When about a dozen women organized a sit-in by blockading the Kalindi Kunj Road, which borders Shaheen Bagh in southeast Delhi, on 14 December 2019, no one predicted that they would launch a 101-day nationwide movement. As remarkable as the duration of the protest was its exuberant affirmation of inclusive nationalism and citizenship. The activists recited the national anthem at midnight on New Year's Eve, hoisted the tricolour on Republic Day and invited prime minister Narendra Modi to celebrate the festival of love together on Valentine's Day. Along with revolutionary speeches and readings of the Indian Constitution, protesters hosted performances by poets and musicians and decorated their tent with protest art. They forged community among people of different ages, faiths and social classes by sharing stories, reading, singing, painting, cooking and cleaning together. In Delhi's coldest winter in over 100 years, they knit each other shawls and sweaters and served hot tea to hundreds of supporters.

The women were protesting the government's passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and its calls for the creation of a National Register of Citizens (NRC), following recent police violence against student protesters at the nearby Jamia Millia Islamia University (hereafter Jamia). Within ten days, the sit-in grew to occupy half a mile of the highway, as it attracted thousands of supporters from across the city and later the country. The sit-in persisted, despite record-low temperatures, several court petitions seeking to evict the activists and false rumours that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spread, claiming that the protesters had been paid to resist the CAA and the NRC. The protesters remained peaceful and even distributed rose petals to their adversaries and the police, who ultimately evicted them and destroyed the protest site on 24 March 2020, when the government declared a lockdown to prevent the spread of Covid-19 (The Wire 2020a).

In this chapter we explore why Muslim women were at the forefront of the anti-CAA struggle and how their gendered experiences inform their affective relationship to citizenship. Before doing so, however, we provide some relevant background.

The CAA is the culmination of a series of steps the Modi-led BJP government has taken to establish Hindu domination and disenfranchise the Muslim community.

In 2014, the Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People's Party, BJP for short), the political wing of India's ethnomajoritarian Hindu nationalist movement that aims to redefine the country as a ‘Hindu-first’ nation, won the general elections and formed the government with a clear majority of 282 out of 543 parliamentary seats. Five years later, the BJP further consolidated these electoral gains. Defying the anti-incumbency pattern of Indian politics in which political parties are ousted from power in successive elections by a disillusioned electorate (Roy and Sopariwala 2019), the BJP returned to power in the 2019 elections with an increased tally of 303 parliamentary seats.

The BJP's ascent to national power since 2014 marks a major change in the political life of Hindu nationalism, from a mobilizational politics of insurgent opposition to a governmental politics of rule. While the former has been the familiar form of Hindu nationalist politics for close to a century, the latter is a new development that is less than a decade old. Reflecting this chronology, the main focus of the vast and rich scholarship on Hindu nationalism, or Hindutva, is on its ‘movemental’ aspects, that is, the practices of agitational politics, popular mobilization, and the strategies of ideological reproduction that recruit individuals and groups to the cause of Hindutva. Moving beyond this protest movement framework, this chapter explores the relatively uncharted terrain of ‘governmental Hindutva’, a formation that reflects both the vision of cultural and religious homogenization that the Hindu nationalist movement has promoted for close to a century and a more recent political–institutional vision of India as a majoritarian ‘ethnic democracy’ with a strong unitary state governed by authoritarian populist strongmen leaders (Jaffrelot 2019; Peer 2017). What are the modes and effects of this transition from nationalist mobilization to authoritarian populist governance? What changes when Hindu nationalism is the currency of rule and not protest?

Going beyond existing accounts of deinstitutionalization and anti-elitism as the necessary and main consequences of populists in power (Crewe and Sanders 2020; Kyle and Gultchin 2018; Mounck 2018; Varshney 2019), I argue in this chapter that parallel processes of institutional innovation and elite formation are equally central to the project of governmental Hindutva.

