Manisha KUSHWAHA, Self, India
Covid-19 has brought unprecedented changes to the global economic order. Every country suffered during the pandemic, and India was no exception. Indian economy, especially the informal sector, was severely hit. The visuals of poor migrant workers walking on foot thousands of kilometres to reach their homes during the countrywide lockdown are hard to forget. Most of these workers came from the marginalised section of our society from the poor states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. These visuals provoked us to think about how inequality is reshaping itself in the new economic order.
The paper is based on an ethnographic study conducted in two Dalit dominated neighbourhoods of Lucknow city. Dalit comprises a significant share of the workforce in the informal sector. During Covid-19 the situation got much worse than ever for the lower caste informal sector workforce during the lockdown in 2020. The implementation of demonetisation in 2016 and Goods and Services Tax (GST) in 2017 had already hit the informal sector. The economy had just begun to recover when the pandemic hit the world in 2020. In the last two years of the global pandemic, the country's economic condition has undergone changes leading to a new world order of precarity. The paper aims to bring out the challenges poor Dalit residents from the neighbourhoods are experiencing because of the Covid-19 pandemic. While people from all caste groups suffered economically, the magnitude was much more for the marginalised communities. Dalits are a victim of systematic discrimination. Thus, pre-existing fault lines and structural inequalities revealed through the pandemic window need immediate attention. Through the micro study I conducted in Lucknow city, I attempt to bring the narratives of people from the Dalit community to understand how Covid 19 has affected their everyday lives and how they are navigating in the new economic order. It attempts to understand the larger meaning and the link between caste and Covid-19.
Mots clés : Covid-19|caste|informal Sector|marginalisation|inequality
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