Whether it is capitalism or socialism, it is the poor who are invariably the worst victims, argued Harvard sociologist Barrington Moore, Jr, in his widely read classic, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: and Lord Peasant in the Making of the Modern World.
In the pervasive chaos of India’s lockdown, one fact is becoming increasingly clear—that India’s poor are going to face a mortal threat, despite all the governmental measures announced by New Delhi and other state capitals.
The most distressing fact that is emerging from various reports of how poor migrant workers were brutally thrashed or harassed by the police in various parts of the country, such as Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, raises the question whether this police