Biopolitics in the Twenty-first Century: India and the Pandemic

Abstract

Swatie and Rashee Mehra discuss in their "Biopolitics in the Twenty-first Century: India and the Pandemic”, the rise of the biopolitical state in India in the 2020s. The article emphasizes the relevance of Michel Foucault’s work on biopolitics for the pandemic in India. The biopolitical governmentality of the Indian state operates at several levels to politicize ‘life itself’: racism (the notion that sections of the population are disposable), economics (the notion of privatization of care), and the logic of contagion (based on ideas of threat perception and risk). The article engages with biopolitics in the 21st century and looks at the relief work done by non-governmental actors such as NGOs, gurdwaras, unions, and individual citizen-volunteers, which points to the importance of community outreach. The authors use theoretical and media commentaries and the experiences of one of its authors in Delhi government relief work.