Unequal Contagion: Citizenship, Democracy, and the Politics of COVID-19 in India

The COVID-19 pandemic was a global emergency, but its health, social, and economic effects were highly uneven. In India--one of the world's most unequal democracies--the pandemic and government responses unfolded across a hierarchical social landscape and uneven institutional terrain, producing starkly different experiences of risk, protection, and loss. In Unequal Contagion, Gabrielle Kruks-Wisner and Poulami Roychowdhury bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to analyze how long-standing patterns of inequality shaped pandemic experiences in India, how those inequalities were intensified by state responses, and how historically rooted forms of social mobilization and citizen-state relations helped, in some contexts, to mitigate their effects. Drawing on wide-ranging methods, from surveys to ethnography, chapter authors examine how centrally imposed lockdowns, disruptions to health systems, and uneven welfare provision interacted with class, caste, gender, religious, and regional inequalities. While responses varied substantially across states and localities, seemingly universal policy responses often amplified vulnerability--particularly among migrants, informal sector workers, women, and other marginalized groups--leaving many without access to livelihoods, healthcare, or protection from violence. Chapters also trace how access to healthcare, welfare, and relief depended not only on policy design but on everyday relationships between citizens, local officials, frontline workers, and civil society organizations. Grounded in India yet widely relevant, Unequal Contagion advances a relational and intersectional account of governance under stress. By linking sub-national variation in pandemic policy and welfare outcomes to historically embedded patterns of social mobilization and political engagement, the book offers insights on the formulation and implementation of emergency-related public policy in other unequal democracies, revealing how social inequality and uneven citizen-state relations shape who is protected and who is left vulnerable.