Introduction

Training to become a member of the Sangh Parivar (Sangh Family), India's largest and most influential Hindu nationalist collective, begins at an early age. Games, songs and stories are used to transmit Hindutva, or Hindu nationalist thought. In shakhas (meetings held daily, weekly or during camps) across the country, members place a special focus on storytelling and its didactic nature, an aspect that is enjoyed by listeners young and old. Pedagogic authorities everywhere have used storytelling as a mode of ideological introduction and propagation. How does the ‘method’ of storytelling modify itself in the service of the thought – how is it adapted, received and reproduced, and how does it become gendered? Why are many of the stories set in a historical time period, and what role does historicity play in the telling of these stories? These are the questions that would be engaged with in this chapter.

The empirical data for this chapter comes from two sources: textual (biographies of Rashtra Sevika Samiti [National Women Volunteers, henceforth Samiti] members and short stories of ‘ideal women’) and participant observations (from an annual summer camp of the organization in Delhi [2017] and Meerut [2013]), and shakhas across Delhi (March–June 2018). Stories from four books (from the Samiti's publication unit) and participant-observation data were analysed. Out of the four books, two were in Hindi and two in English. The fieldwork was conducted in Hindi. The publication materials have been divided into two: first are the stories of the influential members of the Samiti; second types of publication materials are the stories deploying historical figures (important women of the Hindu nationalist movement) that are written to highlight the important aspects of the ideology. Using the stories told by Samiti members (orally and textually), I attempt to outline the stories’ main themes as messages of the Hindu nationalist thought.

In this chapter, I show that these stories are important vehicles of socialization into the ideology. They are essential to the progress of the Sangh Parivar apparatus and their core project of writing a Hindutva history. There are two goals for this chapter. The first goal is to illustrate the larger objective of the Sangh Parivar to shape Hindu nationalist history. Second, the specific aim of Samiti's storytelling is to show how stories most effectively shape a gendered vision of Hindu nationalism.

The story is well known. Historically, Bangladesh exports were dominated by just one cash crop, namely jute, which accounted for nearly 90 per cent of total exports. Jute prices, however, experienced considerable volatility around a long-term secular decline in its terms of trade, imparting a high degree of uncertainty to export earnings. Remittance earnings opened up a much-needed additional source of foreign exchange, serving to lessen dependence on jute.

At the same time that remittances were beginning to flow in, in the late 1970s, crucial first steps were also being taken that would ultimately lead to the emergence of the apparels or RMG sector. Both remittances and RMG exports signalled a more open and accessible world market where poor, labour-abundant countries could find a niche on the basis of their comparative advantage. The global climate was more favourable for poor countries like Bangladesh, either by design or as the accidental consequence of advanced countries pursuing their own self interests. Thus, once the RMG potential was demonstrated, the response from local entrepreneurs was lightning-fast. The government, it must be underlined, rose quickly to take advantage of the opportunity to introduce incentives and policies to move things forward quickly for the RMG sector. Key initial movers who were close to the corridors of power played a crucial role in bringing the government fully on board. One could also argue that the government in the 1980s initiated a distinct change in its stance on ‘socialism’, which had earlier led to policy ambivalence and moved towards a more supportive role for private sector-led, capitalist development.

The Stylized Facts

The mid-1970s saw certain important changes in the world market for RMG. Advanced (importing) countries were getting increasingly worried about being swamped with low-cost clothes from East Asia, and as a precautionary move enacted the Multi-fibre Arrangement (MFA) in 1974, replacing the earlier Agreement on International Trade in Cotton and Textiles, 1964, under which country-specific quotas were imposed on major exporting developing countries.

The move was driven essentially by protectionist motives on the part of importers (the US and EU mainly) who were concerned about the effects on their own manufacturing industries.

