CHAPTER 8

The Effects of Reverse Migration on India’s Indigenous Communities Following the COVID-19 Lockdown

Nishaant Choksi, Sukanya Deogam, and Kalpesh Rathwa

On March 24, 2020, the prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, announced a nationwide lockdown of twenty-one days in response to the COVID-19 pandemic a mere four hours before it went into effect. The lockdown was ultimately extended for more than a month, leading to the closure of all commercial, industrial, and transportation operations. Subsequently, several regional administrations enforced curfews and stay-at-home measures in areas experiencing a surge in documented COVID-19 infections.

India’s lockdown was one of the most severe worldwide.1 For many Indigenous people, especially those who had migrated to cities for temporary employment, the lockdown threatened their livelihoods. Urban employment opportunities became almost nonexistent, landlords threatened eviction, and essential markets were closed. As public transportation stalled, many were left with no option but to embark on arduous journeys on foot, spanning hundreds if not thousands of kilometers to reach their lands of origin.2 Based on conservative estimates, about fifteen million people returned to their native villages from industrial states, such as Maharashtra, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Gujarat.

It is well known that when crises such as the global COVID-19 pandemic occur, preexisting challenges faced by marginalized people, including India’s Indigenous communities, are compounded. These include limited health care access, elevated communicable and noncommunicable diseases, inadequate vital services, and deficiencies in fundamental preventative measures such as clean water, soap, and disinfectants.3 In the context of India, these challenges compounded the disruption of labor migration for India’s Indigenous peoples, also known as Scheduled Tribes and Adivasi (original inhabitants), denying them a primary means of securing sustenance and livelihood.

This chapter examines a specific case of “reverse migration,”4 in which Indigenous villages witnessed a return of the migrant labor populations en masse, and describes how village residents managed the economic and social costs of the pandemic and the lockdown. Our research focused on two communities—Moti Sadhli, located in the western Indian state of Gujarat, and Bharbharia, in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand—situated in Indigenous (Schedule 5) areas. Significant numbers of residents from these villages participate in migrant labor, and our fieldwork was conducted when these laborers returned between the first wave and the second wave of the pandemic, from December 2020 to May 2021.

Our observations suggest the impacts of reverse migration are not homogeneous. They vary depending on the differing migration profiles of the region to which they were returning as well as on the social position within the region of the community to which a returning migrant belonged. Although both villages comprise mostly Indigenous residents, the majority of whom are engaged in migrant labor activities, they are situated in regions with distinct roles in India’s broader migration landscape. Gujarat, known for its advanced industrialization, serves as a prominent “receiving” area, drawing labor migrants from various parts of the nation; in contrast, Jharkhand is categorized as a “sending” region, from which labor typically migrates toward the western and southern regions. The way states positioned themselves in relation to migration, whether as migrant senders or receivers, shaped their policy responses to returning migrants during the COVID-19 lockdown. Jharkhand, as a key sender state, took a more proactive policy approach compared to Gujarat, a major receiver state. Additionally, the greater geographical distance that returnees traveled influenced how the lockdown was understood in each region.

While the regional differences appeared most apparent at a broader level of examination, a deeper ethnographic inquiry yielded many more commonalities than previously expected. First, we found that reactions to the pandemic were remarkably consistent and contrary to media reports. Most nonmigrants were more suspicious of institutions and the state than of the migrants themselves. Contagion itself was not seen as being caused by people, which made people much more willing to reabsorb the returning migrants than we originally suspected.

Additionally and perhaps most importantly, both areas, though classified as Indigenous, displayed a significant internal diversity that is often overlooked in discussions of indigeneity in India. Certain communities controlled more land and had more access to forest produce than others, affecting how extended kin networks absorbed returning migrants. Access to land, forest resources, and capital to set up alternate forms of livelihood determined to what extent both reverse migrants and nonmigrants experienced hardship during the lockdown period. Finally, in addition to community and region, we also found that experiences differed based on gender, with women responsible for both managing the health and well-being of the returning migrants and being tasked with greater responsibility for creating avenues of livelihood to compensate for the loss of income of male-dominated migration.

