Virus will pass, stamping will continue.

"Last week, the mayor of Ecuador's largest city ordered the international airport's runway blocked to prevent a KLM airliner from landing to pick up Dutch tourists stranded by the coronavirus." Apparently, she did it to protect residents of her city from the virus. Politicians are arming themselves with extraordinary powers "made possible only by rapid advances in technology. and while citizens across the globe may be willing to sacrifice civil liberties temporarily, history shows that emergency powers can be hard to relinquish". In India, "officials are tracking mobile phones, pulling out reservation data from airlines and railways, and stamping people's hands with indelible ink". "When I first heard of the stamping in Mumbai, I thought it was fake news," said Supreme Court lawyer NS Nappinai, an expert in data privacy legislation. Nothing unusual. Governments in India, both central and states, are known for their brutality, beating and humiliating citizens with little provocation. A 32 year old man died in West Bengal after being thrashed by the police. Maharashtra is using a law, enacted by the British in 1897 to combat Bubonic Plague, to stamp people flying in from countries with virus epidemic. The Act protects authorities from litigation for any action, however draconian or lethal. Milady, the Countess de Winter, had been branded with a fleur de lis in Alexander Dumas's novel 'The Three Musketeers'. Ironically, the fear of authorities drove thousands of migrant laborers to rush to stations in Mumbai and pack into trains to get back to their villages. When train services were stopped migrants from Rajasthan started walking home from Ahmedabad in the adjoining state of Gujarat. The chaos caused by the coronavirus is similar to the events at the beginning of the 20th century, wrote Pankaj Mishra. "The opening years of the 20th century, too, were defined by a free global market for goods, capital and labor." "As with our own crisis, the seminal crashes of the 20th century -- the First World War followed by the Great Depression -- were harder to grasp because their principal causes were set in motion decades before and largely neglected by mainstream politicians and commentators." "In the interwar era, an expanding state assumed unprecedented powers over its citizens, metamorphosing in some countries into outright fascism." Governments are assuming unbridled powers to contain the pandemic. "Certainly, the techniques of surveillance available to the contemporary state, starkly evident in China today, can only further restrict human rights and liberties." With facial recognition technology and Aadhaar, India is not far behind China. The virus will pass, but we will continue to be stamped. Into submission.