Risk, causation and containment of Covid-19 pandemic in India: a sociological interpretation

ABSTRACT Pandemics have a collective character. They compel us to reflect upon our collective norms, values and behaviour forcing us to abandon, alter and renew our collective ‘normal’. The paper cogitates the implications of Covid-19 in India through a multi-disciplinary perspective. The boundaries between biology and culture, self and the other, individual and the collective stand reconfigured in the wake of the epidemic. The analysis of emergent infectious diseases reveals that cultural and anthropogenic factors have a predominant role in shaping the progression of pathogens to a disease outbreak. The epidemic has precipitated an atmosphere of risk and uncertainty. Risk Theory provides the theoretical underpinnings to interpret the sociological impact of Covid-19. An overarching discourse on risk has shaped the decisions at the international, national, and inter-personal level. The heightened perception of the risk of the other is mitigated by exclusionary practices, stigmatizing and blaming of the other. Reliance on digital surveillance apps to negotiate the risk, lockdowns, quarantines, containments, surveillance, and social distancing norms that have imbalanced power dynamics between the State and citizens, demonstrate the Foucauldian concept of ‘biopower’. The pandemic calls for adoption of a sociological approach and to revisit the epistemes of Sociology to accommodate the new normal.