Adivasis, Schedule 5 Areas, and Migrant Labor

Article 366 of the Indian Constitution grants the state the authority to classify specific communities as Scheduled Tribes by considering factors such as “geographic isolation,” “primitive” attributes, and a “distinctive culture.” These criteria originate from a colonial understanding of what constitutes a “tribe.” However, the colonial origins of the term have now combined with how these communities understand themselves to be culturally distinct from neighboring communities and claim a long-standing historical and spiritual connection between their societies and the lands they inhabit. Therefore, the term “Indigenous” is not as clear-cut in India as it can seem in settler colonial contexts and can be contentious within the communities themselves.5 However, as Scheduled Tribes have legal status in India and the term “Adivasi” is a commonly understood political category and is closely aligned with the term “Indigenous,” we believe it is an apt working term to describe the residents of the villages we conducted fieldwork in. Both villages fall under what is called Schedule 5 of the Indian Constitution, a designation that refers to areas that have a majority6 Scheduled Tribe population and directs the state to offer certain kinds of special protection and limited provision of self-governance.

Despite these constitutional assurances, regions designated as Schedule 5 continue to represent some of the most economically disadvantaged areas in the nation, characterized by a lack of educational facilities, health care services, proper transportation infrastructure, and viable employment opportunities.7 Moreover, these areas are predominantly forested and hilly landscapes where agricultural activity alone does not ensure subsistence. All of these factors lead to regular cycles of migration to urban industrial hubs and agriculturally fertile zones.8

The COVID-19 Pandemic and Lockdown-Induced Migration to Tribal Villages

To grasp the impact of reverse migration, it is important to understand the particular context of COVID-19, how the host communities received news of the disease, and the travel experiences of returning migrants during the lockdown. Information about the pandemic was broadcast through various media during the initial months of the outbreak. Later, awareness campaigns were held in villages at district subdivisions or at block levels in Jharkhand.

COVID-19 was understood by villagers as a disease that spread through the air, but the idea of humans as carriers did not take hold. As a result, social distancing as a practice to prevent contagion failed to a great extent. At the same time, individuals from both villages expressed a general distrust of health care institutions, refusing to seek medical assistance at primary hospitals, referral hospitals, and medical health camps in villages, as these facilities were perceived as both isolating and loci of contagion.

State institutions were the biggest sources of fear due to draconian police surveillance. Throughout our research, most individuals wore masks only when they exited the village or when police made rounds. Masks themselves also became markers of the virus in many communities. For instance, in Moti Sadhli some respondents stated that people who wore masks were perceived as the ones infected with the virus. This led to a general avoidance of masks, although this never crystallized into a political issue or stigma as it did in European and North American contexts.9 Even at the height of the devastating second wave, people did not generally wear masks in rural and tribal areas.

While villagers were generally distrustful of health care facilities and saw hospitals as places of contagion, their response to returning migrants undergoing screenings and quarantine was more ambivalent. Migrants were largely reabsorbed into village life without resistance, in contrast to media reports that claimed that returnees were stigmatized as potential virus carriers. As a result, while formal quarantine centers were initially established, enforcement declined quickly, and migrants often left these facilities and quickly reintegrated into the local community. State-imposed measures, whether in hospitals, quarantine centers, or police surveillance, were treated as bureaucratic obstacles rather than meaningful health care interventions. Consequently, rather than fearing the returnees as potential sources of infection, most villagers viewed them as fellow community members navigating uncertain conditions.

Most of the difficulties faced by laborers therefore involved the journey home, and this is where regional differences played a role. In Gujarat, there were very few resources to facilitate the return of migrant laborers to their villages. One of our interviewees, a farm laborer from Moti Sadhli, told us how he and his family walked for several days from western Gujarat. On the way, he gathered seeds to sell in the market for some cash since he had been shorted wages before leaving the farm. Respondents from Jharkhand had to cover much longer distances but reported that some factory owners, mainly from areas in western India, such as Gujarat, were kind enough to cover the financial burdens. This assistance continued until the Indian government initiated restricted train services to facilitate their return from receiver to sender states, ignoring that migrants would also have to travel long distances within receiver states, such as Gujarat. Nevertheless, some in Jharkhand said that despite assurances from owners, they had to initially cover their travel and stay expenses from their wages and were never compensated.

