This book explores the experiences of managing the COVID-19 pandemic in North East India across different areas of life and work. It offers insights into the challenges and adaptability of communities and stakeholders by including the experiences of psychologists, students, administrators, the police and children among others. The book provides an account of the turmoil—psychological, social and economic – which people endured through stories of migration, loss of livelihood, discrimination and abuse while also highlighting the outpouring of collaboration and support which was found in communities across the North East. This volume will be of interest to scholars and researchers of psychology, sociology, public health and administration, development studies, law and governance and South Asia studies.
This volume discusses the various challenges faced by children in India from different perspectives such as education, psychology, and sociology during the COVID-19 pandemic. It highlights the nature of undocumented struggles of refugees, children with special needs, girl children/ girl child, child labourers, children from SC/ST and other disadvantaged communities and migrant children in India. The book examines the lack of a social justice framework to cater to children’s needs and wellbeing. It discusses how intersectional location of these children in caste, class, gender, ethnicity, and religious locations shape their ability to access welfare and rights across sectors such as health, education, nutrition, and security. The book puts forth recommendations to ensure better intervention mechanisms to address issues faced by children from all sections of society and paves the way to counter the emerging challenges in future. This book will be of interest to students, teachers, and researchers of education, psychology, sociology, social work, childhood studies, and development studies. It will also be useful for educationalists, sociologists, social psychologists, lay public and those interested in exploring the condition of various marginalized children in India.
This volume captures the social, political, psychological, administrative, and policy dimensions of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Indian context. The book is divided into four parts. Part I highlights social narratives from underprivileged workers, ASHA workers, the LGBTIQ+ community, and sanitary workers. It documents their struggles to develop mitigation, adaptation, and resilience strategies. Part II includes case studies and stories of self-management, the mental health of students from rural and urban Maharashtra, and of caregivers. It unveils the path of transformation of self to deal with the issues of anxiety and emotional turmoil caused during and due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Part III consists of resilience, philosophical hope, and solidarity, which reflect the contribution of seva by the Sikh community. It also highlights the contribution of government organizations like Indian Railways, Air India, and the Employee Provident Fund Organization to provide relief to both the people of India and Indians residing abroad to bring people back to the country during the unprecedented times. Part IV discusses the responses of various states of India to the COVID-19 pandemic and the implementation of policies by the government of India during those times. Based on empirical research work, this book will be useful for students, teachers, researchers, behavioral scientists, and practitioners of psychology, sociology, human geography, mental health, political science, public health, and public policy. This book will also be of interest to policymakers and the general public to understand the intricacies involved and the essential propositions with regard to pandemics.
This book is a cultural exploration of health and wellness, with a focus on impacts of Covid-19 on the population of India. The chapters in this book present original research, systematic reviews, theoretical and conceptual frameworks, encompassing multidisciplinary, inter- and intra-disciplinary fields of study, in the context of how culture and disease sufficiently unpack and inform each other. The book includes contributions from the social sciences and the humanities and analyses issues that range from smallpox to the history of vaccine, indigenous healing practices, the Macbeth paradigm, Zizekian encounters, mental asylum, and marginalised genders. Using the theme of intellectual interconnectedness in the times of self-isolation and social distancing, the book is a collaboration of critical thinkers who identify and visibilize the hidden global issues related to ‘disease’ and ‘health’ that have divided the world into narrow binaries – individual/society, poor/rich, proletariat/bourgeoisie, margin/centre, colonised/coloniser, servitude/liberty, powerless/powerful. By doing so, the book emphasises the potential of holistic wellness to improve human life and humanity across the globe. A novel contribution on the cultural factors that played an important role in contemporary times of Covid-19, this book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of Cultural Studies, Health and Society and South Asian Studies.
This book seeks to identify the reasons why some countries were more efficient and effective than others in responding to the COVID 19 pandemic, and why the global community failed to coalesce. What are the political determinants of the different state responses to the pandemic? Why was scientific advice rejected or ignored in many countries? What has been the role, respectively, of neoliberalism, populism, and authoritarianism in the making of Covid-19 policy? What role have each of these factors played in the uneven and clearly inadequate global response to the pandemic? In an effort to understand why some states failed to handle the pandemic properly, some of the literature suggests that populism is at the root of the current failure of international co-operation. The global financial crisis of 2008-10 triggered significant cooperation within the G-20, led by the combined efforts of the United States and China. These forms of cooperation have clearly disappeared in the context of the pandemic, not only with respect to economic policy but also in public health and management. The authors of this volume link the different state responses to the pandemic-- from its inception to the start of the vaccination campaign, and to the political regimes prevailing in each. In particular, the present volume focuses on a distinction between the responses of neo-liberal regimes, populist regimes and authoritarian ones.
