There has perhaps never been such a need as there is today to develop critical, rational, and compassionate public opinion. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought with it a plethora of issues; crises that we do not yet know the scale of. Over the years, the space for analytical thought and productive criticism has been shrinking, resulting in mindless populism, fear and a herd mentality. In India, this has manifested in a deepening of the structures of inequality across gender, religion, class, and caste lines. The ‘Solidarity Webinar Series’, organised by the Centre for Financial
Accountability (CFA), comes at the critical juncture of a government-imposed lockdown, where many isolated at home, had an incomplete understanding of the social, economic, cultural and political impact of the crisis.
Covid-19 brought a 21 day country wide lockdown from the midnight of March 24th 2020 and this caught the entire country completely unaware and unprepared. Chaos and panic buying kept a few occupied while most others without money were on the street without a shelter and a meal. A climate of fear engulfed the country with millions stripped off their dignity walking home to be with their families in this time of such uncertainty. Police brutality against the migrants, delayed decisions from the courts, collapse of governance, lack of public health facilities left everyone clueless and helpless. It was at this point that civil society networks, trade unions and people’s movements came together in solidarity and organised a series of webinars titled: “Solidarity Series: Conversations during Lockdown and Beyond”. These conversations drew people from multiple sectors and perspectives and a range of themes, all of which independently and collectively interrogated implications of the lockdown decisions, analysed its repercussions on governance, economy, trade, finance, labour, human rights, public health, situation of Dalits and Adivasis, gender dimensions, environment, climate change, surveillance state and privacy etc. Each of these webinars helped in building deeper understandings of dealing with the changing world.
In this volume, edited transcripts of this webinar series have been shared. Each transcript is unique reflecting the work and views of the speaker, which it is hoped that this volume will be useful and empowering to all readers.
This series of webinars were coordinated and facilitated by Centre for Financial Accountability. Recordings of the webinars are available at: https://www.cenfa.org/webinar-solidarity-series/
Centre for Financial Accountability (CFA) engages and supports efforts to advance transparency and accountability in financial institutions. They use research, campaigns and trainings to help movements, organisations, activists, students and youth to engage in this fight, and they partake in campaigns that can shift policies and change public discourse on banking and economy.
They monitor the investments of national and international financial institutions, engages on policies that impact the banking sector and economy of the country, demystify the world of finance through workshops and short-term courses and help citizens make banks and government more transparent and accountable, for they use public money.
