Paper short abstract:

Despite widespread speculations of a disastrous effect of Covid-19 in the urban informal settlements, the case rate was very low in the largest slum of Bangladesh. An ethnography reveals an informal pandemic response by the slum dwellers demonstrating the community governance from below.

Paper long abstract:

It was argued that COVID-19 crisis is likely to have disproportionately damaging effects on slum dwellers compared to other urban residents, particularly those in low- and middle-income countries due to the higher transmissibility of the disease and higher case fatalities given the precarious living and livelihood conditions. However, though COVID-19 cases and deaths in different clusters of Bangladesh was increasing rapidly throughout 2020, surprisingly very few cases were reported in the slums. Bangladeshi media coverage also portrayed slum dwellers as potential sources of the disease for the entire city because of their ignorance and non-compliance to the health directives and indifference to the pandemic. Nevertheless, a systematic COVID test in the largest informal settlement in Bangladesh found lower infection rate than other sites of the city. While the epidemiological puzzle of the low incidence of COVID-19 in slum remains unresolved, an ethnography in the largest informal settlement in Bangladesh reveals how in the context of indifference from the state the slum dwellers themselves initiated a number of robust medical and non-medical measures to tackle the pandemic. Whether the interventions taken by the slum dwellers made any impact on COVID-19 is beyond the scope and interest of the ethnography. This ethnography rather reveals how through informal and adaptive response to a crisis the slum dwellers demonstrate collective agency and the power of community governance from below. We understand these community initiatives by urban poor as what Bayat (2013) calls ‘Quiet encroachment’ or ‘Non-Movement, referring to the collective actions of noncollective actors.