human society is forced to prioritise right in this moment of the corona pandemic: Stepping back and caring for the others.

The coronavirus outbreak can be seen as a consequence of our global society's refusal to grant others (humans and non-human beings) reciprocity and space. It is a symptom of a stance built into the objectifying, globalist ways of thinking: That granting space is not needed, as those others are just things, and things can be rearranged most efficiently by the forces of the market.

The coronavirus pandemic proves this view wrong. It shows that reciprocity is a key ecological quality, and it shows that reciprocity - granting the others space to live in order to keep our own - is asked of us as a key ecological contribution.

The pandemic shows us that reciprocity is a necessity that rules our lives: We can only exist in ecological mutuality. We are part of the ecosphere. We are nourished by it, and we perish through its viruses. Human beings do not stand apart from non-human beings, but are part and parcel of ecological exchange. The virus reminds us of a simple truth that nonetheless has been ignored. It tells us that we are part of the collective of life, and that we are, as all living beings, mortal - partaking in a cycle of birth and death that ultimately provides life with fecundity.

3. Microbial deconstruction of the Western Cognitive Empire

Granting others life as a key command of organising one's own existence, and of building society, was never a concern of market thinking. To the contrary, it is deemed a hindrance. Reality here is construed as a dog-eats-dog world (according to the "natural state", described by Thomas Hobbes in his book Leviathan). Reciprocity with the living world in this thinking is denounced as a naïve dream.

In the dominant tradition of socio-economic thinking following Hobbes, a "social contract" was supposed to secure stable livelihoods for individual humans by surrendering to the power of the state. This stability, therefore, was not achieved "naturally" through a human competence of granting others their space for life. The social contract played rather out as a small group of people in power overseeing and allowing material exchange through unmitigated competition of individuals seeking personal profits.

In this picture, there are two domains: A world composed of dead things - nature - and a human society, built upon a treaty to fight nature in order to pursue individual goods and through this to detach human lives from material reality. This picture is marked by the classical "dualistic split", which still deeply informs the ways of western thinking: The separation of culture from nature and a re-definition of non-human beings into "things".

Portuguese sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos has termed this setting the "Western Cognitive Empire". French sociologist Bruno Latour has described the practice of the Western Cognitive Empire as the creation of "monsters". Monsters are born when we split the living world (which by its own creates life by being offered reciprocity) into two incommensurable and hostile domains, nature and society. Despite the claim to achieve this, however, those domains can never be truly separated. Ironically, the coronavirus pandemic shows this impossibility to separate the human from the natural. In the outbreak, the material processes (the proliferation of the virus, the infection of bodies) change culture and society - and the social measures taken feedback on the course of the pandemic. Nature - a virus from wild animals - dictates how society behaves and society affords the playing field for the virus.

The coronavirus destroys the modernist claim that society can treat "things out there" as it wishes. It even destroys the idea that by sustainable actions, with a more efficient society, by creating larger preserves and buffer zones between society and "nature", we can handle the problems created by humanity. Sustainable actions still treat the non-human parts of reality - the non-human beings and the proliferating elements of the earth system - as things and not as actors. We now learn that the world, which we share is not made of objects, but of others, who need to be treated with the right amount of reciprocity.

The Western Cognitive Empire has been set up according to this invisible demarcation line between the "objects" (including all non-human beings, and, frequently still, some humans, too) and the members of society who have been able to establish a social contract among each other. The cognitive hegemony of this thinking has enabled the destruction of non-human others ("nature") and the extinction of human others in the "colonies".

This cognitive empire is ipso facto colonialist as it tends to view everything and everyone who do not sign up for the society by contract as part of a dead nature made up of objects. The core motive for colonialism lies in this split and this split inevitably leads to a colonial, and hence, violent treatment of extra-societal others (humans not adhering to societal norms, other peoples, other beings, other elements of the earth system).

The coronavirus pandemic shows us with blunt force that this thinking is wrong. The colonialism of the western cognitive rule is not only destructive, but also self-destructive. In this, the advent of Covid-19 is the paradigm of an Anthropocene event. This is so, because the Anthropocene, our current epoch, is defined as the mix-up of human and non-human realities. We can find this mix in the presence of anthropogenic radioactive traces in the arctic ice three yards deep. Or in a virus (a virus!) that brings technological civilisation to a halt, making it resemble plague-stricken cities of the middle ages and their quarantine regimes, and that we have created, through deforestation, and trade of near-extinct animals for meat consumption.

The Anthropocene is not, differently to what many may have expected, the extension of the western rational regime into a stewardship over all of "nature". Rather, the advent of the Anthropocene marks the end of the western cognitive dominion. The Anthropocene is the age in which societies experience that they do not stand above "nature", and that, even more important, standing within "nature" (being a part of life) has a set of rules, which, if societies do not comply, will stop our partaking in this very life. The RNA-based actor coronavirus is the paradigmatic anthropocenic agent.

