The Pandemic and Its Discontents in India

The edited collection, India and the Pandemic: The First Year, Essays from The India Forum, serves to plug a glaring gap in documentation of the biggest challenge that India has faced in several years. Although, documentation, as also policy interventions, should ideally have been done by the government itself, neither of these have happened in an honest or proactive way. Therefore, a citizen-led documentation of the pandemic as well as the large-scale relief work organised by ­ordinary people is what has been the saving grace amid the pandemic.

The book looks at different dimensions of the pandemic. This is at once a problem and a good thing. It is a problem because the public health doctor would struggle with the economic technicalities, while the activist may find the banking data too heavy. However, the advantage is that the book offers a ready reference on the multiple dimensions of the pandemic ranging from emp­loyment loss, effects on trade and commerce, communalisation, poverty indices, effects on labour, etc. The book helps to give a snapshot of diverse consequences of the pandemic and therefore becomes a historical document for fut­ure generations to refer to.