The Panchshil Buddha Vihar Group: Dalit migrant life and group solidarity during the pandemic (original) (raw)

Indian Migrants Movements during COVID Pandemic and its Socio- Emotional Impacts

Abstract: The world has been witnessing history in making since the last few months. The pandemic of COVID 19 and the resultant lockdown across the world has made us face many new challenges. Indian migrant workers have faced multiple hardships during this phase of forced lockdown in the country. Millions of migrant workers spread across India in various states had to deal with the loss of livelihood and had to go through a complete overhaul because of the looming uncertainties. In absence of clear policy guidelines by the government and authorities, thousands of migrant workers began walking back home in their villages, with no means to transport. Indian media was full of shocking images of these migrants forced to walk in desperation portrayed the enormity of the crisis. As per the reports, more than 500 migrant workers and family members died on the way with reasons ranging from starvation, suicides, exhaustion, road accidents, police brutality, and denial of timely medical help. This has opened up a whole chain of new challenges for India and some other countries posed by a series of lockdowns where so many people live had to mouth and cannot afford not to work. As per the government's estimated data, there are more than 90 % of working people in India are engaged in the informal economic sectors. This typically follows the temporary, seasonal, and circular migration patterns. More than 80% of these workers come from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar- two of the biggest states in India. Nearly half of these workers are not entitled to any social security schemes. There is also an extended risk of further waves of COVID 19 infections, which could create a severe shortage of these labors in the field and industry. There are mainly three aspects of these challenges: the need for leaving their native place in search of livelihood, their inability to withstand any further uncertainties and crisis, and their emotional urge to come back home to their loved ones to be alive than to search for one more ‘unknown’ land. This paper discusses some of the key challenges faced by the migrants and the Indian government due to this unprecedented chain of events. It also discusses some of the solutions towards fostering self-reliance in migrant workers.

Caste in the Time of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Contemporary Voice of Dalit, 2021

Historically, it is a glaring fact that any disaster or pandemic made the Dalit and Adivasi as the worst victim. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to unfold the caste dynamics and social realities around the debate of the COVID-19 pandemic. A unique feature of India's caste system is in its flexibility. Therefore, even during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, the prescribed medical guidelines of 'social distancing' encourages the Savarnas to strengthen the caste prejudices in the name of science. Apart from this, the prescribed guidelines for 'social distancing' and 'home quarantine' exposed the graded caste inequality in India. The empirical evidence from this study brings it to the forefront that a graded caste inequality persists in household's availability of exclusive room with attached toilet facilities and adequate ventilation facilities, household's access to exclusive drinking water source, household's affordability in practising hand wash with soap or detergent, etc. Therefore, when the Forward caste become the most privileged in maintaining the home quarantine and complete isolation, it becomes an unaffordable luxury for the Dalits. It makes the Dalits most vulnerable during this pandemic. Therefore, this pandemic provides a stark example of the pervasiveness and perniciousness of social inequality in India.

Agony of survival Refugees and marginality in India during COVID-19

Routledge, 2022

Marginality and refugees live side by side be it a normal situation or any kind of crisis. The COVID-19 not only multiplied the sufferings and marginalities of the refugee communities but also added and strengthened various stigmas, discriminations, and increased phobias about them. Refugees apart, the majoritarian imaginations tried to break the pandora box of COVID-19 on the heads of weaker and underprivileged sections of society which also includes the IDP COVID-19 is a virulent deadliest viral disease that spread across the world from Wuhan, China. It emerged from the family of Coronaviruses and this was the latest SARS-COV-2. It has disrupted human mobility across the national and international borders and imposed worldwide lockdown. IDP is an abridged form of an Internally displaced people/person, undocumented citizens, labour migrants, minorities, and backward classes. We have witnessed the discriminations against these people during the pandemic across the borders. Thus, COVID-19 has exposed the existing structural inequalities in our societies on the grounds of gender, caste, class, religion, race, etc. This chapter tries to analyze the situation of refugees in India during the disquieting time of the COVID-19 crisis, what challenges they face (racial, health-related, economic, political) and how did they struggle to survive through various possible means. It also underlines how legal weakness and socio-economic exclusion and misunderstandings led to the further subjugation, exploitation, and exclusion of refugees from all government schemes and social spheres. This discourse analysis takes the help of data from existing available interviews, reports, and blogs/news reports/newspapers. It also analyzes the role of national and international bodies and NGOs in mitigating the spread of this disease among refugees and helping them in difficult times and what are their challenges while assisting these deprived communities

THE COVID-19 AND ITS IMPACT ON INDIAN SOCIAL LIFE: LIVED EXPERIENCES OF MUSLIMS AND DALIT COMMUNITY

Habitus: Journal of Sociology, 2022

The coronavirus has changed the social fabric of many societies. It came with so many consequences in the life of people which cannot be described without taking into account the loss of life; trauma and psychological distress people are going through in their everyday life. The initial days of uncertainty and unpredictability in the unruly behaviour of virus created the doomsday kind of situation for people and authorities, which has been mitigated gradually with the introduction of vaccines and booster doses and regimen of other combination of medicines. Yet people are into rumour spreading through social media platforms and there are doubters who are yet to believe the presence of coronavirus. This paper is an attempt to explain and understand the impact of coronavirus on Indian social life. One of the ways of studying Indian society is to bring in the phenomenological and political anthropology as a methodological tool to unravel the intricacies, social cleavages and the fault lines prevailing in the everyday life of people. By applying these methodological tools one can also understand the complexity it brings into social, political and economic life of an individual and community.

India’s Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Frontal Assault on the “Historically Dispossessed”

International Journal of Health Services

During the nationwide lockdown as part of the state response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the predicament of interstate migrant laborers in India, caught in crowded cities without means of livelihood and basic resources needed to sustain life, gained national and international attention. This article explores the context of the current migrant crisis through the historical trajectories and political roots of internal migration in India and its relationship with the urban informal labor market and the structural determinants of precarious employment. We argue that the both the response to the pandemic and the disproportionate impact on migrant laborers are reflections and consequences of an established pattern of neglect and poor accountability of the state toward the employment and living conditions of migrant workers who toil precariously in the informal labor market.

long and deadly road: indian migrants and the pandemic

cultural studies, 2021

This essay focuses on the Indian migrant crisis in the context of the state's handling of the pandemic. It argues that the migrant situation in India pries open 'problem spaces' that, if attended to, reveal how many of the now normative solutions for governing and containing the virus are exceeded by bodiesof migrants in particularthat cannot be kept safe by solutions in place to check the contagion. The essay first raises questions about the unequal distribution of 'saveability' in the Indian context (but this can also apply to others). It asks who cannot be included in the frame of 'human life' that underlies the solutions offered for protecting lives in the pandemic. Second, the essay offers a description of the migrant crisis in India that has ensued in the pandemic. Following that description, the essay focuses on three problem-spaces or aporias that the pandemic has pried open and that call for a more politically complex, contextually sensitive, and humane response to the management of the virus: unequal temporalities, the dilemma of im/mobility, and the challenge of recording death.