A growing number of natural disasters make us understand that we are part of one interconnected whole (think bushfires in Australia, or disturbed monsoon patterns, cyclones, drought in many parts of the world). But none of them are so directly threatening to you and me as is Covid-19. Through this, the virus offers us a community ethics. The pandemic shows us how to behave in the right way. This right way - granting the other the space of life - is summarised in the famous Kisuaheli term "Ubuntu", meaning "you are, therefore I am". It is the thinking of reciprocity, the thinking that we participate in a collective creating life, that we are collectively responsible for life, not only for ours, but also for that of the others, and for the fecundity of life as such.

The thinking underlying Ubuntu is animism. Animism is the idea that the remainder of the world is not made of mute objects, but of persons. Persons have interests, and needs. They are agents. An animistic approach believes that we need to establish reciprocity with these persons. We need to share with them in order to be granted our place and, even more important, in order to allow this place to bring forth life in continuity. In the pandemic, the world is stirring, and we keep still, and what emerges in front of our eyes, through our motionless state, is the need to share this world's aliveness with all other persons, human and non-human, of which it consists.

4. The family of being(s)

Animism, the cosmology of indigenous peoples, is the most radical form to think and to enact reciprocity among human and non-human persons. To understand the full scope of this radicality, we need to rediscover what animism is. It has suffered a long time of misrepresentation within the western cognitive empire. The idea that naïve "native" humans live in a Hobbesian natural state adulating spirits and demons in trees, rivers, and mountains is a false myth. This misrepresentation stems from projecting the western cognitive mindset on what the so-called "primitive people" are doing, when they, for instance, ritually give thanks to a tree-being. It comes from not getting the radical reciprocity animism is engaged in.

Through regarding colonial knowledge as surpreme, we have unlearned what ecological knowledges and alternative worldviews entail. A central principle of this knowledge is that it is not actually about knowing in a western sense, but about sharing a world. Animism accepts that all beings co-create a world that is continuously producing life, and takes responsibility to keep this cosmic fecundity going. It understands the cosmos not as made up of things, but of agents, which all resemble humans in the fact that they, like us, crave for life, express their needs, and are required to interact with one another.

"Animists are people who recognise that the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human, and that life is always lived in relationship with others...," religious scholar and anthropologist Graham Harvey observes, providing the best up-to-date definition of indigenuous, animistic cosmologies.

In a cosmos of relationships, reciprocity is required in order to thrive, and it is required from all sides. In a world of relationships, we are not atomistic indivduals set against one another, but we collectively create one coherent process of life. The collective is as important as the individual. This collective is not only human, but made of everybeing and every force of reality.

Ecologically, the social definition of an attitude required to produce life is accurate. If we look from a formal point of view, an ecosystem is the embodiment of reciprocity. It consists of a host of beings related in endless ways. Ecological life is always lived in relationships with others. An ecosystem is a commons, shared and brought forth by all its participants. It is not an assemblage of egoistic agents. For a long time, Darwinian economics of nature have overstressed competition (the "natural state") and not paid due attention to the host of dependencies within competitions play out. (For a deeper discussion see Weber 2013 & 2019).

So a view to substitute the crumbling Western Cognitive Empire is already at hand. It is the etiquette of reciprocity we can find unconsciously executed in ecosystems - and culturally instituted in societies, which have managed to live in mutuality with those ecosystems for a long time.

To explore this view, the west will need to step out of its intrinsic supposition that "western rationality" after all is the way the world works - and everything else are mild or severe superstitions. Scientific anthropology has started to attempt this humble position, asking, with Edoardo Kohn "How Forests Think" , instead of "what indigenous people think about forests".

The animistic attitude, attempting to share the productivity of the cosmos among its participants, contrasts the basic principles of the western cognitive model (see table). Animism is not about material objects being possessed by spirits. It is about constructing a culture, which enables reciprocity, and about a cosmology, which integrates the experience of being part of a fecund collective.

These principles play out in different key fields, which all are crucial areas of conflict in the Anthropocene. It turns out that most conflicts of the Anthropocene are grounded in difficulties in maintaining good relations through sharing the cosmos.

5. Commoning for kin

An animistic answer to the central problem of how to maintain good relations is that we can see our membership in the living cosmos as being part of a vast community of beings. Our behaviour has the potential to make good relations possible - relations that let others and ourselves prosper. As these relations are of an embodied nature, we can, in accordance with an animistic view, put it even more radically: In this cosmos, all persons including the non-human ones are kin. As kin, they help us, they give us the assurance of being received well, but they also demand being treated in a way so that they can thrive.

Reciprocity with other - human and non-human - persons plays out in two fields: It requires us to treat the distribution of material provisions as a sharing of the productivity of the biosphere. And it allows us to experience this sharing as an emotional involvement, hence reconnecting with our own aliveness and enjoying it as a prime intuition of successful relationships.

I have called this new double stance "enlivenment" we can build from it a " poetics for the Anthropocene " , an art of creating and maintaining mutual fecund relationships sustaining cosmic productivity. And we can experience ourselves as sources as well as recipients of this productivity.

If reality is a society of beings, individual behaviour is fruitful to the degree that it joins into this cooperative worldmaking. The distribution of material goods hence follows what we call a "commons economy". Exchange and distribution is not a reaction to scarcity, but enables everyone to participate. A commons is not a resource, but a set of relationships. It is a collective process of co-creation, which nurtures all participants, which is upheld by everyone, and which in the end feeds into the productivity of the cosmos.

