In Unequal Contagion, Poulami Roychowdhury and her co-editor bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to examine how class, caste, gender, religious and regional inequalities shaped Indians' experiences of the pandemic and the government's response to it. Drawing on methods ranging from surveys to ethnography, contributors trace how nationwide lockdowns, disruptions to health systems and uneven welfare provision interacted with these existing inequalities.
The authors argue that policies applied uniformly across India often amplified vulnerability for specific groups, including migrants, informal sector workers and women, leaving many without access to livelihoods, healthcare or protection from violence. They also find that access to relief depended not only on policy design but on everyday relationships between citizens and local officials, frontline workers and civil society organizations.
The book advances a relational and intersectional account of governance under stress, offering insight into how emergency policy is formulated and implemented in unequal democracies beyond India.