Siddiqui, Asim
(2021)
Body politics of the Indian state in the COVID-19 era: from an Ambedkarite lens.
Shuddhashar (24).
pp. 1-12.
Abstract
A health pandemic is a complex phenomenon that can’t be merely understood in biomedical terms while ignoring the socio-cultural context of how it has spread, and the way countries have responded to it. For this reason, many scholars like Reyes (2020) and Horton (2020) have argued that we need to look at natural/health disasters in conjunction with the social interactions and institutional responses to make an accurate sense of the situation. The Covid-19 pandemic was initially touted as a great leveller as it didn’t distinguish between different social classes while spreading profusely among people, which created a false image that somehow every person, whether rich or poor, is equally affected by it. However, in the past one year we have seen anything but the pandemic having an equal impact on everyone. In fact, what happened was that different measures were taken for different groups to address the spread of the virus, which showed a great bias against vulnerable groups and communities in India. Instead of being a great leveller, the pandemic exacerbated the social cleavages and ended up increasing inequalities.
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