Unlike residents of Moti Sadhli, for whom there were no internal checks on returning migrants, Jharkhand state authorities screened migrants returning from other states for fever, especially from states reporting a high number of cases. The screenings were mere temperature assessments, conducted at the nearest railway station. The migrant workers allowed to travel were then tasked with arranging their own journey back to their respective villages by hiring vehicles, using special buses, or walking. In the initial phase of the return of migrant workers, quarantine facilities were established for returnees within the premises of local Panchayat Bhawans, or village council buildings in their native villages. During this period, the local Block Development Officer described to us the strict enforcement of quarantine measures for those returning from regions designated as red zones. However, there were instances when the workers escaped the centers, and later quarantine measures were relaxed. Our data suggest that these quarantine measures were not generally followed by the local population.

Same Village, Different Experiences

In each village, one of the major findings was that the uneven distribution of resources in the villages shaped how communities could navigate the conditions brought about by the lockdown. Factors such as social status, economic resources, and personal networks were distributed across community lines, which in turn shaped the experiences of both the migrants and the receiving community during the period of return migration. In Moti Sadhli, for example, there are four major communities with varied landholdings, three Indigenous (Scheduled Tribes), and one from the former untouchable community (Scheduled Caste) out of a population of 3,279 people (Table 8.1)10

The Rathwas are the majority, engaging in subsistence farming as their primary occupation, and they have rights to forest land. Compared to other communities, they are also more educated. Apart from engaging in agriculture, members from the Rathwa community (mostly men) migrate to urban areas such as Ahmedabad, Vadodara, and Surat in central and southern Gujarat in search of construction jobs. Central to the experience of these laborers is the irregular nature of their wages due to a lack of formal contracts and long employment periods. The abrupt imposition of a lockdown further exacerbated their situation, leaving them responsible for arranging their return transportation home. Moreover, during this period pending wages for work already done remained unpaid. Dhanaks and Naiks are Indigenous communities that do not have land, although Naiks have limited forest rights. These communities have lower levels of education and often seek work as agricultural laborers in the fertile regions of western Gujarat. Their wages are paid in the form of a one-fourth share of the crops harvested during the season. The Harijan community, identified as a Scheduled Caste group, has been a settled community in the village. Members of the community perform music at the weddings of the Indigenous groups and they also make baskets out of bamboo and other forest materials. They are considered the least educated in the village.

A considerable number of Rathwa individuals, previously employed in the affected urban areas of Gujarat, returned to their villages due to the impact of the pandemic’s initial wave on these cities. Market closures, however, made it more difficult to turn agricultural surpluses into cash. As a result, Rathwas and to a lesser degree Naiks relied heavily on collecting mahua (Madhuca longifolia) seeds from the forest, which could be sold or traded raw or brewed as liquor and sold for cash, showing the importance of non–timber forest produce for Indigenous communities during times of crisis (Figure 8.1).11 Members of the Harijan community did not migrate out of the village for labor; their loss of livelihood came primarily from the shutting down of weekly markets (hat) where they sell their goods and the cancellation of weddings. They attempted to compensate for this by setting up exchanges in the local villages instead of market towns to circumvent lockdown restrictions (Figure 8.2). Many members of the Naik and Dhanak communities who also did not have land and had limited forest rights chose not to return, preferring to stay on the farms in western Gujarat. For those who did return, the conditions were much worse than for the Rathwas, and some reported living on the brink of starvation. Due to the paucity of resources and a fatigued extended kin network, for these communities, returning home was the same if not worse than if they stayed in their places of work.

Bharbharia, located in Jharkhand’s district of West Singhbhum, comes under Schedule 5 and has a population of 2,966.12 Like in Moti Sadhli, the distribution of land ownership primarily aligned with respective communities composed mainly of the Ho, a predominant Indigenous, or Scheduled Tribe, community, along with several communities categorized by the Indian government as Other Backward Classes, or socially and economically marginalized groups that are not listed under constitutional provisions. These include artisanal communities with traditional occupations such as weaving and smithing as well as cowherd communities. Like in Moti Sadhli, the term “Harijan” was used by others to refer to the Scheduled Caste, formerly called “untouchable” communities engaged in work such as sweeping. Table 8.2 breaks down Bharbharia’s communities.

The Ho community forms the Indigenous majority in the village, and they mostly have small landholdings. Unlike in Moti Sadhli, Bharbharia did not have any forest land, which made agricultural activity more important in daily subsistence. Only the Ho and Gope (cowherd caste) have lands, while the Tanti, Harijan and Lohar do not have land ownership. Most of the households in Bharbahria, including the landowners, depend on migrant labor for their income, with most households sending at least one member to work primarily in Gujarat. When workers returned, they used this time to repair their houses and brew and sell rice beer (handiya) in neighboring villages to make ends meet (Figure 8.3).

