Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Education, Livelihoods and Health

Poonam Batra, Amir Bazaz, Anisha Shanmugam, Nihal Ranjit, Harpreet Kaur, Ruchira Das | 2021

This research investigates the impact of the pandemic on the education, livelihoods, and health of the most marginalised sections of India’s society. Three major sites were chosen for this investigation: (a) Tiruchirappalli (Trichy) with respect to the livelihoods of informal workers; (b) Delhi with respect to teachers, parents, and children in the city’s schools; and (c) Bengaluru with respect to students and faculty of higher education institutions in the city. Narratives of teachers, children, and parents highlight how stakeholders from different socio-economic contexts across government and private schools and higher education institutions have been affected and the multiple challenges they experience as teaching-learning is disrupted. The study highlights how technologically mediated learning platforms, brought into effect due to the pandemic, continue to impact teaching and create pedagogic constraints for students from different socio-economic backgrounds. Narratives of informal workers in the city of Trichy highlight how the city’s most marginalised and vulnerable are impacted by the crisis in the face of acute urban inequality that remains a critical challenge to developing sustainable cities.