For the commons philosopher and activist David Bollier, commons are "realms of life defined by organic wholeness and relationality. They stand in stark contrast to a modern world whose hallmark is separation - the separation of humans from 'nature'; of individuals from each other; and a separation between our minds and our bodies". And precisely these commons are blossoming in pandemic times.

With the onset of the pandemic, observers have noted a host of spontaneous resurgences of commoning - from neighbourhood networks volunteering to do shopping for the elderly to tailors shifting production to face masks and giving them away to the community for free. As Bollier observes, these behaviours are more than momentaneous bouts of altruisms. They rather represent the care for community, which is a spontaneous driver in human behaviour.

To a western mindset, this is somewhat baffling. Under catastrophic circumstances, people educated in the western tradition have learned that in the natural state, as Hobbes conceived it, brutal egoism should prevail. But to the contrary. As Rebecca Solnit observed in her classic on mutual trust in times ofcatastrophes, the increased reciprocity arising in hard times makes the people involved feel good in a deep, meaningful way.

To a western eye this can seem astonishing - from an animist viewpoint it is the norm. The same is valid for the feeling humans experience when they care for non-human kin - for plants in a garden, for pets in a household, for endangered species. In western terms these emotions are difficult to explain. From an animist viewpoint, they are showing how we need to behave. Nourishing the fecundity of the cosmos is a deeply animistic experience, because it is about feeling welcomed through welcoming the other. It is animistic for the reason that it is not a technical attitude, but a feeling experience.

These two dimensions - enacting the world as a commons through reciprocity with all beings, and experiencing this sharing relationship as my own and others' aliveness, and hence the cosmos' true character - cannot be separated. Only when we understand that the metabolic process through which we participate in the ongoing life is an emotional experience for all who are implied in this, can we proceed from the attempt to efficiently distribute objects to truly engage in an exchange with kin. Only then can we belong to family.

An aboriginal person, asked about her relationship to country, answers: "This rock is me." Having an identity is derived from belonging. Through this, the human experience of beauty can be explained as the experience of being loved as part of family, the experience of one's own love for that family or a particular member of it, and one's desire to sustain that family, to give back.

Animistic sustainability is performative. It always requires a dialogue with a real other, a tree person, a jaguar person, a river person. Sustainable actions cannot be done without the etiquette of relationship, and without enacting the simple rites of reciprocity: Before we can save a place, we need to ask it to receive us in grace and to allow us to get in touch. And we need to express gratitude in words and in actions.

Animism, the enactment and culture of interspecies reciprocity, cannot teach us how to better manage "natural objects", but shows how to sustain a cosmos giving life to all its members. This will require us to rethink traditional sustainable practices. US botanist and writer Robin Wall Kimmerer, herself an American Indian, masterfully put what is required in her principles of "The Honorable Harvest": "Sustain the ones who sustain you and the earth will last forever."

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Nourishing community in pandemic times | Heinrich Böll Stiftung | India Office

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The corona pandemic makes us understand that the earth is a commons, and that our lives are shared. This insight is not a rational concept, but springs from an emotional need. Individuals accept hardships by restricting their contacts in order to protect community.

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Die Freiheitsliebe - Artikel einer IAAW-Studierenden

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Die Freiheitsliebe - Artikel einer IAAW-Studierenden

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In Indien gibt es mittlerweile 5.979 bestätigte COVID-19-Fälle (Stand: 9. April 2020), 313 mehr als am Tag zuvor. 183 Menschen sind bereits gestorben. Die meisten Infizierten, 1.153, wurden in der Maharashtra-Region gezählt. Alle aktuellen Zahlen in jedem indischen Bundesstaat können hier verfolgt werden.
Eine richtige Dokumentation und Registrierung von COVID-19-Infizierten durch die indische Bürokratie kann nicht gewährleistet werden. Die Dunkelziffer ist sicherlich höher und es gibt viele Menschen, die wahrscheinlich infiziert sind, sich jedoch nicht testen lassen können.

21-tägige Ausgangssperre

Indien befindet sich seit dem 24. März in einer landesweiten, 21-tägigen absoluten Ausgangssperre - also bis zum 15. April - die es so bisher noch nie in Indien gab. Damit soll die Ausbreitung des Coronavirus in diesem dicht besiedelten Land mit 1,3 Milliarden Menschen verhindert werden.

Premierminister Narendra Modi hielt am 24. März eine Rede und verkündete diese Ausgangssperre ohne große Vorwarnungen in seinen vorherigen Reden. Er betont in den nachfolgenden Reden: „Soziale Distanzierungsmaßnahmen sind in dieser Zeit sehr wichtig" und applaudierte für Ärztinnen, Ärzte, Mitarbeiter und Mitarbeiterinnen des Gesundheitswesen als die „Soldaten an der Frontlinie". Doch dabei lässt er außer Acht, wie sehr diese sozialen Distanzierungsmaßnahmen Privilegien sind, denn das bedeutet, genug Platz zu Hause zu haben, um sich von anderen Menschen fernzuhalten. Es bedeutet, dass man es sich leisten kann, in Quarantäne zu leben, ohne arbeiten zu müssen. Sich die Hände regelmäßig waschen zu können, ist ebenfalls ein Privileg, denn das bedeutet Zugang zu fließendem sauberem Wasser zu haben. Desinfektionsmittel und Masken sind ebenfalls Privilegien.

