Page 79 - EW August 2021

The consequence is compliant establishment
that 40-50 percent of the that have misruled post- DOOM: THE POLITICS OF
residents of India’s 4,000 independence India. CATASTROPHE
cities live in squalid slums The concluding chapter Niall Ferguson
without basic sanitation titled ‘Covid-19 in the ALLEN LANE
and their filth, dirt and Rear-view Mirror’ of this Rs.770 Pages 476
disease is contaminating book should be mandatory
the groundwater reserves reading for all so that the
of the country. Ditto in egregious errors and mis-
rural India which ungra- calculations of the current
ciously hosts 67 percent of pandemic are not repeated Instead of shying away By writing a
the republic’s population when the inevitable next from framing natural and combined history of
where no safe drinking pandemic is upon us. man-made disasters as natural and man-
water and public health DILIP THAKORE separate entities, Ferguson made disasters the
infrastructure worth the focuses on the historical author leaves less
description has been built. tussle between scientific space for robust
Therefore, bearing in mind Over-ambitious progress and different argument
that cholera is a water- types of catastrophes
borne disease, a new chol- initiative that rear their ugly heads
era pandemic could break periodically. As much as own words, “the history
out anytime. Ferguson attempts to cre- of disasters is a history of
Nor do any worthies of IALL FERGUSON ate a compelling account a poorly managed zoo of
the establishment whose has a penchant for of global catastrophes, an gray rhinos, black swans
salaries and perks swal- Nwriting sweeping over-reliance on informa- and dragon kings”.
low almost 25 percent of histories. Over the years, tion, facts and figures Through the book, he
the annual Union budget, he has managed to cast his leaves less space for robust obsesses over the micro
seem at all concerned that spell over a wide audience argument. details of each and every
the rodent population of through what can broadly In the introduction, event. Large sections read
Mumbai for instance, is be called ‘popular history’. the author confesses his like bloated biographi-
two-three multiples of From empires and money own complicity by being cal sketches of events,
the human population (15 to global leadership, a ‘superspreader’ in early personalities and organ-
million), raising the om- Ferguson has enchanted 2020, when he was globe- isations that appear to be
nipresent danger of a new his audiences by introduc- trotting to deliver lectures, at best a critical appraisal
plague pandemic. And the ing them to newer albeit attending conferences and of academic truisms like
point stressed in this vol- obscure topics. He might corporate meetings. At the “how we must study the
ume backed by historical find it difficult, however, same time, he is quick to social and political aspects
research and scholarship is to repeat the trick with remind his readers about instead of narrowly focus-
that pandemics don’t break his new book, Doom: The the ‘Cassandra effect’, ing on the pandemic” and
out sequentially, they can Politics of Catastrophe. wherein he subtly posi- the fallacies of “cyclical
be simultaneous and often While explaining the tions himself among the theories of histories”
overlap each other. reasons for writing a select few who “think they among others.
After the Black Death history of catastrophes, know the future (in this There is no gainsaying
devastation of the 14th Ferguson clarifies that case, the ramifications of that a focus on the inter-
century and influenza pan- this is not a history of the the pandemic) but cannot connections of society,
demic of 1918-20, succes- ongoing pandemic, but convince people around polity and the pandemic is
sive governments of Eu- rather “a general history him”. With his trademark crucial to understand the
ropean countries applied of catastrophe”. These style of posing facts and emergence and sustenance
themselves and invested include both natural hypotheses at the same of a catastrophe in myriad
massively in public health, and man-made disasters time, Ferguson implores ways. However, to use this
education, sanitation and which straddle diverse us to think of catastrophes statement as one of the
affordable public housing. categories like geological as ‘gray rhinos’ (highly principal arguments comes
Unfortunately, these are (earthquakes), geopolitical probable events), ‘black across more as a hack-
bottom priorities, if at all, (wars), biological (pan- swans’ (surprising events) neyed hypothesis, neither
of the professedly socialist demics) and technological and ‘dragon kings’ (vast a new nor an interesting
governments and meekly (nuclear accidents). in magnitude). In his ‘question’ to think about.

AUGUST 2021 EDUCATIONWORLD 79