Covid on the Coast: Pandemic Governance and Protests in Fishing Villages in South Kerala, India

Abstract

In this article, we reflect on the consequences of COVID-19 interventions on coastal communities in south Kerala (India), and the responses of the local population to the latter. In particular, we map out the events which led to spontaneous protests in a number of fishing villages during the second wave of the epidemic in July 2020. We will show that whilst during the first wave of the epidemic, coastal communities remained supportive of government intervention, such an initial support begun to wane as the epidemic unfolded over time and became more aggressive and widespread. We argue that such a shift in fishing communities’ attitudes was a response not only to the consequences of a more forceful policy of containment of the epidemic but also to a sudden identification of coastal communities as the main locus of contagion in the district. We suggest that the consequent restrictive measures enforced on coastal communities were driven as much by epidemiological concerns as by a media-driven social panic built upon widespread negative stereotypes that have historically worked to marginalize, and even criminalize coastal communities in Kerala. We deploy the notion of bio-moral marginality to reveal ways through which the attribution of specific—and largely stereotyped and negative— physical attributes and moral dispositions to the bodies and behaviour of people belonging to fishing coastal communities constituted the ground upon which the social panic concerning the spread of the COVID-19 virus unfolded in south Kerala, thus leading to fishers’ militant response.

The Impact of COVID on Kerala Fish-vending Women

“…While vegetable vendors were permitted, under popular demand and vendor protest, to re-open for sales during the lockdown, this consideration was not offered to female fish vendors. Fish-vending women’s protests were merely deemed unruly, unlawful and further evidence of the community’s lack of adherence to Kerala’s public norms of performative ‘law-abiding respectability’ (Jament et al, 2023). Even when fishing bans were lifted, villagers’ mobility remained restricted.…”