Abstract
Pamela Philipose, A Boundless Fear Gripped Me: How the Other Half Lived in the Pandemic’s Shadow. Yoda Press, 2023, 109 pages, ₹258 (Paperback). ISBN 978-9-38-257988-5.
Human and material loss across classes caused by the pandemic (mahamari) is incomparable for the working poor. The Delhi government’s performance report for June (2022), titled Dialogue and Development Commission of Delhi, boasts of significant health investments made by the state compared to others. Mohalla clinics have received global attention for their concept and outreach; however, it remains inadequate to Delhi’s requirements. After Mumbai, Delhi is the second largest state with interstate migration, and during the second wave of COVID-19, around 1.3 million migrant workers left Delhi. A sudden loss of income and shelter generated fear left a deep scar and hurt on their dignity. Mired by social identities of class/caste, gender, disabilities, religion and location, inferior citizenship rights, and the tumultuous loss of identity, self, and belongingness haunted their everyday lives. The contagion reinforced social stigma, discrimination and violence as the working poor lost jobs in the city’s informal economy.
Senior journalist Pamela Philipose’s A Boundless Fear Gripped Me: How the Other Half Lived in the Pandemic’s Shadow took the reader through the by lanes of jhuggis, bastis and rain baseras (shelters for the homeless) to remind us of the sharp societal cleavages that exist across the city spaces. She documented through interviews the impact of COVID pandemic on categories of the vulnerable such as children, pregnant women, single women, men, elderly, religious minorities, newborns and persons with disabilities. Philipose met with members from grassroots organisations such as Satark Nagarik Sangathan, Delhi Rozi Roti Adhikar Abhiyan, Astha and Jagori to corroborate the narratives with factual data.
As the narratives illustrate, the fear of susceptibility to COVID-19 seemed secondary: trepidations following the first lockdown on the 25th of March 2020, the pandemic became an opportune moment to cut costs, eliminate the poor and cleanse the city, as witnessed by the demolition drives and reverse migration from the capital city of Delhi. Simmel’s (1903) work on the Metropolis and mental life resonates while reading this book as it raises the existential question of living in a metropolis.
There are 10 chapters in the book with a Foreword by Damyanty Sridharan and Jyoti Rawal, a prologue and an Afterword by Anjali Bharadwaj and Amrita Johri and an Introduction by Dipa Sinha. Each chapter addresses different aspects of the lives of the urban working poor during the pandemic. The first two chapters ‘The Never-ending Search for Sanctuary During the Pandemic and when the Door Slams on You’ and ‘The Crisis of Finding Work’ examine the never-ending search for sanctuary and some work and the painful and costly journeys that had to undertaken. The tough decisions parents had to make of leaving children with kith and kin in villages or other locations within the city are documented.
The immediate impact of an economic crisis in a household is reduced food intake, and women are the worst suffers. Pre-existing morbidities of anaemia and multiple pregnancies were common, with the burden of domestic work multiplying during the lockdown. Tightening one’s belt was the most familiar recourse taken by the urban poor, as the study shows in various pockets of Delhi. Chapter 3 titled ‘The Parallel Pandemic of Hunger’ documents hunger and food insecurity with people standing in queues for hours waiting for a morsel. The chapter also reveals a 50% increase in child marriage during the pandemic as families could not afford to feed and educate their children, particularly daughters. In the next chapter, ‘Suffering Domestic Violence in a Well of Silence’, Philipose looks at domestic violence with the parallel increase in the availability of alcohol that benefited the state exchequers but was a curse for people with low or zero incomes. As the narratives document, women were bullied, threatened and tormented by their husbands and also local goons. They lived in fear and humiliation and managed the household burden with little familial support. Difficulties in procuring documents, denying children their basic needs of nutritious food, education and basic quality of life with violence at home became a harrowing experience for them. ‘Locked classrooms leave young lives in limbo’ poignantly illustrates children’s experiences of online classes, missing school, friends and quality of education that affected their academic progress as expressed by the parents. The chapter reveals that some parents were compelled to take children out from private schools or shift them to government schools. As much as they did not want them to work, the children invariably became part of the informal labour market. In Chapter 6, ‘The Disabled Got Left Behind’ through the support of the organisation Astha, the author documents the innumerable challenges families faced during the pandemic: fear and the unsurmountable risk among differently-abled children and young adults of being sexually attacked by vagabonds. Accessing hospitals and health care was complicated for them. For instance, premature babies could not be attended to because of the pandemic. Health, diet and nutrition for children with special needs were compromised severely by the lockdown.
‘When the Roof Goes, the Foundation of Life Disintegrates’ painfully illustrates that there was no respite for people living in JJ clusters and slums with the demolition drive during the pandemic in various pockets of Delhi. Housing and Land Rights Network notes that about 16 million people were displaced. Basti Suraksha Manch, an organisation working for the rights of the vulnerable and homeless, noted how women were vulnerable to threats, bullying and coercion on account of abandonment, widowhood, and age and non-possession of documents. The narratives of women also reflected resilience and hope for a better future. Chapter 8, ‘To Be Old and Crippled and Alone Is to Experience a Lockdown of Life’ draws attention to another category, that is, the elderly, who, with sadness, reveal how they lost whatever they had built—both in terms of relationships and materials. This chapter shows how their frail bodies were pushed further in search of labour and shelter, making them anxious and vulnerable.
Chapter 9, ‘Health Emergencies: Empty Purses and Mounting Debts’ illustrates out-of-pocket expenditure, reliance on non-registered medical practitioners and amassing debts are common in rural and urban India. The pain of losing children and employment, hardships of accessing treatment during pregnancies and saving children’s lives make the reader rethink the vicious cycle of poverty and the political economy of health frameworks through classics like Rakkus’s Story by Zurbrigg (1988). Chapter 10, ‘A Mother’s Death in a Summer of Sorrow’, looks through the lens of a family, the unconditional love of a mother for her son and family and the irreparable loss of losing her to COVID-19. The struggle to procure necessary documents like proof of residence, birth certificates, disability certificates and death compensation was common in almost all the narratives. Reciprocity within communities is possible only if one has the earnings or capacity to extend support. In the absence of any form of economic security, the enormous dependency on the benevolence of employers, strangers on the streets, the charitable langars, where people stood in long queues for some morsel of food, reflects acute food insecurity. The Delhi government’s facilitation of dry rations through e-coupons further brought about a divide between technology and income. The book has not been written out of empathy but with the hope that due diligence will be in place in the coming future for the working poor in Delhi.
A Boundless Fear Gripped Me will be extremely useful to researchers and teachers working on public health, informal labour market precarity and the implications of the pandemic on the urban poor. As each chapter in this book is well-researched, it is a crucial read for policymakers and stakeholders as well and could assist in ironing out health inequities that the city confounds in the everyday.