Brahaspati Mahila Mahavidyalaya

Kidwai Nagar, Kanpur

“Risk, Trust and the Pandemic. A

Sociological Perspective.”

Dissertation Submitted in partial

Fulfilment of the requirements for the
degree

Master of Arts
In Sociology (2023-2024)

Submitted By Supervised
Praveen Kashyap Mrs. Praveena Singh
M.A. Sociology (Assistant Professor)
4th Semester
 Acknowledgement
I, Praveen Kashyap, would like to express my deepest gratitude to all those
who have contributed to the successful completion of this dissertation.
Firstly, I would like to thank my teacher Mrs. Praveena Singh, for her
invaluable guidance, support, and encouragement throughout the research
process. Her insightful feedback and expertise have been crucial in
shaping this work.

I am also grateful to my family and friends for their constant support and
understanding. Their encouragement has been a source of motivation for
me during the challenging times of my research.

Finally, I would like to extend my appreciation to all the respondents and

participants who took the time to provide their valuable insights and
information, which greatly enriched the content of this dissertation.
Thank you all for your support and contributions.

Praveen Kashyap
M.A. Sociology
4th Semester
 Declaration

I hereby declare that the dissertation titled “Risk, Trust and the
Pandemic. A Sociological Perspective” Submitted by me to the
Department of Sociology, Brahaspati PG College, Kanpur, in
partial fulfillment of the requirement for the award of the degree of
Master of Arts in Sociology, is an original work and has not been
submitted earlier to any other university or institution for the award
of any degree or diploma. I have acknowledged all sources of
information which have been used in the preparation of this
dissertation. I have also adhered to the guidelines provided by the
university for writing the dissertation.

Name: Praveen Kashyap

Date: ____________
Risk, Trust and the
Pandemic. A
Sociological
Perspective
 Table of Contents:-

Topic Page No

Introduction 5-7

Risk and Trust 8-10

India and Covid 19: The initial process 11-13

The Lockdown Policy, its Myths and 14-16

Implications
India and Covid: The health system 16-18

The Economy 18-20

Increase of risks: employment and 20

work

Implications: Social reproduction and 21

Violence

Conclusion 21-24
INTRODUCTION:-

• Because we live in them, the fundamental features of

our social order are elusive to assessment and logical
rigor. Though as social scientists we try and unravel the
processes, events and experiences that constitute them,
we sometimes don’t perceive them.

• Every now and then a crisis, any crisis opens up and

makes transparent the way we live and the nature of the
social order that has organized it.

• More than any other crisis (e.g. a political and

economic crisis) epidemics and pandemics opens up an
epistemic window on our social order; this is so not
only because of its high mortality rate and extensive
debilities, both of which creates fear and impacts
everyone to act, irrespective of group affiliation and
geographical location but it exposes the
interconnections between death and its embeddedness
within the structures of society.

• For example, historians have argued that in the 14th

century when the black plague swept Europe, it led to
political and economic but also religious upheavals and
it allowed some if not all the people living through it to
see the world in a new way, to build new knowledge
about it and intervene thus to reconstitute life. The same
was true of the Spanish Flu of the early 20th century
which killed one third of the world’s population.

This pandemic, i.e. that of Covid 19 has inaugurated a

crises of unimaginable nature, something the world has
not seen earlier; not only because the earlier
epidemics/pandemics were local and/or regionally
limited; this pandemic is continuing to spread across
our globalized interconnected world even though it is
10 months after Covid 19 was recognized as a
pandemic;
• It is clear that today the pandemic has created
uncertainties, uneasiness, fear and lack of hope coupled
with tiredness
• These uncertainties are related to the contingency in
our understanding about this pandemic; about its
science, its symptoms, its cure
• At this moment, this knowledge have been restricted
to two themes: the first is of LIFE, that is how do we
stop deaths and continue to augment an healthy life and
stop suffering and the second is of the ECONOMY, that
is how to generate incomes, employment, revenue and
taxes in order to upgrade life.
• The two are interconnected because today globally
we don’t have a model for life other than the one that
advocates lockdowns and the shutdown of the economy,
a model that was perfected during the earlier epidemics
and is related to a country having a strong preventive
and curative health system and a democratic and human
governance system
• Nation-states that have been successful in curtailing it
are few: New Zealand, South Korea, China and possibly
Sweden have been successful because of strong health
systems and their inclusive governance systems.
Additionally except for China these are small countries
with small populations; China though a big country
with a huge population has a organized party dependent
governance systems in addition to an excellent health
infrastructure-and in spite of their partial successes,
these 4 countries have gone through 2nd and 3rd waves
and we are not sure if further waves will not occur
there.