The Indian Government being minded to discover the economic condition of their lands, sent a Committee to inquire into it; and saw that it was good…

Cooperation, legislation, and the drive towards rural reconstruction in the Punjab comprised the immediate response to the problem of rural indebtedness in the province. From the Alienation of Land Act and the cooperative credit societies, a much wider push towards ‘rural reconstruction’ emerged, which encapsulated various ideas of reform as discussed in Chapter 3. Another development was the beginning of a discourse on rural affairs that was centred on statistical inquiry and intensive data gathering in the province. This culture of knowledge starting in the 1920s was significant for several reasons:

firstly, it emerged in a political climate where the government needed to show greater knowledge of its rural subjects after the Montagu–Chelmsford reforms. The research agenda and scope of the studies were also defined and limited by political considerations. Second, it signalled a global move towards statistical inquiry in agricultural life with similar questions being studied elsewhere. Such inquiries were the precursor to two fields of study that became more developed by the 1950s and 1960s: peasant studies and development studies. Third, the inquiries did not challenge the official narrative on various socio-economic issues and instead confirmed many existing colonial biases. And finally, in keeping with an argument made elsewhere in the book, the inquiries reaffirm the limited memory of development studies, in that they remain largely forgotten and unused. This chapter develops these points by discussing the emergence of this new culture of research during the interwar period.

Ideas of rural reconstruction or cooperation did not pass away with colonial rule but endured in South Asia under new nomenclature and frameworks. This postscript discusses the legacy of British policies of development in the Punjab, even though the lineage is marked by a discontinuity: while programmes of community developed and funded by the Americans took root in both India and Pakistan from the 1950s onwards, there was little recognition of the earlier colonial flirtation with similar ideas. Instead, community development was presented as a novel way of eradicating ‘third world poverty’ and continues to be recast in various deifications of the local as an ‘innovative’ cure for underdevelopment. This ahistorical persistence of ideas of community is neither accidental nor benign: at the heart of all valorization of ‘grassroots’ development is an abdication of responsibility at the structural level and a transfer of blame to the poor. Much like the colonial schemes of rural uplift, the community development programmes are also premised on self-help and a fundamental criticism of the outlook and habits of the peasant or citizen as the root cause of indebtedness or poverty.

Both India and Pakistan embarked on large-scale community development programmes in the 1950s and 1960s, with the financial support of the United States.

BACKGROUND

At the end of 2019, the world was stunned by the emergence of an alarming new virus. After numerous failed attempts to contain it, by March 2020 the World Health Organization finally recognized COVID-19 as a pandemic. The rapid spread of the virus gave little time for governments all over the world to brace for its impact. While some governments bought time by implementing travel restrictions, the Indonesian government, fearing an economic slowdown, initially played down the virus’ threat by running a travel campaign in February 2020. However, as the COVID-19 death toll crept up, by March it was clear that the virus was a real threat. By April 2020 when the virus has spread to all of Indonesia's thirty-four provinces, the government finally implemented social restrictions in the Greater Jakarta area.

As people reduced their mobility, the economy slowed, and many breadwinners lost their income. Amidst such a condition, an increase in the poverty rate was expected. Although initially the poverty rate projections forecast that Indonesia's years of poverty alleviation efforts may be reversed as people fell into poverty, the country did better than expected. The poverty rate was projected to be as high as 13.38 per cent (World Bank 2020a). The actual outcome, however, defied many of these projections.

Considering that Indonesia experienced a significant economic contraction of up to –5.32 per cent in the second quarter of 2020, it was remarkable how Indonesia's poverty rate only climbed up to 9.78 per cent in March 2020 from its low of 9.22 per cent before the pandemic. This figure would then peak at 10.19 per cent in September 2020 (Statistics Indonesia 2020). By September 2021, Indonesia has returned to a singledigit poverty rate, which equated to 1.04 million people moving out of poverty (Statistics Indonesia 2022). International institutions, such as the World Bank, attributed the Indonesian government's success in keeping the country's poverty rate down to the many social assistance and social safety net programmes deployed throughout the pandemic.

