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Paper short abstract:

Drawing from Ghosh’s (2019) argument on how the government “uses and abuses” the inequality for its benefit, the paper analyses how the government socially reproduced and abused the crisis of care to furthering gender and economic inequality using the case study of ASHA workers during the pandemic.

Paper long abstract:

Regardless of a country's GDP, caregiving responsibilities predominantly fall upon women within households, mostly without compensation. Scholars assert that the capitalist system relies on, or arguably exploits, provisioning, caregiving, and interpersonal interactions that foster and sustain social connections, all while assigning them no monetary value and treating them as if they were free. Consequently, gender inequality is essential for the functioning of the market. During the Covid-19, the government, lacking adequate preparation to address the crisis by supplementing healthcare facilities, imposed caregiving responsibilities on women within families and healthcare workers. The government has been exploiting women's labour for years, even before the pandemic as is evident in how government schemes typically devalue women's work by offering minimal wages, as seen with anganwadi employers, or failing to provide payment, as is the case with ASHA workers.

Drawing from Ghosh’s (2019) argument on how the government “uses and abuses” the inequality for its advantage, the paper attempts to analyse how the government socially reproduced and abused the crisis of care to furthering gender and economic inequality using the case study of ASHA workers during the Covid-19 lockdown in India.