Unlike the Harijans in Moti Sadhli, the Harijan community in Bharbharia is more well off than others in the village. Men from this community go to work as migrant laborers, and the women work in the Block hospital as midwives or sweepers. The community aspired to educate its children, with many aiming for higher degrees. However, with the pandemic outbreak, both income generation and educational pursuits were adversely affected. This is perhaps the reason why the Harijan households had more expectations from the Jharkhand government, which had proposed a lockdown-related jobs scheme,13 than the landed Indigenous households. In addition, the central and state governments had put in place schemes to provide 5 kg of rice or wheat and 1 kg pulse per family, although Bharbharia residents either utilized the provided rice to produce beer or opted to sell it to local village grocery stores due to their dislike of its taste. Similarly, in Gujarat, a preference for corn-based chapati was evident, with rice being an unpopular choice due to prevalent culinary tastes. These programs therefore had limited traction.

Gender Dynamics

The ability of villages to reabsorb the returning migrants was shaped by not only community resources but also gendered social structures. Both the pandemic and the return of migrant laborers deeply altered women’s responsibilities and vulnerabilities. Male migrant workers’ sudden return disrupted established household structures, forcing families, especially women, to adapt to new economic and social challenges in ways that shaped their economic and social recovery. While some of these challenges were experienced universally by women in rural areas, others were specific to households with returning migrants, impacting the long-term recovery of these communities.

Universally, rural and urban women were disproportionately burdened by the pandemic; however, returning migrants intensified these challenges. The sudden return of male laborers, often unemployed and financially strained, placed additional pressure on women to manage scarce household resources and provide caregiving support. Whether or not they were employed, women were responsible for household chores, childcare, and their children’s education, all of which became more demanding during the lockdown.

More than 85 percent of health care workers were women, including frontline health care personnel such as nurses in the formal sector and workers like nannies, midwives, and domestic helpers in the informal sector.14 Many of these women were poorly paid, lacked protective equipment, and were given irregular work. Accredited Social Health Activist workers, for instance, were classified as volunteers rather than formal employees, allowing recruiters to underpay them while assigning them demanding tasks such as conducting tests, thereby increasing their vulnerability to disease exposure.15 In Bharbharia, most female health workers were laid off during the lockdown without prior notice. Other village workers, such as those who worked at an Anganwadi center (for rural childcare), were employed in health-related duties since the closing of the centers. Since most of these workers were women, this led to heightened vulnerabilities. For instance, Jaimuni, an Anganwadi worker from Bharbharia, explained how her family was more concerned with her carrying the virus back from her daily duties than they were about her husband, who was a returning migrant worker.

Moreover, the economic impact of COVID-19 disproportionately affected women. The phrase “stay home, stay safe” did not resonate with many women from tribal communities. While they remained in the village to manage households, some were previously engaged in informal work outside the home. In Bharbharia and Moti Sadhli, girls were compelled to take over additional domestic responsibilities, particularly as their parents extended their working hours to address financial hardships. Many girls also engaged in household repairs and maintenance. When asked, several expressed hesitation about returning to school after the lockdown was lifted.16

With markets closed for extended periods, many families, particularly women, struggled to meet basic needs. While there was a growing anticipation for male migrants to return in hopes of restoring financial stability, it was more typically women who made up the financial difference. The story of Jema Kui, an elderly woman from Bharbharia, illustrates this point. Before the pandemic, her son was a migrant worker in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, and he returned home following the lockdown, which cut off an important income stream for the family. An upcoming funeral ritual allowed Jema Kui to make up the income shortfall by selling rice beer, a traditional occupation among Indigenous residents, but even this avenue was threatened by police raids that sought to disperse gatherings and enforce lockdown protocols. Despite these difficulties, she managed to secure some money for the event, with additional harom (community support), a cultural practice of providing financial and social assistance to those hosting important gatherings.