Modis Reden sind mit vielen unnötigen rhetorischen Floskeln und Gestiken geschmückt, er erlässt jedoch keine ernsthaften Maßnahmen, um den Ärmsten der Arbeiterinnenklasse und migrantischen Arbeiterinnen und Arbeiter in dieser krisenhaften Situation beizustehen. Kein Wort darüber, wie die Armen in den kommenden Wochen Zugang zu Lebensmitteln und anderen lebensnotwendigen Gütern erhalten sollen. Stattdessen organisiert die Regierung Sonderflüge, um Inderinnen und Inder aus China, dem Iran und Italien nach Hause zu bringen. Die Mittelschicht Indiens kauft auf Vorrat ein, drängt sich in den Läden und auf den Märkten mit Masken, was für die Armen, die Migrantinnen, Migranten Kleinverkäuferínnen, Hausangestellte und Landarbeiterinnen nicht so leicht möglich ist.

Inmitten der Anti-Regierungsproteste

Inmitten der andauernden Anti-Regierungsproteste, gegen CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act), NRR (National Population Register) und NRC (National Register of Citizens) seit Dezember 2019, kommt die gewaltvoll durchgesetzte Ausgangssperre der Regierung zu Gute. Das allein könnte ein Grund sein, sie zu verlängern.

Die neue Situation mit der Coronavirus-Pandemie verlangt eine Neuorganisierung der Widerstandsbewegung, vor allem nach den gewalttätigen Angriffen der Polizei auf die Demonstrienden in Delhi. Der Staat lässt auch Symbole des Widerstandes wie die Malereien an Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi mit anderen Graffiti-Kunstwerken übermalen.

Swapna Gopinath schlägt bei Peoplés Review folgendes vor: „Vielleicht ist es jetzt an der Zeit, unsere sozialen Medien und andere Online-Plattformen so kreativ wie möglich zu nutzen. Plakate, Designs, Briefe, Kunstwerke jeder Art können zur Verbreitung des Wortes verwendet werden. Es könnten mehr musikbasierte Videos unter Freunden und Gruppen auf Facebook und anderen Plattformen verbreitet werden. Es kann auch helfen, Online-Petitionen in großer Zahl zu starten und Sensibilität für die Thematik zu schaffen. Online-Graffiti kann eine beliebte und effektive Form der Kommunikation mit den Millionen von Nutzern sozialer Medien sein. Auch das Verbreiten von Newslettern oder Postkarten können wirksame Mittel sein, um die Dynamik des Protests aufrechtzuerhalten, während wir gezwungen sind, uns in geschlossenen Räumen und von öffentlichen Orten fernzuhalten."

Für die ehemaligen indischen Bundesstaaten Jammu und Kaschmir - seit dem 31. Oktober 2019 in zwei Unionsterritorien geteilt - ist diese Ausgangssperre nun keine besonders neue Situation, da sie sich seit dem 5. August 2019 in Ausnahmesituationen befinden. Diese Menschen sind besonders in Gefahr, da sie völlig abgegrenzt vom Rest der indischen Nation sind.

Phase 3

Indien befindet sich zurzeit in Phase 3. Dies ist die kritischste Phase während eines Krankheitsausbruchs. In Phase 3 breitet sich eine Epidemie schnell aus, da es schwierig wird, die ursprüngliche Übertragungsquelle zu ermitteln. Dr. Girdhar Gyani, der Leiter einer Task Force zu den COVID-19-Krankenhäusern, sagt in einem Interview mit The Quint: „Wir nennen es Stufe 3. Offiziell dürfen wir sie so nicht nennen - aber es ist der Beginn von Phase 3." Dr. Gyani ist Gründer der Association of Healthcare Providers, einer Task-Force zur Eindämmung von Covid-19.

Laut Gyani sind die nächsten fünf bis zehn Tage entscheidend für die Kontrolle der Epidemie, da diejenigen, die asymptomatisch sind, beginnen könnten, Symptome zu zeigen: „Wir haben wenig Zeit für die Vorbereitung der COVID-19-Krankenhäuser, da der Ausbruch in Indien in den kommenden Wochen jeden Tag passieren kann. Wir haben noch nicht genügend geschultes medizinisches Personal und COVID-19-Krankenhäuser". Der Ausbruch hat jedoch bereits stattgefunden und in den letzten Tagen ist die Rate der Infizierten exponentiell gewachsen.

Weiter heißt es von Gyani: „Einige Wohnheime der medizinischen Hochschulen haben ihre Studenten gebeten zu räumen. Der Premierminister sagt, dass sie das nicht tun sollten, stattdessen sollten die Studenten des letzten Jahres dort bleiben, damit sie in Notfällen helfen können... und dass die Studenten des letzten Jahres ein Zertifikat erhalten und mit ein wenig Training in COVID-19-Krankenhäusern eingesetzt werden könnten." Des Weiteren gibt es nicht genügend Kapazität, Menschen zu testen. Die Regierung testet „nur diejenigen, die alle drei Symptome zusammen haben - Husten, Atembeschwerden und Fieber". Bei nur einem dieser Symptome werden sie nicht getestet. Es gibt nicht genügend Ausstattung für Ärztinnen, Ärzte, Krankenschwestern und in Krankenhäusern, um Patientinnen und Patienten zu behandeln und viele Ärztinnen und Ärzte in Kolkata weigern sich nun, zu arbeiten.