When the pandemic struck, Indonesia was in a better position than in 1998 when the Asian Financial Crisis shook its economy. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Indonesia already had a running social protection system.

THE CURRENT TREND OF MENTAL ILLNESS

Global Trend

Globally, mental illness has been recognized as a less addressed disease while having a large economic impact (Chong et al. 2016; Steel et al. 2014; United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs 2022). It is estimated that globally, in 2010, the productivity loss due to anxiety and depression amounted to US$1 trillion per year, while mental health in general resulted in losses as high as US$2.5 trillion per year due to poor health and productivity losses, and that number is projected to increase to US$6 trillion by 2030 (Lancet Global Health 2020).

As a type of mental illness, depressive disorders were among the leading causes of years lived in disability (YLD) counts in 2017, and mental disorders, in general, shared more than 14 per cent of age-standardized YLDs during the last thirty years. The prevalence of mental disorders is higher than 10 per cent in all twenty-one Global Burden of Disease (GBD) regions (e.g., Southeast Asia, East Asia, and Oceania) (James et al. 2018; Moran et al. 2012).

Looking at figures taken from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) website (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation 2019), mental disorders have increased in rank in terms of Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) from number 13 in 1990 to number 7 in 2019 (Figure 10.1), potentially showing a substantial increase in severity and the number of diseases. However, in terms of Years Lived in Disability (YLD), mental disorders consistently sat at the 2nd rank in both 1990 and 2019, showing a potentially similar trend over the 29 years (Figure 10.2).

As an example of the burden of mental illness, studies have shown that psychotic disorders are associated with both health and nonhealthcare costs. However, it is less known that the non-healthcare costs component such as productivity loss (Knapp and Wong 2020) has a large share (more than 50 per cent of the total cost). Such a trend is shown by various studies in different countries such as China, Australia, Japan, England, Ireland, Spain, Belgium, Korea, the United States of America and Canada (Sado et al. 2013; Mangalore and Knapp 2007; Phanthunane et al. 2012; Charrier, Chevreul, and Durand-Zaleski 2013; SANE Australia 2002; Fasseeh et al. 2018; Zhai et al. 2013).

INTRODUCTION

The private sector accounts for more than 90 per cent of the total Indonesian GDP and plays an important role in the Indonesian economy and employment. This chapter focuses on non-financial large and medium businesses which are the main economic drivers of the private sector. Nonfinancial large and medium businesses account for approximately half of the total private sector contribution to real GDP. Following this introductory section, section 15.2 describes Indonesian corporate performance prior to COVID-19. Subsequently, section 15.3 discusses the economic impacts of COVID-19 that appeared in multiple non-financial sectors during 2020–21. Next, section 15.4 zooms in on the impact by looking at how financial pressure on corporates evolved within the 18-plus months from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, which was subsequently followed by changes in government objectives and support. It is then followed by section 15.5 covering how the Government of Indonesia (GoI) has applied an adaptive policy approach with a better understanding of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on both the global and domestic economy. The last section summarizes the discussion as well as gives a reflective discussion on past policies and potential future interventions. Additionally, two case studies on Value Added Tax (Pajak Pertambahan Nilai, or VAT) are presented to provide evidence at a micro level to support the discussions at a macro level in the previous sections.

The COVID-19 pandemic hit the corporate sector hard, especially in 2020, as public authorities across the globe implemented unprecedented measures to contain the spread of the virus. Restrictions on mobility and social contact, school and business shutdowns, quarantine and border closures brought the economy to almost a standstill. Sales across many sectors were plummeting as demand fell sharply. While financial commitments with respect to workers, suppliers and lenders remained, firms had to face abrupt and sharp reversals in earnings. This situation has depleted the liquidity buffer of firms across many sectors. The risk caused by liquidity shortages in the corporate sector rose and potentially affected the stability of the financial system.

The impact of the pandemic was, nonetheless, heterogeneous across sectors, depending on each sector's reliance on social contact and mobility.

