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

新型冠状病毒肺炎（COVID-19）在印度的传播，以及为限制病毒传播而实施的全国封锁，引发了大规模的经济和社会危机。该国福利机构的多样性使这一危机更加尖锐，因为这限制了大部分人口的社会权利。该项目将COVID-19危机视为社会公民身份的危机，从三个层面进行阐述：1/它对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，并在社会权利问题上创造了新的争论领域，3/它引发了对“社会公民身份”的相互矛盾的论述和看法。持续的危机被分析为一个正在发生的历史事件：作为一个社会加速的时刻，造成突然的社会政治紧张，引发了吸收这些紧张的努力，并为巩固和重建开辟了新的可能性。该项目将历史研究方法应用于当前，将提供从2020年第一周在印度登记第一例SARS-CoV-2病例到2021年夏季，即该国疫苗接种开始后半年的危机分析编年史。这一分析性编年史将通过阐明三个空间尺度来追踪这场危机的社会政治变化：（a）它将调查在大流行病期间印度联邦一级社会政策的制定、执行和确认情况。B）通过对马哈拉施特拉邦（一个高度城市化和工业化的地区，是区域间移民的接收端）和比哈尔邦（一个向外移民的农业地区）的研究，将危机的不同区域轨迹并列起来。（c）对比哈尔邦博杰普尔区进行的“试验案例”研究将有助于审查这一流行病是如何经历的，以及如何在地方一级谈判获得社会福利。分析性编年史将通过在各种规模上咨询各种出版和数字来源，并通过在博杰普尔地区收集口头证词来记录。通过对印度新冠肺炎危机前18个月的描述，同时事件继续展开，该项目旨在捕捉危机带来的社会观念、行为和矛盾可能性的活力。特别是，应在对危机的记忆和印象消失之前，或在随后的事态发展改变之前，尽快收集口头证词。该项目所产生的分析编年史旨在作为对后殖民印度不平衡和有争议的“社会公民身份”结构突变进行更深入历史调查的基础--随着危机的展开，这一过程也被凸显出来。

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.