• Today we have a 2 attribute model for handling the

pandemic; with each nation-state, their experts such as
epidemiologists/scientistsadministrators emphasizing
policies that either depend on complete lockdowns that
stops all economic activities or advocate continuity of
some or all economic activities but with contingent
measures; this depends on the strength of their health
systems, governance structures and the mobilization of
its population to the belief in science and its effectivity.

Risk and Trust:-

.Most epidemiologists and economists agree that the

Indian experiment has been unsuccessful, in spite of the
government suggesting that the pandemic is under
control.
.In December 2019, the Wuhan Municipal Health
Commission in China confirmed a series of pneumonia
cases in Wuhan, Hubei province’s largest city. The
cause of the pneumonia cluster events was unclear, and
no deaths were reported. A few days later, Chinese
authorities informed the World Health Organization
(WHO) of the presence of a new infectious respiratory
disease, provoked by a novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-
2). In total, 7818 coronavirus cases were confirmed by
the end of January, with 82 of them occurring in 18
different countries. COVID-19 was declared a global
pandemic by WHO approximately one month later,
following a massive rise and spread of infections.

The novel coronavirus gives rise to a series of physical

symptoms, which range from mild to extreme. Fever,
fatigue, and cough are considered common symptoms,
and serious manifestations may include dyspnea,
pneumonia, and acute cardiac injury . Aside from
physical symptoms, contracting the new coronavirus or
being isolated to protect oneself from it can provoke a
string of mental health implications, such as anxiety,
depression, and dementia

. What happened since January 2020 when the first

Covid 19 case was reported in India and particularly
since March 25th that has created this uneasiness and
what kind of national societal system can we unearth as
a consequence? Of course, this is about communication
strategies to mobilise the Indian population to believe in
life and to continue to hope, that is to have trust but it is
also about the process that organized the various
domains that structured this crisis.

• Ulrich Beck who elaborated risk theory has argued

that risk theory is not about classifying and cataloguing
risks to individuals and groups but it examines how
societal system of governance of capitalism and
modernity engenders and promotes risks to the entire
population. Thus risk theory is not only about the
identifying pain, threats, dangers and about classifying
risks
• Rather, it is about how social processes have
manufactured risks and identifying these processes; it is
about the way the societal system is enmeshed in the
economic system (capitalism and industrialization), the
political system around the nation-state (political parties
and ideologies) and the system of experts (technologists
and scientists); these three are interconnected and the
way these are understood and deployed in a crisis
creates manufactured risks.
• Thus it is also about understanding the limitations of
our analysis and knowledge, our ways of thinking and
opens a comprehension of the unanticipated
consequences that emerge in our societal system.
• Risk theory is about recognizing systemic faults, that
of power/authority, of governance, of knowledge that
governs decision making, of the role of experts and
their expertise and thus of policy that has produced
risks, it is about recognizing our limitations and
assessing how to surmount these to reconstitute the
system.

• Trust is the opposite of risk; it is about confidence,

reliability in individuals and institutions, it is about
belief in abstractions, such as truth, it is also about
solutions to reducing risk, to its threats to life and its
continuities, it is about hope; it helps to create positive
emotions and concerns for each other.

India and Covid 19: The initial process:-

• India announced a lockdown from March 25th and

then opened up after 6 weeks and then has had
intermittently lockdowns in different wards, localities,
cities, districts and States.
• Instead of giving notice for people to travel and reach
their homes, the state gave on 24th March a 4 hours
notice and effected the most stringent, draconian and
complete lockdown that any country has implemented,
rather than ensuring parts are locked down it stopped
the economy and isolated its population in their homes.
• This started a panic response due to lack of
communication of what it means, what the govt will do
in the next 3 weeks and later when extended to 6 weeks,
what it intends to do then; or build knowledge about its
implications with the populations; except a Janata
curfew on a weekend before the lockdown not much
done; politics as usual.no prior communication to state
and local governments, no communication to the
bureaucracy about the emerging health crisis and what
kinds of preparedness needs to be done.Wuhan was
already under lockdown then and so a model was
available.The first breakdown of trust occurred at this
point.

• The second problem was related to its legal

notification and its implications. Though it was
announced under the Disaster Management Act of
2005, passed earlier because of the tsunami of 2004, it
was governed by the Home Ministry and not the Health
Ministry
• The government did not perceive it as a health
emergency but as a threat to public order. Even today
this is the way it is using this act to handle public order
e.g. Hathras
• This Act overturns all other acts and authorities,
complete control by the state.

• As a consequence it asserts bureaucratic command and

control practices, from centre to state and then state to
district..hierarchisation of governance

• Policing was seen as solution to control people who

had never ever experienced such a situation, zealous use
of crowd control, use of Lathis/sticks, arrests, other
forms of repression and torture in police custody. •
Governance did not imply an human intervention rather
it was of use of repression.

