Short Abstract:

The COVID-19 crisis has had a traumatic effect on Indian society. Using 'crisis' as a framework, this panel investigates how the COVID crisis is not singular. It presents empirically rich and theoretically sophisticated accounts of COVID-19 and institutional failure in governance.

Long Abstract:

By using the crisis as a framework, the panel presents a multidimensional approach to understanding the effects of COVID-19 on the lifeworld of the marginalised communities in India. The papers in the panel pursue two interrelated concerns: First, they examine the governance aspect, highlighting institutional failures, a lack of political will, and ideological warfare; second, they firmly position the crisis—as a narrative tool—at the heart of marginality, thereby explaining the effects of COVID-19 on communities that continue to remain at the nation’s margins. The panel presents varied voices and granular narratives of sufferings that structured the lives of the poorest and dispossessed in the country during the crisis. It dovetails the reshaping of material forces that were crucially impacted by the failure of governance with the social lifeworld of those containing what can be referred to as inter-generational trauma. This panel offers a robust account of the crisis by combining these two distinct but complementary dimensions of COVID-19 in India. It will greatly interest scholars and researchers in crisis studies, governance, medical anthropology, public policy, politics, sociology, and South Asian studies.

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