Rethinking Biopolitics and Governance in India during the Covid-19 Pandemic
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 conceptualise 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 analyse 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 secondary 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 implementing the same has adversely impacted and reconfigured the social and the quotidian life of citizens.