Gewaltvolle Methoden der Polizei und Behörden

Die übereilte Entscheidung der Zentralregierung, eine Ausgangssperre einzuführen, ohne sich um das Wohlergehen der Tausenden von migrantischen Arbeiterinnen und Arbeiter im Land zu sorgen, hat im ganzen Land Panik und Verwüstung ausgelöst. Vor allem arme Menschen aus der Arbeiterinnenklasse und migrantische Arbeiterinnen und Arbeiterkonnten sich nicht hinreichend auf diese 21-tägige Ausgangssperre vorbereiten, sodass sie genug Zeit gehabt hätten, Lebensmittel sowie Hygieneartikel auf Vorrat zu kaufen. Oft ist dies finanziell überhaupt gar nicht möglich. Es gibt viel Verwirrung und Auseinandersetzungen mit der Polizei, die diese Ausgangssperre mit gewaltvollen Methoden durchsetzt. Arbeiterinnen und Arbeiter können es sich nicht leisten, zu Hause zu bleiben und versuchen weiterhin, ihrer Arbeit nachzukommen, um ihre Familie zu ernähren. Polizistinnen und Polizisten schlagen und misshandeln Menschen, die sich außerhalb ihrer Häuser befinden.

BBC schreibt über Suresh Shah und seinen Bruder Ramprasad, die seit 15 Jahren in Noida, einem Vorort von Delhi, Gemüse verkaufen. Suresh Shah berichtet von den Misshandlungen der Polizei von Delhi: „Ich wurde so hart getroffen, dass ich auch heute noch mit den Schmerzen beim Sitzen kämpfe. Aber was noch mehr schmerzt, ist, dass es ein großer Verlust für mich war, da ich nur etwa 300 Rupien pro Tag an Gewinnen mache." Weiter erklärt sein Bruder Ramprasad Shah: „Wir müssen hinausgehen und Geld für unsere Familien verdienen. Aber noch wichtiger ist, dass die Menschen Vorräte brauchen, und wir helfen ihnen, in ihren Häusern zu bleiben. Wir brauchen Unterstützung und keine Schläge und Übergriffe."

In Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, ereignete sich letzten Sonntag ein schockierender Vorfall, bei dem Migrantinnen und Migranten, die in ihre Häuser in Uttar Pradesh zurückkehrten, von einem Desinfektions-Team, mit Natriumhypochlorit (NaClO) besprüht wurden. NaClO wird in großem Umfang als Bleichmittel in der Textil-, Waschmittel-, Papier- und Zellstoffindustrie, und ebenso als Desinfektionsmittel verwendet. Mohd Afzal, einer der Migranten, sagte zu ABP LIVE: „Etwa 50 von uns saßen am Shuttlebus und warteten auf Essen und den Bus, als einige Männer in Schutzanzügen kamen und anfingen, uns mit Wasser zu besprühen. Sie sagten, dass sie das Desinfektions-Team bildeten und uns desinfizieren würden. Die Kinder fingen an zu weinen, und auch die Frauen waren schockiert." Kinder bekamen Juckreiz in den Augen und einige Frauen bekamen Ausschlag.

In Howrah wurde der 32 jährige Lal Swami von der Polizei zu Tode geprügelt, weil er während der Ausgangssperre auf der Straße war, um auf dem Markt Essen einzukaufen. Die Polizei verteidigt sich und behauptet, er sei an einem Herzinfarkt gestorben.

Die ärmsten und migrantischen Arbeiterinnen und Arbeiter im informellen Sektor

Die Mehrheit der Menschen in Indien, etwa 81 Prozent der Arbeiterinnenklasse, arbeitet im informellen Sektor. Die 21-tägige Ausgangssperre ist ein großes Problem für die Ärmsten dieser Bevölkerung. The WireStaff schreibt: „Fast die gesamte Beschäftigung in der Landwirtschaft (94,7 Prozent) ist in der asiatisch-pazifischen Region informell, und sie erreicht in Südasien, einen Höchststand von 99,3 Prozent. Im Industriesektor stellt die informelle Beschäftigung mit 68,8 Prozent einen höheren Anteil dar als im Dienstleistungssektor mit 54,1 Prozent."

Die meisten Menschen, sind nicht versicherte und informelle Arbeiterinnen und Arbeiter. Nur wenige arbeiten im Staatssektor oder mit Verträgen im Privatsektor. Die meisten Privatsektoren sowie die Regierungsinstitutionen setzen auf Leiharbeit. Die Beschäftigten können nach Belieben eingestellt und entlassen werden, je nachdem wie Arbeit verfügbar ist. Darunter fallen alle Arbeitssektoren der Dienstleistung, der Handarbeit etc. Die Transaktionen des Marktes basieren sehr stark auf informellen Arbeiterinnen und Arbeiter, den kleinen Verkäuferinnen und Verkäufern, bis zu den Personen, die Schachteln oder Kartons von der Fabrik in die Läden tragen. All diese wichtigen Bereiche der Wirtschaft sind informell. Nur sehr wenige davon werden von Einzelhandelsgeschäften kontrolliert.

