Between 11 March 2020 and 5 May 2023, the world experienced one of the most devastating health disasters in history. The COVID-19 pandemic took millions of lives, halted social interactions and public events, shut down institutions and borders, and triggered the largest economic recession in nearly a century. It fundamentally changed how humans experienced the world and left behind memories of how every notion of normal life had been upturned.
This collection of seventeen essays by senior, award-winning, and budding journalists, as well as renowned domain experts, represents a serious attempt to revisit those memories within the context of India’s experience of the pandemic. Drawing on a vast array of articles, reports, papers, and first-hand experiences, the contributors provide detailed and authoritative accounts of how the Indian media covered COVID-19 and the Indian government’s response to it, and how democracy, the economy, the rule of law, communalism, domestic violence, sports, the arts, and the mental health of individuals were affected by unprecedented events.
What emerges is at once a panorama of a nation and society under siege, a critique of decisions that compounded the miseries of citizens, a demand for greater rigour, transparency, and accountability in crisis response mechanisms, and a muted celebration of the efforts of those who refused to give up. It offers a history of a dark time, and like all histories, its purpose is to learn and mine hope from the past, instead of allowing it to be forgotten and its mistakes to be repeated.