Åman, Thejesh G N, Krushna Ranaware, Kanika Sharma
{"title":"Of denial and data: Deaths due to India’s COVID-19 national lockdown","authors":"Åman, Thejesh G N, Krushna Ranaware, Kanika Sharma","doi":"10.31235/osf.io/h9knu","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"On March 23, 2020, the Indian government announced a national lockdown, barely giving a four-notice to a country of 1.3 billion people. What unfolded next was a humanitarian crisis, including deaths caused by the lockdown. The Indian government has been in denial about these deaths and the data on them. In this article, we describe the motivation, process, and details of our attempt to gather data on the human costs of the lockdown. Using media reports, we recorded a total of 989 deaths under 11 categories from March-July 2020. These deaths highlight the devastating consequences of a harsh and sudden lockdown on the vulnerable sections. They also underscore the need for strong social security efforts to reduce the aftereffects of the lockdown and the pandemic.","PeriodicalId":53574,"journal":{"name":"Economic and Political Weekly","volume":"56 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2021-06-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Economic and Political Weekly","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/h9knu","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"Social Sciences","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
On March 23, 2020, the Indian government announced a national lockdown, barely giving a four-notice to a country of 1.3 billion people. What unfolded next was a humanitarian crisis, including deaths caused by the lockdown. The Indian government has been in denial about these deaths and the data on them. In this article, we describe the motivation, process, and details of our attempt to gather data on the human costs of the lockdown. Using media reports, we recorded a total of 989 deaths under 11 categories from March-July 2020. These deaths highlight the devastating consequences of a harsh and sudden lockdown on the vulnerable sections. They also underscore the need for strong social security efforts to reduce the aftereffects of the lockdown and the pandemic.
期刊介绍:
The Economic and Political Weekly, published from Mumbai, is an Indian institution which enjoys a global reputation for excellence in independent scholarship and critical inquiry. First published in 1949 as the Economic Weekly and since 1966 as the Economic and Political Weekly, EPW, as the journal is popularly known, occupies a special place in the intellectual history of independent India. For more than five decades EPW has remained a unique forum that week after week has brought together academics, researchers, policy makers, independent thinkers, members of non-governmental organisations and political activists for debates straddling economics, politics, sociology, culture, the environment and numerous other disciplines.