This book reviews the recent challenges and future perspectives involved in the wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) for COVID-19. The book aims to improve the monitoring of COVID-19 in wastewater by focusing on recent scientific studies in the surveillance and treatment of wastewater containing SARS-CoV-RNA, assessment of COVID-19 in the community and delivering a new scientific understanding of prevalence and re-emergence based on the WBE. It also provides a global perspective on effective detection methods for the analysis and interpretation of the RNA count of SARS-CoV-2 virus in wastewater and predicts the effects wastewater may have on the infection rate. Readers will find in this book case studies from France, India and Southeast Asian of non-invasive population-based monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 through sewage surveillance, and will learn more about the virus behaviour and transmission in different environmental settings. The significance of membrane technologies for virusremoval from water is also addressed in this book, as well as advanced techniques for identifying, quantifying, and characterizing SARS-CoV-2 in activated sludge and wastewater. The book provides a great interface to researchers such as microbiologists, environmental engineers, data scientists and civil engineers, emphasizing issues related to the current monitoring methodology. Furthermore, it also encourages researchers and policymakers by raising awareness of potential new methodologies for wastewater surveillance and accurate monitoring of COVID-19.
This edited volume offers new analytical and methodological approaches to the study of education in the post-pandemic educational context, through case studies from countries in South Asia such as Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Crossing disciplinary and national boundaries to advance collaborative knowledge production in South Asian education, the book explores how different colonial legacies, religious orientations, and positions in the global economy are played out in regional education systems. In doing so, this volume focuses on the educational challenges faced by the region to better understand South Asian society and the existing societal inequalities in the wake of COVID-19. The book highlights how the pandemic invites a re-thinking of current ways of approaching educational research in hybrid forms, and also opens up new areas of research ranging from pedagogical innovations to the well-being of teachers and students. Offering interdisciplinary perspectives on education in this unique context, this timely book will be highly relevant to students, researchers, and academics in the fields of international and comparative education, South Asian studies, teacher education, and education policy and politics.
This book brings you a wealth of stories, in words and images, from a part of India known as the Northeast, a term that is widely contested for the ways in which it homogenizes a region of great diversity. It is also a term that has come to be a marker of identity and solidarity by many who are of the region. Here, 21 writers and artists look at the idea of ‘work’ — from street hawking to beer brewing, from mothering to dung collection — and describe their lives or those of others with humour and compassion. Parismita Singh’s wonderful compilation of the works of women asks: what are the different ways of telling a story? What if we were to attempt these tellings through poetry and portraits and essays, older traditions like textile art and applique and new genres like hashtag poetry tapped into a smartphone? Where would it take us, what would the world look like?
India, founded as a result of the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the Indian Subcontinent in 1947, and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) – established by the leadership of the victor-Mao of Chinese civil war in 1949 – were forced to face the fact that borders between India and PRC in the Himalayas were not demarcated. As India took over the British heritage in the area, border problems that had been pushed into the background due to conjunctural developments resurfaced. Having embraced the idea of ancient China by Mao’s PRC, a hard to overcome psychological barrier was created between two countries, led to a vortex of crises stemming from the border dispute. PRC and India fought in 1962 because of this problem and had a limited armed conflict in 1967. After a small-scale armed conflict in 1975, two nuclear weapons states proceeded to mitigate risks of unintended small- scale armed conflicts or crises turning into a full-scale war. Within this framework, due to protocols signed in accordance with parleys started in the 1980s, neither firearms nor bladed articles were used during the border crises since 1975 to this day and there were no casualties until June 15, 2020, Galwan Valley “unique” clash. Diplomatic negotiations, held after this clash did not provide a road map to end the crisis. Normalization in Galwan Valley could only be achieved through the mid of February 2021 with the help of global developments. Although troops were withdrawn from the disputed parts of Galwan Valley, parties could not come to an agreement on other regions. As the snow melted, the armies of both countries reinforced their borders. After the 2020 clash, in spite of messaging each other through media, proxies, and allies, both countries did not budge from their claims on borders. There are no implications of change on both parties’ classical discourse and strategical objectives. On the contrary, both countries are even more honed against each other. The Himalayas, the hot front of the new cold war is still a conflict zone. The biggest impediment to a new crisis in this region is the coronavirus pandemic. As the regional and global competition of two emerging countries continue, the PRC seems to be getting the upper hand by tackling the coronavirus pandemic and impelling its economy. By acquiring Russian Federation’s support, the PRC has been challenging QUAD alliance on several fronts and India in the Himalayas as well. Nevertheless, the hurricanes of tides that will face the PRC after the pandemic, are still being sown both by the West and QUAD alliance. The border dispute between the PRC and India is the most heated front of the cold war whose groundwork has been laid and probably, in the following period the first spark will be lit in the Himalayas.
