Pandemic Journeys through Space and Society in South Asia

Lockdown is a form of “governmentality” in the face of a threat to life. As the lockdown eases, some of these powers, exceptions and rules will recede, while others like contact tracing, social distancing and zonal restrictions will remain to define life in the “new normal”. Starting with this premise, in this paper we highlight that a new mobility regime is evolving in South Asian cities. While this regime will integrate innovations in digital technology with modern transport networks, so that spacing, testing, containing is carried out as a new belief system and an everyday embodied practice, it will overlap with existing and emerging inequalities between the mobility choices and freedoms of elites and the poor. This paper draws on a funded research project on urban mobility of marginal groups in South Asia to show how the governmentality of the pandemic is changing the socio-economic context and meaning of mobility for marginal groups (migrant workers, women, minorities) who embody differentiated choices and constraints for movement while themselves providing mobility solutions for survival in the city and beyond. Mobility for us is a lens to understand the changing power, relational identities and inequalities produced through the governance of the pandemic in rapidly changing South Asian urban societal spaces.