Crisis as catalyst: Covid-19, social citizenship and political transformation in India

新冠肺炎在印度的传播，以及为限制病毒传播而实施的全国封锁，引发了一场大规模的经济和社会危机。该国福利机构的多样性加剧了这场危机，限制了很大一部分人口的社会福利。该项目将新冠肺炎危机视为一场社会公民危机，阐述在三个层面上：1它给印度的社会再分配基础设施造成了前所未有的压力，2它影响了现有的治理模式，并在社会福利问题上创造了新的争议领域，3它引起了相互矛盾的话语和对“社会公民身份”的看法。目前的危机被分析为一个正在展开的历史事件：作为一个社会加速的时刻，它造成了突然的社会政治压力，引发了吸收这些压力的努力，并为巩固和竞争打开了新的可能性。应用历史研究方法，该项目将提供从2020年头几周印度登记的首批SARS-CoV-2病例到该国疫苗接种活动开始半年后的2021年夏天这场危机的分析编年史。这份分析性编年史将通过阐述三个空间尺度来追踪危机的社会政治突变：a)它将在印度联盟一级调查大流行病期间国家社会政策的制定、执行和争论。B)它将通过对马哈拉施特拉邦(一个高度城市化和工业化的地区，区域间移徙的接收方)和比哈尔邦(一个农业人口占绝大多数的迁出地区)的研究，将危机的不同区域轨迹并列在一起。C)对比哈尔邦波吉普尔区进行的一项“测试案例”研究将有助于审查大流行是如何经历的，以及如何在地方一级谈判获得社会福利。分析编年史将通过在每个级别上对各种出版和数字来源进行协商，并通过收集博伊普尔区的口头证词来记录下来。通过在事件持续发展的同时，对印度新冠肺炎危机的前18个月进行描述，该项目旨在捕捉这场危机带来的社会认知、行为和矛盾可能性的动态变化。特别是，应在对危机的记忆和印象消退之前尽快收集口头证词，或在随后的事态发展中重塑这种印象。该项目产生的分析编年史旨在作为更深入的历史调查的基础，调查殖民后印度不均衡和有争议的“社会公民”结构的突变--这些过程正是随着危机的展开而突显出来的。

The spread of the Covid-19 in India, and the nation-wide lockdown imposed to limit the circulation of the virus precipitated a large-scale economic and social crisis. This crisis was sharpened by the heterogeneity of the country’s welfare institutions, which limits the social entitlements of large portions of the population. The project examines the Covid-19 crisis as a crisis of social citizenship, articulated at three levels: 1/ it created unprecedented strains on India’s infrastructure of social redistribution, 2/ it impacted on existing modalities of governance and created new fields of contestation over issues of social entitlement and 3/ it gave rise to contradictory discourses and perceptions of “social citizenship”. The ongoing crisis is analysed as an unfolding historical event: as a moment of societal acceleration creating sudden socio-political strains, triggering efforts at absorbing these strains, and opening new possibilities for consolidation as much as for contestation. Applying methods of historical research to the present, the project will provide an analytical chronicle of the crisis from the first weeks of 2020 when the first cases of SARS-CoV-2 were registered in India, until the summer of 2021, half a year after the start of the country’s vaccination drive. This analytical chronicle will trace the socio-political mutations of the crisis through the articulation of three spatial scales: a) It will investigate the formulation, implementation and contestation of the country’s social policy during the pandemic at the level of the Indian Union. b) It will juxtapose divergent regional trajectories of the crisis through the study of the states of Maharashtra (a highly urbanized and industrialized region at the receiving end of inter-regional migration) and Bihar (an overwhelmingly agricultural region of outmigration). c) A “test case” study of Bihar’s Bhojpur district will serve to examine how the pandemic was experienced, and how access to social entitlements was negotiated at the local level. The analytical chronicle will be documented through the consultation, at each scale, of a range of sources, both published and digital, and through the collection of oral testimonies in the district of Bhojpur. By creating an account of the first eighteen months of India’s Covid-19 crisis while the event continues to unfold, the project aims at capturing the dynamism of social perceptions, behaviour and the contradictory possibilities opened up by the crisis. Oral testimonies, in particular, should be collected as soon as possible before the memories and impressions of the crisis fade, or are reframed by subsequent developments. The analytical chronicle generated by the project is intended to serve as the basis for a deeper historical investigation of the mutations of post-colonial India’s uneven and contested structure of “social citizenship” – the very processes that are foregrounded as the crisis unfolds.