Embodiment in Social Accounts of Indian Migrant Workers’ Experience of the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

On 24 May 2020, tens of thousands of daily wage migrant workers in India suddenly realised that they were without work due to the abrupt announcement of a nationwide lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. With no employment, most of the workers exhausted their meagre savings within a few days. Stranded without food and no means of sustenance, the migrant workers voiced their plight: “Corona se nahi marenge par bhookh se mar jayenge” (“We will not die of Corona, but will die of hunger”). This expression emerged as a strong statement depicting the images of distressed bodies of the migrant workers of India. Overnight, their employers turned them away, which led to them becoming outcasts in the cities they erected with their labour. All modes of transportation were suspended because of the complete lockdown. Men, women, including pregnant women, and children began their journey on foot back to their villages fearing starvation, their bags packed with all their worldly possessions. The pictures of their long foot march that crowded the internet induced mixed feelings of indictment and sympathy amongst the privileged classes. However, it is safe to assume that this distressing episode involving the migrant workers will soon become a part of the annals of India’s history, only remembered in political or intellectual debates. As the more privileged classes of society desperately look for ways to attain something akin to normal, the violence inflicted upon the working class will slowly fade from our collective memory. Nevertheless, this episode opens up some salient aspects surrounding the corporeality of the body in unprecedented social circumstances, which I discuss in this essay.