The Lockdown Policy, its Myths and

Implications:-

• More specifically India’s lockdown policy was based

on 4 myths and indicated a lack of understanding
regarding the nature of social order:
• First, the idea that India is an urbanized country and
that the people of India live in self enclosed homes.
• Though the lockdown was for the entire country, the
ways of organizing life in urban areas of India where
most of the poor live was not taken into account; that a
large part of lower segments of the urban population
live cheek by jowl in one room apartments in slum
housing
• These groups thus came to be policed for any
transgression of immobility, led to police brutality.
• Second, the state created its policy through a myth that
Indians have service jobs and can work from home;
rather most workers and particularly migrants stayed in
small shops and once these closed they lost both jobs
and place to stay
• Third, that social distancing was equivalent to
physical distancing.
• The policy of physical distancing immobilised the
upper segments of the population, the middle classes
who had homes so that they could isolate themselves.
• In India trust networks has had to mediate through the
inequities such as caste, gender, religion and tribe
affiliations.
• However in spite of these inequalities, the nation
state’s policies had created a degree of faith and belief
in redressal of these inequities, a trust in change of
status, in ensuring aspirations for mobility.
 • The pandemic led to a reverse journey by breaking
these trust networks and legitimising instead social
distancing.

• Upper groups blamed the lower class/caste/tribal

groups for the virus; physical distancing was interpreted
within caste rules; that of pollution and purity; these
started being applied officially and unofficially in social
interactions with lower caste and other communities
and became policed through housing societies; created
distances also among the middle classes between lower
and upper castes, pushed women within the household
into domestic work
• More generally it created boundaries and borders
between neighbours and groups, within middle classes
and slums, within localities and wards, districts and
States; and across the country
• Fourth, the myth that contact tracing can be organized
through technology (Arogya Setu); rather contrarily it
has led to further to surveillance and privacy concerns.

India and Covid: The health system:-

• The second perception of risk related to access to the

health system
• An health emergency allows lockdowns to create
infrastructure for installing procedures for testing,
tracing, isolation and quarantine; China set up large
hospitals within days. This has been the experience in
China, Korea, HK, etc
• No such efforts made for months, part of the problem
related to center-state relationship; distrust due to
different govts but also when there were same party
govt.s; In India except for Kerala which prepared itself
earlier (in January) no other State was prepared, but
even Kerala was not prepared for the second round
which is on today; for the rest of the country, it was
disaster.

The Health System:-

• There was an immediate recognition of the uneven

regional nature of the health governance of the
pandemic (Kerala vs UP/Bihar), consequently people
migrating to other states and cities to get access to
health care; also the class divide in access to the system.

• It also exposed the nature and limitations of the

biomedical systems in India and globally; the role of
big pharmas; the country’s unequal public health
infrastructure, e.g. the decrease of trained human
resources (e.g. .7 doctors per 1000 as against global
average of 1.72 per 1000), and lack of medical
equipment (access to ventilators and oxygen cylinders);
related to decreasing public health budgets, Govt spends
11.3% of GDP on health, 62% healthcare funding is
done by individuals and pvt sector

• Additionally there is acknowledgement that Indians

are not sensitive to issues of mental health: Before
Covid, 1/3 of world’s suicides and ¼ of male suicides in
India; India at the bottom in the World Happiness report
(indexed in terms of economic strength, perception of
social support, levels of generosity and corruption)
alongside, Afghanistan, South Sudan and Yemen while
Pakistan is 78 times higher and so is Nepal-this index
falling in the last 5 years.

• This breakdown of trust related to data regarding tests.

India in terms of official data is third in the world today
in terms of infections; though the govt expert committee
proclaimed that we have peaked, the infection continues
to spread and deaths are increasing; both infections and
deaths are under reported and tests are low and have
decreased in the last fortnight (.88 per thousand in India
(Nov 5) as against 2.02 per thousand in USA (Nov 3).
• Today the health system in most States is ONLY
focusing on COVID; with preventive health or non-
communicable diseases getting low priority.
• Stats. of Dept of Health 1/9/20: Bet April to June 20
as compared to the same period in 2019: E.g
Immunization has dropped by 27%, Institutional
deliveries by 28%, Major surgeries fell by 60%,
outpatient treatment for heart ailments and cancer by
70% and 51% fewer cardiac emergencies were logged
in. Treatment of TB, Diabetes and asthma, screening of
babies for birth defects all declined; Further risks to life

India and Covid: The Economy

• The third perception of risk relates to the economy.

