Daily Times

SAARC countries, home to nearly 1.94 billion people, may become hotspots of coronavirus infections because of their traditional social life, backwardness, religious school of thought, poverty, health facilities, illiteracy, joblessness, fragile economies and underperforming digital infrastructure.

Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Srilanka, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives that constitutes SAARC, seem to have been caught off guard by unprecedented predicament. Responding to COVID-19 is a test of diverse societies, of governments, of communities and of individuals. Health emergencies like COVID-19 threaten to cost many lives and pose detrimental risks to the South Asian economies, social dynamics, human rights, and overall security and stability.

Challenges to traditional social life

Given a social life style practiced in SAARC region, millions of people are resisting to follow safety SOPs. Because communal living arrangements are salient feature, self-quarantine and social distancing is a pipedream. Throughout in South Asian countries, most of people live in large families. They do not afford sizeable houses due to dwindling financial constraints. On small homes, one family often consisted of seven to 12 members, share single room. Within living dynamics, all family members use one bathroom. Their soaps, towels, shoes, toilet papers, combs are in common use for everyone at one place.

During COVID 19 scenario, In case of death, burial congregations as per customary tenets are being held with impunity

Compelled by congestion, they have to share one place for breakfast, lunch and dinner. If somebody is ill not because of Coronavirus rather due to other reasons, friends and relatives have set traditional norms to enquire after his or her health. For them as situation is unavoidable, togetherness is a must. Even some people who are keen to observe Safety SOPs to stay away from infections have no other way but to live in crammed living conditions. They never afford to stay in self-isolation, billed as the best pre-requisites in this critical juncture.

During COVID 19 scenario, In case of death, burial congregations as per customary tenets are being held with impunity. Although governments have ordered to let health or other departments to carry out last rituals but getting overwhelmed with emotions and religious doctrines, people have been defying COVID 19 precautions.

In slums areas, where hygiene is never in place, living conditions are in their worst form. People are highly prone to contract infections and embrace the deaths. It is dilemma that shanty areas where millions of people live especially in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and others, local governments are not desirably active. Local government teams and even NGOs, sometime due to traditional callousness, infrastructure constraints and resources, do not reach out grass root level. Hence, destitute remain out of their radars. As cases of COVID-19 escalate in South Asia, one of the world’s poorest region with more than 600 million in poverty, international organization including United Nation and Amnesty International have urged on stepping up efforts to protect marginalized and vulnerable groups at higher risk, including daily wage earners, people displaced by conflict, health workers and prisoners.

CHALLENGES OF BACKWARDNESS, ILLITERACY

Fighting against COVID 19, among others, chink in the armor is rampant backwardness and illiteracy. With Pakistan literacy rate at 55 percent, India 69 percent, Nepal 67 percent, Bhutan 60 percent Bangladesh 71 percent, majority of people have disproportionate access to basic education. With slim conformity with sources of information and communication, heir globalized action stands nowhere.

Since backwardness is deep rooted, layman feels free to defy COVID 19 regulations regarding staying at home. In Pakistan and India, it has been witnessed that gathering at shopping malls, milk shops, retails shops still are as usual. Rule of distancing is seldom observed. In Pakistan government imposed 144 Section to discourage public togetherness. India enforced 21 days curfew. Same is being placed in Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bhutan. Howaliever, people believe that life and death are in hands of Gods, so if death is destined with Coronavirus, it is bound to happen whether or not COVID 19 SOPs are strictly followed.

In Pakistan village near Lahore, Capital of Punjab, on a death ceremony at least 300 people gathered on the occasion. Shahzad Ali, one of condolers, termed Coronavirus a conspiracy. “Even it is reality, good people are exempted”, he averred. According to reports, the villagers suffered ailments later but nobody tried to find out whether the sickness had any link with COVID 19 or not.

Driven by backwardness, big portion of South Asian people have a tendency to try to cure sick person with homemade stuff. At least one week, patient remains on informal medicine recommended by elderly on the basis of ancestral health knowledge. Later, if situation deteriorates, quacks come forward as families in mostly cases cannot afford qualified doctors. Finally when all stages are covered and patient condition gets out of control, people reach to hospitals. The bleak landscape of backwardness sounds alarm that a number of suspected cases, left untested so far, are the live vectors and have full potential to spread COVID 19 in coming days.

CHALLENGES TO RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS

Performing pilgrimage, offering five times group prayers in mosques, seasonal religious congregations, embedded trend to interactions and death rituals are proving to be drag on efficacy of precaution measures designed to contain COVID 19.

South Asia is fertile land for religion. Big religious togetherness and conventions are held one or two times in a year. People belonging to different sphere of life tend to assemble for goodness disseminating their message to mankind. In fact, faith-believers were not prepared for COVID 19. They let the notion go viral that spiritualism and mysticism are the best cure. They have banded Coronavirus as curse of God. They reckon that collective prayers will stamp out reign of doom. Given the scenario, a number of big Muslim gatherings held in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh giving no regard to COVID 19 SOPs. Resultantly, thousands finally tested positive. And nobody knows how many others they may have infected further.

Since April 03, Pakistani government has been tracking down some 41,000 people who attended a large religious congregation in Lahore last month and then scattered across the country.

The annual congregation was planned to be held March 10-15 despite Pandemic warnings. However attendees flocked at the Raiwind complex. The foreigners attendees came from China, Indonesia, Tunis, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Turkey, and other countries. Now a number of them are being quarantined in mosques in Sukkur and Hyderabad, cities of Sindh province.

The Delhi religious conference, an annual event, was inaugurated on 3 March though there are differing accounts of when it may have ended. What is clear is that once it ended many people – including 250 foreigners – chose to stay on. It is thought that some of them were carrying the Covid-19 infection, that has now been transported across the country.

Religiously, Muslims have very decent act of greeting with one another. They love to shake hands followed by hugging (same gender) friends and acquaintances, especially in mosques and Muslim organisations. With COVID 19 outbreak, they are in state of quandary how to continue greeting tradition. So somewhere they try to follow and somewhere they avoid. Visiting the sick is considered a good deed in Islam. However, in the case of COVID-19, such visits are not possible. Checking up on those who are sick with phone calls, messages and social media is still possible and encouraged.

Congregational prayers in mosques are important for Muslims in instilling a sense of being in the presence of the sacred, and a sense of being with other believers. Accordingly, they line up in rows with shoulders touching. This arrangement is extremely risky during a pandemic. Under the situation some mosques are closed while some are opened allowing only few prayers.

CHALLENGES TO AWARENESS DRIVES FOR POOR CLASS, REFUGEE CAMPS, MIGRANTS

SAARC countries are one of the highest populations of refugees in the world, including three million registered and unregistered Afghan refugees in Pakistan and more than a million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.

In Afghanistan, the ongoing conflict has displaced more than two million people within the country and continues to receive thousands of people who have been forcibly returned from other countries, including neighbouring Iran. Social distancing seems to be impossible in the Rohingya camps in Bangladesh, where tents are tightly squeezed together across the Kutupalong settlement. Refugees have to walk through the camps to access basic services. There are limited medical facilities at the camps and no emergency services available nearby. In Afghanistan, internally displaced people (IDPs) are scattered in different camps, often in difficult-to-access areas, where they have lacked access to basic healthcare facilities for years, with only mobile clinics occasionally available and people being forced to make long journeys to search for food and water.

Yasir Habib Khan is freelance journalist