Nach dem Buch The Indian Big Bourgoisie: Its Genesis, Growth and Character basieren 70 Prozent der indischen Wirtschaftsleistung auf Landwirtschaft, die nicht unter einer großkapitalistischen oder staatlich geförderten Maschinerie industrieller Arbeit steht, also auf informeller Wirtschaft.

Problematisch ist, dass ein großer Teil der Bevölkerung von der saisonalen Landwirtschaft abhängig ist. Für ein halbes Jahr bewirtschaften sie den Acker auf ihrem kleinen Stück oder auf gepachtetem Land. In den nächsten sechs Monaten ziehen sie in die Städte und verrichten verschiedene Arten von Handarbeit.

Generell sind indische Städte auf eine große Zahl von Arbeitskräften angewiesen, die aus dem Rest des Landes kommen. Diese Arbeitskräfte suchen nach Möglichkeiten auf Arbeit in Städten und lassen ihre Familien oft für Monate oder Jahre zurück. Solche Arbeit ist beispielsweise auf dem Bau zu finden, in Personalrestaurants, oder bei Taxis etc. Meist sind diese Tätigkeiten schlecht bezahlt und prekär.

So sind migrantische Arbeiterinnen und Arbeiter von der Pandemie, der nationalen Abriegelung und der wirtschaftlichen Notlage schwer getroffen. Sie sind nun gezwungen, tausende von Kilometern zu Fuß nach Hause zu laufen, das Wichtigste Hab und Gut in Säcke gepackt. Bilder dieses wandelnden Exodus kursieren im Internet. Alle öffentlichen Transportmittel sind außer in Betrieb. Die meisten dieser Menschen sind Männer, überwiegend jung, aber es gibt auch einige Familien darunter.

Die Eisenbahn ist das Rückgrat des indischen Verkehrssystems. Sie wurde mit fast sofortiger Wirkung am Sonntag, den 26. März ausgesetzt. Zwei Tage später verkündete Premierminister Modi die Sperrung ganz Indiens. Diese schnelle Abschaltung der Transporte bedeutet, dass Millionen von Binnemigrantinnen keine Zeit hatten, nach Hause zu kommen. Wanderarbeiterinnen sind mit praktischen Herausforderungen konfrontiert: Ihre Geldmittel erschöpfen sich, Hauseigentümerinnen weigern sich, die weitere Unterbringung ohne Zahlung der Miete zu erlauben. Sie müssen fürchten, ohne Essen und Wasser auszukommen.

Es ist nicht genau klar, wie viele zu Fuß unterwegs sind. Einige haben Glück und schafften es, auf Lastwagen mitzufahren oder sich in Privatbusse zu zwängen. Einige wenden sich an Schmuggler. Nach einem Bericht von The Indian Express fanden die Behörden Hunderte von Menschen in Lastwagen zusammengepfercht.

Noch am 24. März setzten Tausende von Arbeiterinnen und Arbeitern in etwa 200 Teegärten im nördlichen Westbengalen ihre Arbeit fort, obwohl Mamata Banerjee, Vorsitzende der westbengalischen Regionalpartei All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) und seit 2011 Chief Minister vom Bundesstaat Westbengalen, am Vorabend eine vollständige Sperrung ankündigte. Dies löste eine Kontroverse aus, denn in den Darjeeling-Bergen und der Region Dooars in Westbengalen gibt es 283 Teegärten, in denen 350.000 fest angestellt und Gelegenheitsarbeiterinnen sind. Sie verdienen neben der Wochenration 176 Rupien pro Tag, was umgerechnet etwa 2 Euro sind. Weitere 40.000 Pflanzer erstrecken sich über die Bezirke Darjeeling Japlaiguri und Alipurduars, die Tausende von Arbeiterinnen und Arbeitern beschäftigen.

Die meisten dieser Gärten waren am Dienstag trotz Ausgangssperre nicht geschlossen und weiterhin in Betrieb. Arbeiterinnen und Arbeiter sind verwirrt und wegen eines Lohnausfalles in Panik. Am 25. März kamen viele Arbeiterinnen und Arbeiter der Teegärten nicht mehr zur Arbeit. Ein Manager dieser Teegärten sagte der Hindustan Times: „Dies ist die Zeit für die erste Blütezeit, die den höchsten Preis erzielt und uns hilft, das ganze Jahr zu überleben. Eine Schließung der Gärten würde enorme Verluste bedeuten. Außerdem würden die Arbeiter Löhne und Rationen verlangen, wenn wir die Gärten aus eigener Kraft schließen. Soll die Verwaltung sie doch schließen, wenn sie wollen."

Wenn die Verwaltung nicht Sofortmaßnahmen ergreift und keine Löhne und Rationen sichern kann, dann ist dies ein großes Problem. Laut Dheeraj Mishra weigert sich Indiens Finanzministerin, Nirmala Sitharaman, die Kohlrabi-Ernte zu subventionieren und den Bauern und Bäuerinnen einen angemessenen Preis zu bieten.

