Shadow of the pandemic and the Beleaguered Liberal-Democratic Script in India

ABSTRACT The Covid-19 pandemic of 2020-21 has acted as an inflection point, exposing the fragility of liberal democracy in India, already beleaguered by the rise of majoritarian populism since 2014, buttressed by a process of expansion of bureaucratic power and autocratic legalism while marginalizing the processes of political accountability – étatisation, and normalization of state violence. The combined impact of such developments has been an erasure of basic rights to life and livelihood for the poor, rooted not only in state incapacity but also in state acquiring impunity for its acts of coercion and violence against its own citizens. Many of these processes have come into stark focus during the Covid-19 pandemic, but have longer histories and are likely to have impact far beyond the pandemic. The paper examines some of these processes with the help of three interlinked but conceptually distinct strands: (a) étatisation and suspension of politics; (b) (en)forcement of a new normal during the health emergency; and (c) erasure of right to life and livelihood.