Indias Pandemic: Authoritarian Populism and the Politics of a Viral Disaster

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In April and May 2021, India was engulfed in a viral disaster. The second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic ripped through the country with merciless ferocity, snuffing out millions of lives. This was the worst humanitarian crisis the country had witnessed since independence and partition in 1947. Indias Pandemic traces the root of this viral disaster to the many ways in which the Modi regime mismanaged and manipulated the pandemic for political gain from the very start. Arguing that the trajectory of the Covid-19 pandemic in India was shaped by the authoritarian populism of the Modi regime in crucial ways, the book sheds light on how a politics of spectacle, projecting an image of Modi as a muscular protector of the Indian nation, sidelined effective public health governance from the very onset of the pandemic.

Author Bio

Alf Gunvald Nilsen is a professor of sociology at the University of Pretoria. His research focuses on the politics of democracy and development in the global South.