India’s communities show self-reliant pathways out of COVID, but is its government listening?

• Post by: mehta
• August 10, 2017
• Comments off

As news of a strange new viral infection reached it in March
2020, Kunariya village in the Kachchh region of western India
swung into action. Even before India’s Prime Minister
announced a national lockdown on 24 th March, the village had
already put into place restrictions on entry and movement,
physical distancing, wearing masks, and awareness programmes
on staying safe. Yet it also insisted on the continuation of
economic activities, including works under the country’s
Employment Guarantee Scheme that enabled the poorest to earn
a living wage. Throughout 2020, Kunariya did not have a single
case of COVID-19 infection, nor did it experience any
significant loss of livelihoods, unlike a huge swathe of India that
was affected by both.

The above description raises an important question as to
what made Kunariya resilient to both the health and economic
impacts of COVID19? On a visit to the village in January 2021,
in that short interregnum between the first and second waves of
infection, I dug deeper into its remarkable story (Kothari 2021).