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Lockdown and livelihoods in rural South India: Rethinking patronage at the time of Covid-19
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posted on 2024-04-11, 11:21 authored by Grace CarswellGrace Carswell, Geert De NeveGeert De Neve, Nidhi Subramanyam, Satiyanarayan YuvarajWhat happened to patronage during the Covid-19 crisis in India? Drawing on ethnography collected during the lockdown in India, we explore how the pandemic inflicted a crisis of care on the informally employed working poor in rural Tamil Nadu. Let down by the state, jobless workers appealed to their employers for support but eventually had to rely on their own kin for survival. We make three arguments. First, the Covid-19 crisis revealed how under neoliberal capitalist employment regimes, patronage turns out to be distinctly instrumental rather than being part of a moral economy of exchange. Acts of patronage were not only very limited but also highly unevenly distributed, with some sections of the labour force more easily abandoned than others. Second, employers mobilised a range of strategies, including debt bondage, to retain control over labour during lockdown. Finally, by externalising the costs of social reproduction to workers’ own households, capitalist employers used the lockdown to further intensify exploitation. Employers’ instrumental patronage and their refusal to share the cost of social reproduction during the crisis thus produced a hierarchy of labour exploitation in India’s informal economy, with low caste and migration labour most blatantly exploited.
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Publication status
- Published
File Version
- Accepted version
Publisher
RoutledgePublisher URL
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Pages
226Book title
How to Live Through a PandemicPlace of publication
AbingdonISBN
9781032397801Series
ASA MonographDepartment affiliated with
- Anthropology Publications
Institution
University of SussexFull text available
- Yes
Peer reviewed?
- Yes
Editors
Helen Lambert, Simone Abram, Jude RobinsonLegacy Posted Date
2022-03-21First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date
2022-03-21Usage metrics
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