Rethinking Biopolitics and Governance in India during the Covid-19 Pandemic
| DOI | 10.1177/00195561211045799 |
| Published date | 01 September 2021 |
| Date | 01 September 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Rethinking Biopolitics
and Governance in
India during the
Covid-19 Pandemic
Avilasha Ghosh1
Abstract
The article critically examines the different strategies through which the Union
government of India is battling against the novel coronavirus outbreak. In
particular, the article examines the socio-economic implications of India’s nation-
wide lockdown (25 March 2020–31 May 2020), and how one can conceptual-
ise the same from a biopolitical framework. The article heavily draws from the
works of influential thinkers such as Michel Foucault (1977, 2003, 2007), Giorgio
Agamben (1998), Achille Mbembe (2019) and Partha Chatterjee (2006), to ana-
lyse the Indian state’s responses to Covid-19. The data deployed in this article
is largely gathered from the author’s observations of the lockdown, and second-
ary sources such as newspaper articles, reports published by international and
national organisations, academic journals, and social media websites. The main
objectives of this article were to provide a critical reading of India’s ‘lockdown’
approach and ‘necropolitical governmentality,’ and understand how implement-
ing the same has adversely impacted and reconfigured the social and the quotid-
ian life of citizens.
Keywords
Covid-19, governance, biopolitics, policy, India
In the wake of the novel coronavirus pandemic, the world has come to a standstill.
With little success at an effective vaccination programme (76, 57, 17, 137
vaccinated as of 16th September 2021), thousands of persons continue to lose
lives to the virus, and many more get infected with each passing day. The
proliferating cases of infected persons has forced governments worldwide to
deploy hasty and unforeseen measures such as social distancing norms, travel
Article
Indian Journal of Public
Administration
67(3) 337–350, 2021
© 2021 IIPA
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DOI: 10.1177/00195561211045799
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1 IIT Delhi, New Delhi, India.
Corresponding author:
Avilasha Ghosh, PhD Scholar, Sociology, IIT Delhi, Hauz Khas, New Delhi 110016, India.
E-mail: avilashaghosh@gmail.com
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