INTRODUCTION

Financial inclusion is a key enabler to reducing poverty and boosting prosperity as financial access facilitates day-to-day living, and helps families and small business owners generate income, invest in opportunities and work their way out of poverty. Financial inclusion can empower communities to meet their basic needs and has an important role in the efforts to help people prepare for, respond to, and recover from health and economic crises, such as COVID-19. Financial inclusion has been among the important development policy instruments with more than fifty-five countries launching the National Financial Inclusion Strategy (NFIS) as of early 2020, and a further thirty-four countries are currently in the process of doing so (World Bank 2021).

In Indonesia, the initiative to implement financial inclusion strategy has been officially started in 2016 in line with the introduction of Presidential Regulation/Perpres No. 82/2016 on NFIS (Strategi National Keuangan Inklusif, or SNKI). The NFIS is a legal framework to promote financial inclusion by opening access for more Indonesian to banking and other financial services. The state of financial inclusion in Indonesia saw a marked improvement over the last decades, but compared to peer countries, Indonesian financial inclusiveness is still lagging. Moreover, the inclusiveness gap between the poorest and the richest population is still considerable.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought both challenges and opportunities for Indonesia's financial inclusion. On the one hand, the implementation of mobility restriction measures to control the spread of the virus resulted in the closure of bank branches and halted operations of mobile money agents in compliance with restrictions. On the other hand, government officials and health practitioners encouraged the use of cashless and contactless modes of payment to reduce the risk of viruses spread through the handling of cash. This will create new opportunities for the potential adoption of Digital Financial Services (DFS). Small businesses and low-income households can directly benefit from digital solutions such as mobile money services, online banking and other financial technology innovations.

Financial inclusion plays an important role in delivering government support to those whose income was negatively affected by the pandemic. The pandemic provided a lesson that massive delivery of government support during mobility restrictions can be done quickly if people have access to the financial system.

INTRODUCTION

Indonesia was on a growth trajectory between 2010 and 2019 with annual growth rates averaging 5.4 per cent and was hopeful of achieving the high-income country status by 2045. In 2019 Indonesia managed to show a healthy macroeconomic status—growth reached 5.02 per cent, the inflation rate was manageable at 2.78 per cent, the Gini ratio was at 0.39, the rupiah appreciated by 5 per cent, and there was a 138-basis point decrease in Indonesia's ten-year government bond yield in the second half of the year.

In 2020, the World Bank classified Indonesia as an upper-middleincome country. Later, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Indonesia was then reclassified as a lower-middle-income country. The unprecedented Wuhan outbreak surprisingly shook the global economy to its core in a manner we had never seen before, except perhaps during the Spanish flu pandemic in the early 1900s. At about the time the first COVID-19 cases began to appear, the world was under a cloud due to the US-China trade war which had caused a long period of economic uncertainty and increased geopolitical tension resulting in surging commodity prices. In Q4 2019, the global economy looked set to rebound. Capital flows started returning to emerging markets assets, including Indonesia. The rupiah appreciated by 5 per cent between 31 May 2019 and 31 January 2020, and the ten-year yield went down by 138 basis points during the same period.

COVID-19 first emerged in late December 2019 in Wuhan, China (WHO 2020) and was thought to be a pneumonia disease. By mid-February 2020, positive cases had reached close to 50,000 and spread across twenty-seven countries. By this time, the global market was still in its bullish tendency, with capital flows still flowing into the emerging markets. However, the disease spread fast, pushing the World Health Organization (WHO) to announce a pandemic status on 11 March 2020. At that time, the financial market was still unaware of what was coming but there were already more than 118,000 COVID-19 cases in over 110 countries.

The global financial market was priced in less than ten days after the WHO declared the pandemic. On 20 March 2020, there was a freeze in the global financial market. The Volatility Index (VIX) hit an all-time high of 53.54.