These gendered experiences illustrate the broader socioeconomic dynamics in these communities. Women not only bore the brunt of household responsibilities but also faced increased financial uncertainty, job insecurity, and risks to their safety. In households with returning migrants, these pressures were intensified without remittances. Another difference emerged in how men and women perceived the pandemic’s impact. Male respondents in Moti Sadhli often focused on external events, such as COVID-19 case numbers and mortality rates in different states, while downplaying the economic and social disruptions they faced. Women highlighted the daily struggles of household survival and resource management. The experiences of women during this period shed light on the deeper structural inequalities that persist in these communities, underscoring the need for targeted policy interventions to support their economic and social well-being.

Conclusion

Many researchers have rightly noted that Indigenous peoples across the world have been left behind in the COVID-19 response, and state policy has reinforced and exacerbated their marginalization,17 including in India.18 However, most of these studies focus on the broad effects of state policy on Indigenous communities without ethnographic attention to the place-based internal dynamics at play. Our study takes the return of migrant labor as a starting point to investigate how this unexpected situation impacted Indigenous villages and how communities navigated the problem of income instability.

First, it was clear that communities were ready to reabsorb migrants and were less suspicious of returning migrants than they were of state institutions, such as police and public health initiatives. There was a clear association of the virus with the state and those people, often women, who were employed by the state. In the later phase of the pandemic, this suspicion stretched even to vaccines, resulting in overall low vaccination rates in Bharbharia and Moti Sadhli.

Second, the way in which particular communities were socially positioned within the villages determined the degree of the severity of hardship faced during the lockdown. Across communities income streams were disrupted, although landed communities largely could absorb the income loss through subsistence farming and the utilization of forest-based resources, easing the disruptions caused by the pandemic. For those without land, the lockdown caused greater disruption, although these communities comprise a rural poor whose earnings even in nonpandemic times are hand to mouth, and they have had to develop strategies to deal with recurrent shocks to their livelihood. Small-scale economic activity continued among both landed and landless communities, such as the collection of forest produce, the selling of locally brewed spirits, and the setting up of local markets and barter exchange within the village. Community pooling of resources also helped mitigate the loss of income streams for events such as marriages and funerals. Such examples further reinforce the importance of natural resources and traditional village economies for cushioning Indigenous communities against external shocks, such as the COVID-19 lockdown.

Finally, one issue we were not able to cover in this chapter but found important for future study was the fact that for many Indigenous residents living far from urban centers and not exposed to media and constant government messaging, the pandemic and the lockdown, despite the obvious hardships, were not the most important things in their lives. Even if many migrants had endured treacherous journeys only a few months earlier, they quickly absorbed themselves into the daily rhythms and routines of the village and did not “remember” the details of their hardships in the way we would have expected. This may indicate a strategy of resilience by community members or the success of reabsorption back into their village communities. It might also suggest that the trials and tribulations brought on by the lockdown were assimilated into broader patterns of precarity that migrant laborers and Indigenous communities face even in so-called normal times. Now that we have passed through the pandemic and the lockdown, this issue warrants further reflection in future studies.

