21 COVID, Caste & Coping
Diven Sekhri
During the COVID-19, I was at home in Amritsar, Punjab, India. I was sixteen years old and was about to start grade 12 in April, and the lockdown started in March.
A nationwide complete lockdown that started in March 2020. All of my classes were moved online, and all examinations were suspended; everyone thought it was only a momentary measure. The lockdown restrictions were relaxed in November 2020 to a partial lockdown, but due to a rise in cases, a complete lockdown was reinstated in 2021. It was not until March 2022 that all COVID restrictions were lifted in my state of Punjab. We had domestic help in our house that was put on paid leave. My day-to-day life was completely changed; I was very outgoing, but due to the lockdown, I barely left my house as all stores were closed except pharmacies. Our local grocer started providing deliveries, so we did not even go grocery shopping. I enjoyed playing sports and going to the gym, but I could no longer do that. I resorted to working out a little bit at home, and the only sources of entertainment were board games or electronics.
The COVID lockdown had adverse consequences on me and people my age. I think it exacerbated the atomization of society. I recall that the lockdown made me so sad since I was unable to see my friends or do any of the things I enjoyed. It felt like I went to school one day and never came back. I did not even get a chance to say goodbye to so many of my peers. The worst effect I think the pandemic had on my generation was that it altered our behaviours to be socially isolated. Even after the pandemic, I have not seen my friends much because, in some way, the lockdown made being alone the new normal. Most of my peers in university prefer talking over video chat or other forms of electronic communication over physical meet-ups. The mental health effects of the pandemic were made worse by the subsequent global economic meltdown as my peers and I are beginning to enter the job market. People my age fear they will never be able to land a job, buy a house or simply earn enough to live. People my age battle COVID depression and climate anxiety on a daily basis, which makes me pessimistic about the survival of our species and planet. I firmly believe the combination of social isolation and economic insecurity caused by the lockdown has induced a “doomer” mentality in my generation.
From the start of the pandemic, there was a widespread stigma of the disease. Infectious diseases usually accompany stigmatization among local populations, which is caused by fears and uncertainty. However, this fear is monopolized by bad elements in society to perpetuate false narratives about the disease that target marginalized groups. For example, the global HIV/AIDS epidemic was used to target and demonize gay men and blame the disease on their existence. Similarly, stigmatization occurred around me in Punjab, which targeted individuals from lower caste.
People were extremely afraid since nothing was known about the disease, and there was no vaccination. My dad worked for the local government; he would come home and tell me how people refused to cremate their family members who died of the disease as they feared getting the disease. The disease was stigmatized, and people, including private clinics, refused to help those in need as the public health infrastructure got overrun by a massive wave of patients. The primary stigmatization occurred along caste lines in Punjab.
The caste system is a hierarchical structure in Indian society, and those at the bottom of the hierarchy were historically labelled ‘untouchables’ and were forced to live outside city grounds. Punjab, being an agrarian state, has a large number of migrant labourers from economically insecure parts of India, such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, who come to the state in hopes of employment. A lot of these labourers come from lower castes, and the pandemic exacerbated the untouchability problem under the guise of social distancing. My maid’s husband, who worked at a farm, was let go from his position as his employer feared he would give him the disease as he believed he was unclean. A lot of individuals belonging to ‘lower castes’ live in dense neighbourhoods in the city and lack access to proper healthcare and information, which led to a high number of cases among the lower caste population. Castesists in the city and media used these statistics to try and re-affirm the impure status of lower caste individuals, further propagating stigma and exacerbating the caste problem. This led to a mass migration of agricultural labourers from Punjab back to their home states, which further elevated the spread of the disease among these communities.
