Locking Down the Poor - Harsh Mander

Non-Fiction

Verdict: Read it because certain things need a voice

I'm starting something new - adding covers. Since I love book covers so much, I thought I would share them to maybe inspire you to try something new as well. 

COVID was a life-changing time for people around the world. Governments from all over the world made both good and terrible decisions while trying to keep their populations safe from a virus they neither understood nor were prepared for. India, of course, was no exception. It kept strict lockdown policies at a few points during the COVID pandemic, and this book examines some of the problems with how the government looked at people (particularly how it overlooked poor people and labourers) and how that still affects India today.

Just being honest: books that focus on persecuted populations in India tend to rub me the wrong way. There's a very specific tilting of information on this side of the line, too.  That being said, the effects on people who had little to no resources were real. Therefore, it's important to acknowledge it.  India, of course, has its fair share of crazy politics, and people both love and hate the ruling party - the same one that was there when COVID was happening. I also feel it's quite easy to sit back afterwards and criticise a government or ruling party after all is said and done. It would have been useful as a tool of retrospecting rather than blame.

The book walks step-by-step through some of the difficult results of locking down a poor population - no work, no food, and no way to travel back to villages to at least be with family. As with many other circumstances, the consequences for bucking the rules are harsher for those who are poor or considered less than. 

While the points in this book are definitely valid, Inda doesn't respond quickly to honest valid criticism. The country has been build systems that exists for reasons that are from from humanitarian. Changing these systems becomes impossible when money is the prime motivator and is directly connected with power. This leaves the reader (or at least this reader) hopelessly frustrated at valid points that will be ignored. It's worth the read if you want to see concrete examples of how the government and people in power view the poor in India. 

~Becky~