COVID-19 and Indiaâs New Viral Necropolitics
The pandemic has devastated the lives of Indians across classes and castes but will it help shape a new intersectional approach to public health and politics?
A man walks past burning pyres with people who died from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), on the banks of the river Ganges at Garhmukteshwar in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, India, May 6, 2021. Photo: Reuters/Danish Siddiqui
In
Necropolitics (2019), Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe describes the power of âliberalâ democracies â which never addressed or abandoned their founding violence of dispossession, exploitation, and extraction â to give death and withhold death as the sovereign rite of regulating life. This ânecropowerâ is exercised not only through spectacular, if occasional, forms of terror but also by inflicting âsmall dosesâ of death on people living âat the edge of lifeâ.
Death in the Time of the Coronavirus: A Day Spent in Delhi s Crematoria
A reporter s account of crematoria in the national capital.
Pyres at the Green Park crematorium. Photo: Indra Shekhar Singh
Health8 hours ago
A little sun and some rain made it an unusual May day. A cleaner Yamuna swelled with water and perhaps lost souls. But on her banks, the Sarai Kale Khan crematorium, with over 100 cremation pits, lay quite empty. It was 3 pm and only six bodies were burning. The wind blew east, but suddenly swerved towards a small reddish bench, making all its occupants â Bagh Narayan, 79-year-old living atlas, and the crematoriumâs sweeper, Ram Lal, a cremation worker and I â savour earthly scents of
In Photos: Ghazipur Crematorium Overwhelmed as Delhi s COVID-19 Deaths Spiral
The crematorium has never seen such a large number of funerals, says the assistant who is supervising the last rites.
Funerals being conducted at the Ghazipur crematorium. Photo: Shome Basu
Rights15 hours ago
The crematorium at Ghazipur on the Delhi-Ghaziabad border can be identified by the fumes emanating from it, which can be seen from a distance. The narrow, two-way road leading to the crematorium is lined with bodies. Its parking has been converted into a makeshift area for pyres.
India’s second wave of the coronavirus has devastated Delhi, overwhelming the healthcare system. According to official statistics released on Thursday evening, the national capital recorded nearly 25,000 new COVID-19 cases. The data also said 395 COVID-19 patients died during the day.