Book Review: Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay,Paula Banerjee & Ranabir Samaddar (Eds),India’s Migrant Workers and the Pandemic

This collection of articles focuses critically on how India handled the migrant crisis during the pandemic, especially during the first phase of complete lockdown for almost two months in 2020, with most states and the central government largely shirking their responsibilities. The editors present the resulting crisis as ‘the consequence of political, economic and epidemiological failures’ (p. 5) and portray the lockdown as a golden opportunity for the ‘bureaucratic takeover of the country’ (p. 7). They also focus on how, during this time, the Disaster Management Act of 2005 was imposed by the government, using the pretext of social distancing, to clamp down heavily on political activities. The pandemic thus became an excuse to enhance surveillance/control measures and was a perfect setting for ‘disaster nationalism’ to thrive, combined with ‘epidemiological neoliberalism’ (p. 10), where the state withdraws from social welfare measures, as seen in some parts of Europe and America, while the distressed internal migrants of India lacked bargaining power.

The book, divided into two sections, first covers analyses of the wider impact of the pandemic in six chapters, while the second part offers a compilation of reports on lived experiences in India during the pandemic. Chapter 1, ‘Coronavirus and World Economy’, by R.A. Palat focuses on the known vulnerability of the poor, who have no scope for social distancing or hygienic practices, arguing broadly for a ‘fundamental change in the institutional structures of the world economy’ (p. 37). Chapter 2, ‘Gender Transgressions in the Moment of Pandemic?’ by Paula Banerjee, problematises several gendered effects of the pandemic, including evidence of an exponential increase in cases of domestic violence (p. 50). Globally, especially in developing countries like India, women constitute 70% of healthcare workers, grossly underpaid, unprotected by unions, and working in precarious conditions. Studies in India indicated that, till May 2021, 3.3% of women contracting COVID-19 were dying, compared to 2.9% of men (p. 46). Clearly, the plight of migrant women workers was worse than that of their male counterparts. Overall, the chapter highlights how the pandemic increased gender inequality in all spheres.

Chapter 3, ‘Covid-19 Jurisprudence’ by Kalpana Kannabiran, analyses the triad of citizenship, rights and state responsibilities that forms the ethical framework of the Indian constitution, particularly regarding Dalits, Adivasis and Muslim communities. Examining to what extent this was efficiently handled during the pandemic, this chapter is extremely critical of the harsh and arbitrary lockdown imposed by the Indian government, hitting economically deprived communities without making any provision for them, while using increased state surveillance in the guise of an App named Aarogya Setu. Initiated with the sensible intention of tracking COVID cases, this ended up violating the right to privacy, leading Kannabiran to conclude that the lockdown became a tool used by the government to pander to majoritarian whims, divesting economically deprived citizens of basic rights.

Chapter 4 by Rajan Pandey and Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay examines the links between informal economy and contemporary capitalist development, migration and state welfare. Also tracing transformations in the agricultural and non-agricultural economies in the last two decades, this discussion assesses the pandemic’s impact on the Indian economy. The lockdown disrupted supply chains and capital flows. Social distancing norms brought drastic impacts on the tourism and hospitality sectors, caused a shrinking of the informal economy and led to rapid rise of unemployment rates from 8.4% in mid-March to 23% in mid-April 2020 (p. 112), raising the possibility that more people will die due to poverty and starvation than COVID.

In Chapter 5, describing the migrant crisis as a humanitarian disaster, Byasdeb Dasgupta examines the notion of ethics in policy framing. Most economic measures announced by the government were neoliberal economic reforms, making internal migrants even more invisible, while the government’s apathy in terms of ethics and care was very evident. In Chapter 6, ‘Migration, Circularity and Domesticity’, Samita Sen explores especially the plight of domestic workers, mainly women, during the lockdown. Since in South Asia the local circular movement of domestic helpers is a common phenomenon, and such workers shuttle between multiple homes, often with no proper homes of their own, the lockdown often meant complete devastation of any hard-earned gains.

The book’s second section presents a set of reports documenting the harrowing effects of the lockdown on migrant workers. Commencing with the theme of ‘Hunger, Humiliation, and Death’, it explores intersecting poignant issues such as xenophobia, visibility, the inadequacy of data collection and the gender divide. These reports underscore the debilitating restraints on migrant workers who had to fend for themselves, given the government’s neoliberal approach. Also, various forms of stigmatisation experienced by internal migrant who returned to their hometowns and villages amid the pandemic are highlighted. The report titled ‘The Sudden Visibility of Sangram Tudu’ draws attention to the host-termite myth engrained in the institutional framework, which perceives immigrants as termites who ‘eat into the vitals of the system’ (p. 215). One of these reports also revives the still haunting images of the partition witnessed by India in 1947, to describe the atmosphere of disadvantage, yearning for home and double marginalisation of weaker sections (p. 254).

These accounts strikingly point out how the war of wits between the Indian federal centre and the states continued unscathed, while citizens awaited meaningful policies and solutions. Various incidents chronicle the ‘calculated kindness’ (p. 233) of some states to ‘alien’ workers. Here, too, the treatment of mainly female domestic workers, who continued to supply intimate labour in people’s homes and kitchens, was marked by social ostracism, as they were seen as a source of contamination. After reading these heart-rending reports, one is left to ponder about poignant questions of indignity, bare life, non-acceptance and abandonment. Especially the report titled ‘Counting and Accounting for Those on the Long Walk Home’ underlines how poor management of the pandemic reduced the character of the government to a ‘surveillance state’ (p. 267). This laxity created dents in the socio-economic fabric of the nation, leading to multiple collateral problems.

This well-researched and timely book, which could have been edited a little more meticulously, also to avoid repetition of ideas, despite its reservations and trenchant critiques about government involvement, calls for urgent interventions by the central and state governments to address the issues plaguing India’s internal migrant workers, who are major contributors to the country’s economy. While the book contains a scathing attack on the neoliberal policies of the government, which continue to alienate internal migrants, the editors argue for progressive change focused on sustainable goals and urge that trade unions and social democratic parties should not act as cheerleaders for neoliberalism.