Unmasked : Decoding the politics of the Covid-19 Pandemic

The world continues to reel under the impact of the pandemic caused due to SARS-CoV-2 virus. In the first year of the pandemic people have suffered much – isolation pain agony illness death loss of livelihood largescale migration and massive economic downturn. The pandemic is as much a political economic and social phenomenon as a public health challenge and medical problem. Every aspect of the pandemic – contact tracing quarantine testing treatment vaccine trials lockdown – is closely connected with politics. The promise of free vaccine echoed during local elections held in the course of the pandemic. Politicians rushed to inaugurate clinical trials push hasty regulatory decisions and tried to bask in the success of scientists and vaccine companies. Government agencies engaged in scapegoating to blame a religious group for the pandemic and tools like geofencing infringed upon their privacy and data security. The government set an agenda for the media to emphasize positive news and assure citizens that ‘the government is committed to countering the impact of Covid-19.’ Why science and epidemiology were twisted for political gains? How the pandemic management was misused for projecting political leadership as a saviour? How the lockdown that led to the worst migration crisis since the partition in 1947 was marketed as a ‘strategic policy intervention’? The book is an in-depth investigation into such uncomfortable questions.