Selbstorganisierte Hilfsaktionen

Menschen mit Essen und Medizin zu versorgen, ist momentan die größte Herausforderung. Es gibt Hilfsaktionen, die Lebensmittel, Masken und Medizin in Dörfern und Slums an die Ärmsten und migrantischen Arbeiterinnen und Arbeiter verteilen. Diese massiven Sofortmaßnahmen sind gerade sehr wichtig:

Das Quarantined Student-Youth Network kommuniziert überwiegend in einer Facebook-Gruppe und stellt Anfragen in Westbengalen online, wie zum Beispiel dringende Anfragen für Blutspenden, oder den Kauf von Medizin, Essen und Masken. Fotos werden hochgeladen, die zeigen wie Nahrungsmitteln und andere Hygieneartikel an bedürftige Menschen verteilt werden, auch der Transparenz wegen.

Die Initiative von Studierenden der Jadavpur Universität Kolkata kümmert sich um die Herstellung, Abfüllung und Verteilung von Desinfektionsmitteln und Lebensmitteln an gefährdete Bevölkerungsgruppen und an diejenigen, die noch im Freien arbeiten müssen, wie zum Beispiel Wachpersonal oder Mitarbeiterinnen von Lebensmitteltransporten.

Eine weitere Gruppe ist der Studierendenverband, Students' Federation of India (SFI). Sie versuchen vor allem, migrantische Arbeiterinnen und Arbeiter in dieser kritischen Situation zu unterstützen. Verschiedene Staatskomitees der SFI haben Kampagnen gestartet, um die Botschaft der Landesregierungen und der Gesundheitsministerien unter den Gastarbeiterinnen und migrantischen Arbeiterinnen und Arbeitern und ihre Familien in verschiedenen Sprachen zu verbreiten. Des Weiteren gibt es das Online-Crowdfunding-Netzwerk Our Democracy von Bilal Zaidi, das finanzielle Beiträge für die Schwächsten leistet.

Im Moment ist nicht unbedingt die Finanzierung das Problem. Die größere Herausforderung besteht darin, genügend Reis, Kartoffeln usw. zu sammeln und zu verteilen. Nicht alle Märkte sind komplett geschlossen. Es gibt noch Möglichkeiten, zu bestimmten Uhrzeiten und auf bestimmten Märkten Essen zu kaufen. Die Situation der wirtschaftlich rückständigen Menschen wird sich in der Rezession sehr bald verschlechtern. Sie brauchen finanzielle Unterstützung.

Indien war zwischen 2015 und 2019 nach Saudi-Arabien zweitgrößter Rüstungsgüter-Importeur der Welt. Deutschland trägt hier auch Verantwortung. Im September 2019 wurden erneut mehrere Waffengeschäfte mit Krisenstaaten genehmigt, darunter auch Indien. Dieses Geld könnte für die armen und die migrantische Arbeiterinnenklasse viel besser genutzt werden.

Karitative Hilfen sind wichtig als Sofortmaßnahmen, jedoch wird dies den Ärmsten und der migrantischen Arbeiterinnenklasse nicht dauerhaft helfen. Es braucht ein politisches Programm, das einen Ausweg zeigt, wenngleich in der aktuellen Situation keine Massenproteste auf der Straße zur Umsetzung möglich sind.

Konkrete Handlungsmaßnahmen

P. Sainath ist Gründer und Redakteur von People's Archive of Rural India und schlägt bei TheWire folgende konkrete Handlungsmaßnahmen vor, für die auch Deutschland beisteuern könnte:

„Das allererste, was getan werden muss: die Vorbereitung der Notfallverteilung unserer fast 60 Millionen Tonnen ‚überschüssiger' Nahrungsmittelgetreidebestände. Und wir müssen sofort die Millionen von Wanderarbeitern, migrantischen Arbeiterinnen, Arbeitern und anderen Armen erreichen, die von dieser Krise betroffen sind. Alle derzeit geschlossenen Gemeinschaftseinrichtungen (Schulen, Hochschulen, Gemeindehäuser und -gebäude) müssen zu Unterkünften für gestrandete Migrantinnen, Migranten und Obdachlose erklärt werden.

Die zweite ebenso wichtige Maßnahme ist, alle Bauern dazu zu bringen, in der Kharif-Saison Nahrungspflanzen anzubauen. Wenn der gegenwärtige Trend anhält, droht eine schreckliche Hungersnot. Sie werden nicht in der Lage sein, die in dieser Saison geernteten Feldfrüchte zu verkaufen. Der Einstieg in den Marktfruchtanbau könnte sich als tödlich erweisen. Ein Impfstoff oder ein Heilmittel gegen das Coronavirus scheint noch viele Monate entfernt zu sein. In der Zwischenzeit werden die Nahrungsmittelvorräte schwinden.

Die Regierungen müssen helfen, die Produkte der Bauern in großem Stil aufzukaufen und zu verteilen. Viele waren nicht in der Lage, die Kohlrabi-Ernte abzuschließen, da die soziale Distanzierung und die Abriegelungen in Kraft sind. Wer ernten konnte, kann die Produkte nirgendwohin transportieren oder verkaufen. Selbst für die Nahrungsmittelproduktion im Karif werden die Landwirte ein Ökosystem von Betriebsmitteln, unterstützenden Dienstleistungen und Hilfe bei der Vermarktung benötigen.

