Governing the Crisis

This book presents a multidimensional approach to understanding the effects of COVID-19 on the lifeworld of the marginalized communities in India. The essays in the volume 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 volume presents varied voices and granular narratives of sufferings that structured the lives of the poorest and dispossessed in the country during a 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 intergenerational trauma. This volume offers a robust account of the crisis by combining these two distinct but complementary dimensions of COVID-19 in India. The volume will greatly interest scholars and researchers in governance, medical anthropology, public policy, politics, sociology, and South Asian studies.