Managing the Disaster of Covid-19: An Analysis of Public Policy in Odisha on India’s East Coast

Abstract

This paper is a critical reflection on Covid-19 management strategies adopted in Odisha, a state on India’s east coast. The unprecedented scale and magnitude with which the pandemic affected the entire world was the cause of great uncertainty and collective anxiety. Managing it at the level of the entire nation state with great diversity of race, language, ethnicity, class, caste and culture has posed a great challenge for policy makers and administrators. Policy ethnographies have often relied on the Foucauldian idea of biopower and biopolitics to elucidate the governance practices in nation states with different rationalities. The present paper is an attempt to examine various policy measures adopted by the government of Odisha and how they have been affecting various institutions and everyday life. Using an ethnographical approach, the paper attempts to examine various policy initiatives and the way they get operationalized on the ground giving rise to a kind of governance practice indicative of affirmative biopolitics in the way power is exercised to direct human life and engage citizens for a secure future.