COVID-19 and the Everyday Challenges of Indigenous Peoples of Tripura

Although there were some responses from the government and community sociocultural organisations to deal with an unforeseen crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic, it brought enormous challenges in the everyday life of indigenous peoples of Tripura. In this article, the everyday challenges faced by the rural indigenous peoples of Tripura during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and the immediate response by the government and community sociocultural organisations are unravelled.

India confirmed its first COVID-19 positive case on 30 January 2020 in Kerala (World Health Organization 2020). It was perceived that the infected person was a returnee from Wuhan, China. The first death due to COVID-19 in India was, however, reported on 12 March 2020. Although the states in North East India remained free from COVID-19 cases until sometime; it, however, confirmed its first case on 24 March 2020 in Manipur, from a student who returned from the United Kingdom (Deori and Konwar 2020).

Assam and Meghalaya also confirmed the first case of COVID-19 on 31 March and 13 April 2020, respectively. Tripura revealed its first case of COVID-19 on 6 April 2020 from a woman who returned from Guwahati (Deori and Konwar 2020). It soon confirmed its first fatality on 1 May 2020 from a person who belonged to an indigenous community and hailed from Chachu Bazaar, a remote village from West Tripura district (New Indian Express 2020). The deceased was, however, identified not to have any travel history, and the virus was suspected to have transmitted to him from his migrant son who returned from Bengaluru. After taking the test, his son was declared COVID-19 negative, and it was later reported that the deceased was suffering from cardiovascular disease and hypertension while being admitted to a government medical hospital (Bhattacharjee 2020). Later, some contradiction was raised that he would have been saved if adequate treatment was provided for the correct disease.