Page 37 - Issue 01

This analysis is based on the study I conducted in Initially, they thought that the lockdown will be
my residential area where around 10-12 street only for a day but the day after Sunday, when P.M.
vendors gather daily and sell different items like announced that the lockdown will continue for a
pakoda, samosa, pani-puri, dosa, pan, vegetables, week and then further extended it for 21 days,
etc., and thereby, earn a respectable income. I they were at a loss about how to maintain their
personally know almost everyone because most of daily lifestyle. As they have no other source of
them sell their items just behind my shop and income and are fully dependent on what they sell
many of them buy their raw materials from my on a daily basis, the thought itself of surviving a
shop. So, it’s convenient for me to interact with complete lockdown was very difficult for them to
them for the purpose of this ethnographic study as fathom.
I have watched them selling these items from my
early childhood. The only change that I had
noticed in all this while is the hierarchical At the onset of the lockdown, they didn’t quite
transition in ownership which has been gradually understand its basic motive and were overall a bit
taking place from generation to generation. critical of the government’s moves. In the early
days of the lockdown, listening to various rumors
When I started to talk to them regarding this doing the rounds, they thought that the virus only
study, initially they seemed to feel very awkward infected people who came from China and other
and hesitant as nobody like me had approached foreign countries. However, after a few days, when
and tried to initiate such a conversation with them they started to get the actual idea about the virus,
before. At first, they outright asked me why I am how it spreads rapidly and affects our health
doing this and don’t I have to study big bulky system, they eventually started appreciating the
books since I am currently enrolled in a higher actions of the government. Moreover, during the
degree course. They wanted to know then where first phase of the lockdown, they were allowed to
lies the significance of this study in the context of sell their food items till 7 p.m. according to the
the curriculum of my course. According to them, state government guidelines since at that time the
students should only study to get “jobs”, cases in Jharkhand were quite low. But later on,
otherwise join the family business or parental when cases started to rise in our district
profession. They don’t have any idea about this (Dhanbad), then our District Collector announced
kind of analysis which is understandable given complete lockdown, and only ration shops and
nobody in their family has even completed the vegetable shops were allowed to open along with
higher secondary. n their families, usually, people the . . .
study till class 6-7 and very few of them go for
matriculation in the local government school. So, I
started the conversation by trying to explain what
this is all about – the topic and purpose of my
analysis and thereby, earn some confidence from
them after which, in 3-4 days, the conversation
between us became quite fluid. Since I knew them
very well, I didn’t have to face any kind of
difficulty in getting from them the specific
information I required for this study. First of all,
like us, they were all very shocked and in panic
when they came to know about the complete
lockdown after listening to the Prime minister’s
speech on 23rd March, 2020

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