Notes

1. 1.  Ramita Iyer and Diego Maiorano, “COVID-19 Lockdown in India: Impact on the Poor and the Government’s Response,” ISAS Insights (blog), Institute of South Asian Studies, May 19, 2021, https://www.isas.nus.edu.sg/papers/covid-19-lockdown-in-india-impact-on-the-poor-and-the-governments-response/.
2. 2.  Indrajit Roy et al., “Precarious Transitions: Mobility and Citizenship in a Rising Power,” Economic and Political Weekly (Engage) 56, no. 7 (2021), https://www.epw.in/engage/article/precarious-transitions-mobility-and-citizenship.
3. 3.  See the UN Department of Social and Economic Affairs Report on Covid-19 and Indigenous Peoples, accessed April 6, 2025, https://social.desa.un.org/issues/indigenous-peoples/covid-19-and-indigenous-peoples.
4. 4.  The concept of reverse or return migration has been a well-established concept in the social scientific study of migration since the 1980s. See George Gmelch, “Return Migration,” Annual Review of Anthropology 9 (1980): 135–59, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.09.100180.001031. However, the concept gained particular prominence in studying migration induced by the COVID-19 lockdown in India. See, for example, Ajay Dandekar and Rahul Ghai, “Migration and Reverse Migration in the Age of COVID-19,” Economic and Political Weekly 55, no. 19 (2020): 28–31, https://www.epw.in/journal/2020/19/commentary/migration-and-reverse-migration-age-covid-19.html.
5. 5.  André Beteille, “What Should We Mean by ‘Indigenous People’?,” in Indigeneity in India, ed. Bengt T. Karlsson and T. B. Subba (Routledge, 2006); and Alpa Shah, In the Shadows of the State: Indigenous Politics, Environmentalism, and Insurgency in Jharkhand, India (Duke University Press, 2010).
6. 6.  In the villages we selected, minority groups included those legally termed “Scheduled Caste” (also called Dalits and Harijan) and “Other Backward Classes.” The complexity of legal terminologies challenges any stable, homogenous definition of who constitutes “Indigenous” and who does not.
7. 7.  Varsha Bhagat-Ganguly and Sujit Kumar, eds., India’s Scheduled Areas: Untangling Governance, Law and Politics (Routledge, 2019); and Virginius Xaxa, “Isolation, Inclusion and Exclusion: The Case of Adivasis in India,” in Adivasi Rights and Exclusion in India, ed. V. Srinivasa Rao (Routledge, 2020).
8. 8.  David Mosse et al., “Brokered Livelihoods: Debt, Labour Migration and Development in Tribal Western India,” Journal of Development Studies 38, no. 5 (2002): 59–88, https://doi.org/10.1080/00220380412331322511; and Saurav Kumar et al., “Patterns and Drivers of Internal Migration: Insights from Jharkhand, India,” GeoJournal 88, no. 5 (2023): 4971–90, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-023-10895-6.
9. 9.  Eric Klinenberg and Melina Sherman, “Face Mask Face-Offs: Culture and Conflict in the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Public Culture 33, no. 3 (95) (2021): 441–66, https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-9262919; and Franziska B. Schönweitz et al., “The Social Meanings of Artifacts: Face Masks in the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Frontiers in Public Health 10 (2022), 1–10, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2022.829904.
10. 10.  Census of India, Moti Sadli village, 2011, https://www.censusindia.co.in/villages/moti-sadhli-population-vadodara-gujarat-520350.
11. 11.  Aashish Xaxa, “Minor Forest Produce and Tribal Livelihood in the Era of COVID-19,” in India’s Indigenous Peoples: A Journey of Self-Reflection on Culture, Society, and Sustainability, ed. Virginius Xaxa et al. (Indian Social Institute, 2021).
12. 12.  “Bharbharia,” Villageinfo, n.d., https://villageinfo.in/jharkhand/pashchimi-singhbhum/manjhari/bharbhariya.html.
13. 13.  “Mukhyamantri Shramik Yojana,” Government of Jharkhand (n.d.), https://msy.jharkhand.gov.in/#:~:text=The%20main%20objective%20of%20Mukhyamantri,other%20states%20of%20the%20country.
14. 14.  Jashodhara Dasgupta and Sona Mitra, “A Gender-Responsive Policy and Fiscal Response to the Pandemic,” Economic & Political Weekly 55, no. 22 (2020): 13–17, https://www.epw.in/journal/2020/22/commentary/gender-responsive-policy-and-fiscal-response.html.
15. 15.  Vatya Raina and Ananya, “The Lockdown in India: Understanding the Matrix of Caste, Class and Gender,” Economic and Political Weekly 56, no. 8 (2021): 12–16, https://www.epw.in/journal/2021/8/commentary/lockdown-india.html.
16. 16.  The devastation caused to Indigenous and rural students’ educational trajectories in Jharkhand by the lockdown is outlined in Paran Amitava and Jean Dreze, Gloom in the Classroom: The Schooling Crisis in Jharkhand (Gyan Vigyan Samiti Jharkhand, 2022), https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/library/resource/gloom-in-the-classroom-the-schooling-crisis-in-jharkhand/.
17. 17.  Kaitlin Curtice and Esther Choo, “Indigenous Populations: Left Behind in the COVID-19 Response,” The Lancet 395, no. 10239 (2020): 1753, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31242-3.
18. 18.  Minaketan Behera and Preksha Dassani, “Livelihood Vulnerabilities of Tribals During COVID-19,” Economic and Political Weekly 56, no. 11 (2021): 19–22, https://www.epw.in/journal/2021/11/commentary/livelihood-vulnerabilities-tribals-during-covid-19.html; and Jagannath Ambagudia, “Tribes, Covid-19 and the State in India,” Journal of Asian and African Studies 59, no. 2 (2022): 563–77, https://doi.org/10.1177/00219096221117073.