Die Regierung muss bereit sein, private medizinische Einrichtungen im ganzen Land zu verstaatlichen. Den Krankenhäusern zu raten, eine „Corona-Ecke" zu haben, wird alleine nichts bringen. Spanien hat letzte Woche alle Krankenhäuser und Gesundheitsdienstleister verstaatlicht, da es erkannt hat, dass ein gewinnorientiertes System dieser Krise nicht gewachsen ist.

Die Safai-Karmacharis (Reinigungskräfte für den öffentlichen Raum) müssen sofort alle von Regierung und Kommunen in Vollzeit beschäftigt und mit 5.000 Rupien pro Monat unterstützt werden - zusätzlich zu ihren bestehenden Gehältern - und mit vollen medizinischen Leistungen und Schutzausrüstung, die ihnen bisher immer verweigert wurden, ausgestattet werden. Wir haben drei Jahrzehnte damit verbracht, Millionen von bereits gefährdeten Sanitärarbeiterinnen weiter auszubeuten, sie aus dem öffentlichen Dienst auszusetzen und ihre Arbeit an private Unternehmen auszulagern - die dann dieselben Arbeiterinnen und Arbeiter zu niedrigeren Löhnen und ohne Leistungen wieder einstellten.

Die Mittagsmahlzeiten der ASHA-Arbeiter (Gesundheitspflgerinnen), der Anganwadi (Sozialarbeiterinnen) und der Arbeiterinnen und Arbeiter - die bereits an der Frontlinie des Kampfes stehen - müssen von der Regierung gestellt werden. Die Gesundheit und das Leben der Kinder Indiens liegen in ihren Händen. Auch sie müssen zu vollwertigen Arbeitnehmerinnen gemacht werden, sie müssen einen angemessenen Lohn erhalten und mit Schutzausrüstung ausgestattet werden.

Die Bauern und Arbeiter brauchen täglich Löhne, in Höhe von 6.000 Rupien pro Monat bis die Krise vorüber ist."

Pandemien-Teil des Kapitalismus und Kolonialisierung

Edna Bonhomme schreibt bei Al Jazeera über die Verantwortung, die der globale Norden für die verursachten Krisen durch die Weltordnung im Bereich der öffentlichen Gesundheit trägt. Der globale Norden profitiert davon und betrachtet Epidemien im globalen Süden als Tragödien „anderer". Der globale Süden sei jedoch nicht die Quelle, sondern Opfer von Ausbrüchen, die durch den Kapitalismus verschlimmert werden. Edna Bonhomme schreibt: „Pandemien treten nicht isoliert auf. Sie sind Teil des Kapitalismus und der Kolonialisierung. Die Länder, die in der jüngsten Vergangenheit um die Eindämmung und Kontrolle großer Epidemien gekämpft haben, von Haiti bis Sierra Leone, hatten vor diesen Krisen - teilweise als Folge ihrer kolonialen Geschichte - ein mangelhaftes öffentliches Gesundheitssystem. Darüber hinaus tragen die Produkte des Kapitalismus - vom Krieg über die Migration bis hin zur Massenproduktion und zum verstärkten Reiseverkehr - massiv zur Verbreitung von Krankheiten bei."

Ein globales Gesundheitssystem könnte Pandemien wie COVID-19 besiegen, indem Weltmächte zusammenarbeiten müssen und Tests sowie einen möglichen Impfstoff gegen COVID-19 ohne Profitzwang kostenlos zur Verfügung stellen. Zugang zur Gesundheitsversorgung muss ein unbestreitbares Menschenrecht für alle und überall sein.
Ein Beitrag von Susheela Mahendran, sie ist Politikwissenschaftlerin, Künstlerin und freie Journalistin. Sie lebt in Indien
Abonniere unseren Newsletter:

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Corona-Pandemie in Indien: Die ärmsten und migrantischen Arbeiterinnen und Arbeiter sind die Verdammten | Die Freiheitsliebe

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In Indien gibt es mittlerweile 5.979 bestätigte COVID-19-Fälle (Stand: 9. April 2020), 313 mehr als am Tag zuvor. 183 Menschen sind bereits gestorben. Die meisten Infizierten, 1.153, wurden in der Maharashtra-Region gezählt. Alle aktuellen Zahlen in jedem indischen Bundesstaat können hier verfolgt werden.

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Hindi "Übungsclub"

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=Exrs85DTD0A

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www.freitag.de/autoren/der-freitag/die-drinnen-und-die-draussen

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https://thewire.in/gender/lockdown-gender-inequality-india

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https://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/dal-kachori-recipe/

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https://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/baked-samosa-recipe/

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The words in this course are taken from Teach Yourself Hindi by Rupert Snell. Use this course to accompany your progress through the book, or just generally for vocabulary. Any questions, comments, feedback, etc. please post them in the course forum: https://community.memrise.com/t/course-forum-1000-hindi-words-for-beginners/10500

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Uni Heidelberg Vokabeln für Hindi I (Liu). Buch: Hindi bolo I (हिंदी बोलो I)