Between 11 March 2020 and 5 May 2023, the world experienced one of the most devastating health disasters in history. The COVID-19 pandemic took millions of lives, halted social interactions and public events, shut down institutions and borders, and triggered the largest economic recession in nearly a century. It fundamentally changed how humans experienced the world and left behind memories of how every notion of normal life had been upturned.
This collection of seventeen essays by senior, award-winning, and budding journalists, as well as renowned domain experts, represents a serious attempt to revisit those memories within the context of India’s experience of the pandemic. Drawing on a vast array of articles, reports, papers, and first-hand experiences, the contributors provide detailed and authoritative accounts of how the Indian media covered COVID-19 and the Indian government’s response to it, and how democracy, the economy, the rule of law, communalism, domestic violence, sports, the arts, and the mental health of individuals were affected by unprecedented events.
What emerges is at once a panorama of a nation and society under siege, a critique of decisions that compounded the miseries of citizens, a demand for greater rigour, transparency, and accountability in crisis response mechanisms, and a muted celebration of the efforts of those who refused to give up. It offers a history of a dark time, and like all histories, its purpose is to learn and mine hope from the past, instead of allowing it to be forgotten and its mistakes to be repeated.
Nalini Rajan is Professor and Dean of Studies at the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai.
Introduction 1 Nalini Rajan 1. COVID-19 and the Emerging Media Ecology 15 Sashi Kumar 2. The Virus and the Viral: The Use and Abuse of Information During the Pandemic 26 P. Sanal Mohan 3. ‘The Space for Independent Media has Shrunk’ 52 Ravish Kumar 4. The Muslim as the ‘Super-Spreader’: Framing the Pandemic in 2020 60 Vikas Pathak 5. The New(s Ab)Normal: Job Losses, Kashmir’s Lockdown, Data Gathering, Migrants’ Crisis 70 Krishna Prasad 6. Domestic Violence During the Lockdown 86 Geeta Ramaseshan 7. Making NREGA Work 97 Reetika Khera 8. COVID-19 and Climate Change: Intersections with Inequality and Communications 107 Sujatha Byravan 9. Structural Inequality and the COVID-19 Impact 118 C. P. Chandrasekhar 10. Legislative Interventions and the Responses of the Courts: An Evaluation of the Tamil Nadu Experience 127 Justice K. Chandru 11. COVID-19 and the Holy Trinity of Democratic Values 144 Suhrith Parthasarathy 12. A Portrait of a Killer Virus 155 T. V. Venkateswaran 13. Art in the Time of COVID-19 176 Gita Jayaraj 14. Cinema and Entertainment in the Age of COVID-19 193 Baradwaj Rangan 15. Sports and the Pandemic 201 Vijay Lokapally 16. Stressed and Sleepless: Living Alone in a Pandemic 206 Dhanya Skariachan 17. Navigating My Way through Quarantine 214 Ayaan Paul Chowdhury