• Stimulus package directed towards enterprises;
criticism that these were old schemes rather than new
investment into the system, suggestion that MSMEs &
small businesses have not benefitted; these have already
closed or are closing down while salaried employment
declined (21 million have gone according to CMIE,
7/9/20); GDP declined by 23.9%-one of the highest
across the world
• For people there was no creation of jobs: rather rations
given only thrice to the poor-a study of 11 States by 65
CSOs (HT Sept 14) states only 50% received it 3 times,
42% once and 8% none; Situation precarious in
backward states of Jharkhand, Odisha, MP, Bihar. 66%
of this group reported that they were short of cash for
food, and 51% for medicines; 40% of the households
surveyed reported that they had reduced food intake —
the proportion is higher in Bihar (53%) and Jharkhand
(48%).

• In this survey, three quarters (73%) of households

expressed fear and anxiety about the future, in the case
of Dalits, this was 77%. Three fifths of households
(63%) are worried about sustained income and support
to the family. More than one third (36%) have disturbed
sleeping patterns and 33% are without social
interactions.

Increase of risks: employment and work

• For the first time an awareness that in most Indians are

employed in the informal sector (86 to 94%), that a
large no of these are internal migrants, that they live in
urban India (almost 30 to 50%), work in small jobs, in
construction industry, in ecommerce, in hospitality
industry.

• We also now know that these migrants circulate

between villages and cities and rotate in time cycles of
6 months to two years; are recruited by labour
contractors and rent out single rooms where 4-5 stay
together, have little to no social security, labour
recruiters do not show any responsibility for these
labourers, also they consume but do not invest in urban
settlements (having an implication on investments in
low end urban infrastructure) and repatriate their
earnings to their birth-place, to their family/kin group.

• Their migration back to their villages have informed

us about the organic interconnections between villages
and cities and raised the problem regarding what would
happen as a consequence to these families/households
who live on their remittances and who have been also
infected because of this reverse migration. However
little to no targeted policies for them. What kind of
social security and rights interventions are needed to
support the migrants in urban India and their
families/kin in villages?
• For example, the CSO study mentioned earlier (HT
14/9/20) argued that at least 1 out of 3 households had
migrant workers, more than 18% of who were women
with 2% children, and 4/5th of households stated that
these migrants had returned back; only 7% of the
returned migrants were currently engaged in
MGNREGS work, 28% are working as casual labour,
and two-fifths of the households have no gainful work.
The impact on women workers whose work had
decreased significantly before the onset of the
pandemic; given their significant role in reproducing
biologically and culturally the family and its
households, their vulnerabilities have accentuated.

Implications: Social reproduction and

Violence

• Particularly vulnerable been children and adolescents,

single women and old people

• Breakdown of trust has led to increase in interpersonal

violence particularly domestic violence, trafficking of
women and children, the withdrawal of the latter from
schools and colleges and the social reproduction of
family and household units
• With the breakdown in trust of state institutions, it had
led to increasing hate crimes in social media and
lynchings.

Conclusions

• In India’s modernity project, the state has played the

most important role; it has organised opportunities for
growth and development, for building solidarities
between groups in networks within received inequalities
of caste, community and gender distinctions, of forging
new social and cultural ties of being a nation; it has to
build trust networks across these divides.

• We already had knowledge that these experiment of

trust-building has not been very successful; that poverty
contd. and remains a major problem; that violence
between men-women, and between unequal groups but
also of the state against the populace has increased;
there have been class, caste, tribal-outsider and
communal/sectarian conflicts.

• Instead, media is discussing new narratives, there is

fake news, an increase of hate crimes, social media
trolling and targeting of protesters and those who
question policies, have alternatives are not being heard
and have increasing felt desolated.
• I have argued that the pandemic has given us an
opportunity to understand how the withdrawal of state
from governance for the people has raised precarity,
insecurity and risks.

• We need to comprehend why have we reached this

situation for which we need to build trust among us and
create new knowledge. We need to ask whether

• A) It is related to neoliberal polices of decrease in

budgets and promotion of privatization?

• B) Has the government abandoned the people?

• C) Can India which is such an unequal country afford

to have the government withdraw from the care of its
population?
• D) Such a situation in some measure in all countries
but wherever there is democratic and inclusive
governance of health system and of economy the
situation has improved.
• Social theory assesses knowledge in terms of what,
how, why and for whom

• It sees itself contributing at four levels: by aiding

professional research within academic institutions;
policy research (assessing government interventions
and its implications); reflexive research (assessing
methodological and philosophical moorings of theory)
and public research (aiding public interventions)

• Today we need interventions in all these levels; these

needs to be outreached in order to build trust in
knowledge and lessen uncertainties that have overtaken
both the management of LIFE and that of the
ECONOMY.

• This in the lesson that the pandemic has taught me.