Paper short abstract:

The COVID pandemic in India has unraveled profound failures of governance and discrimination of marginalised sections. One response of state which failed to provide transport/food to stranded migrant workers was to offer tele-counselling and psychiatric medicines for ‘mental distress’.

Paper long abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic in India has unraveled both the profound failures of governance and the social fissures in society. While the privileged Indians abroad were flown in at the expense of the government, an estimated 40 million migrant workers were left high and dry to fend for themselves. Money-less, transport-less, jobless, they walked thousands of kilometers in an attempt to reach their villages. Recorded as a massive human tragedy, not seen since the partition in 1947, the migrant workers were often victims of police brutality and hundreds are documented to have lost their lives. One response of the state – which failed to provide transport, food and water – was to offer tele counselling for ‘mental distress’, and offer pharmaceutical support through task-shifting. This talk will unwrap the politics of psy disciplines, especially as it is brought to bear in India during the humongous crisis brought on by structural violence and social suffering; medicalizing, decontextualizing, depoliticising and psychiatrising these. Drawing from mental health policies, developments around COVID-19 and personal insights from mental health spaces, I will throw light on how mainstream mental health systems in India huddle with the state, in aggressively replacing social justice problems of vulnerable sections like migrant workers with a single story of ‘psychiatric disorders’.