COVID CORRUPTION

Vastavikta Bhagat

We at SEA believe that the pandemic has a granularity of meta, non-linear narratives that become useful in making sense of the relational complexities of the pandemic and society. Thus, we set out to collect stories of fears, joys, agilities, fragilities, friendships, networks, collectives, home, work, infrastructures, entrepreneurship, privileges, marginalizations, migrations, desperation, gender, equity, etc. The glossary as a method became useful to reflect on this granularity of experiences and account for slippages during these times. These spatio-temporal stories, when read together or as individual instances produce a new sense of the emergent contemporary. This framework also allows us to speculate on the kind of world we will inhabit once the storm has passed. We draw on multiple readings to bring out the nuances and patterns of social life produced in a pandemic. This we hope would allow us to collectively reflect on the restructured ideas of the self, the collective, society, space, and time. The pandemic got in new agile entrepreneurialism, some ingenious methods swayed on the borders of ethics and right and wrong to survive in the pandemic world. Instances of bribery, black marketeering etc were recorded.

The bus stands in my town were transformed to booths from were the poor people could acquire food, water and some clothes.

There was one interesting thing that was happening in my town during the lockdown, only daily necessity goods shops like grocery shops, dairy and medicals were allowed to stay open. As a result many people in my town placed a request to license their establishment as a grocery shop or medical shops. There was only 5 to 6 new grocery shops that had emerged in the last decade but during this 6 month of lockdown there were about 38 new grocery shops that got established with proper licenses. Seeing this new emerging market many banks started providing huge amount of loans to many people without any guarantee of their property, which I thought was a new form of corruption in this country.

As far as I remember, the lockdown had just begun. It was the first or the second week, where the medical shops, general stores, and grocery stores were given permission to stay open. I had just gone down to take a walk, since being locked up in the four walls made me sick and mad, to experience a sense of being free. I noticed some changes in my area.

I noticed a mobile repair shop that was open. I immediately recalled that other than the medical, general, and grocery shops, no other shops were given permission to reopen by the government. I was curious to know how did the mobile repair shop start to function again. Was it working illegally? Does anyone know they aren't given permission to open and work? All such thoughts were running through my mind, and so I went ahead to see what was really happening. I was shocked and a bit taken back to see that the once mobile shop called “ ALL REPAIRS” has now been changed to “ADEN BAKERY” and they were selling all grocery items, like milk bags, fruits, vegetables, biscuits. I went further ahead and asked the owner that how did he manage to do it? He responded by saying back that juggad is important. He further added that his business was running low so he needed to come up with another alternative. So he contacted the other grocery store shop owner and bought half of his stock and started to sell them through his store. He also managed to make a board of bakery so if any police officers came on rounds he won't be caught. Behind, in a corner he was still running his mobile repair shop. He said this was a good investment because, with fewer grocery stores in the area, people needed to buy stuff for their daily usage, so he saw an opportunity for expanding his business.

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