Covid On The Coast: Pandemic Governance and Protests in Fishing Villages in South Kerala, India

Research Article
Covid on the Coast: Journal of South Asian Development

1–26
Pandemic Governance © The Author(s) 2023
and Protests in Fishing Sage Publications India Private Limited

Villages in South Kerala, Article reuse guidelines:
in.sagepub.com/journals-permissions-india DOI:
India 10.1177/09731741231162446
journals.sagepub.com/home/sad
Johnson Jament1, Max Martin1, M.S.

Visakh1 and Filippo Osella1
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.
1
Department of Anthropology, School of Global Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK
Corresponding author:
Filippo Osella, Professor of Anthropology and South Asian, School of Global Studies, Arts C, Room 240,
University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9SJ, UK.
E-mail: f.osella@sussex.ac.uk
2 Journal of South Asian Development
Keywords
COVID-19, marginality, subaltern protests, fishing communities, Kerala, India
Introduction
During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the southern
Indian state of Kerala gained international recognition and praise for its
successful interventions in managing and containing the spread of the disease.
Whilst the world over was clumsily struggling to cope with the fast spreading
of the contagion and mounting casualties, the Kerala government appeared to
have developed and implemented an effective strategy for reducing contagion,
providing medical care to those affected by the virus and offering material
support to its population. It also provided migrant labour in the state with free
food provisions, appropriate quarantine facilities and more so that there was
no repeat of the tragic exodus of labourers witnessed in many an Indian city.
The success of the government in containing the pandemic has been attributed
to the lasting legacies of the ‘Kerala model of development’: a strong and far-
reaching public health system, an efficient system of decentralized governance,
and popular mobilization in support of government interventions (see, e.g.,
Chathukulam & Tharamangalam, 2021; Choolayil & Putran, 2021; Isaac &
Sadanandan, 2020; Ramakumar & Eapen, 2021). Moreover, whilst the failure to
foresee the destructive force of the 2017 Ockhi cyclone and two devastating
monsoon floods1—in August 2018 and July 2019—had sharpened the state’s
capacity to react rapidly to emergencies via an effective strategy of rescue,
support and rehabilitation of affected populations (see, e.g., Raman, 2020), the
2018 Nipah virus2 outbreak had enabled the government to devise responsive
health protocols and strategies directed to containing the spread of epidemics
through case-based isolation, contact-tracing and community participation (see,
e.g., Rahim et al., 2020). Without detracting from the undeniable success of the
Kerala government’s actions in containing the spread of the virus in the state—
especially during the first wave of the epidemic—in this article, we aim to
explore the consequences of COVID-19 interventions on coastal communities in
south Kerala, and the complex responses of the local population. In particular,
we intend to discuss the events which led to spontaneous protests in a number of
fishing villages during the second wave of the epidemic in July and August
2020. These short-lived protests disrupted hitherto widespread compliance and
support to the Kerala government’s policies directed towards containing the
epidemic.
Whilst during the first wave of the epidemic, coastal communities remained
supportive of government intervention this initial support began to wane as the
epidemic unfolded over time and became more aggressive and widespread. We
argue that the shift in fishing communities’ attitudes emerged as a response not
only to the (economic and social) consequences of a more forceful policy of
containment of the epidemic but also to the sudden identification of coastal
communities as the main locus of contagion in the Thiruvananthapuram district.
We will suggest that the consequent restrictive measures enforced on coastal
communities—from
Jament et 3
renewed bans on fishing and restrictions on fish selling, to the deployment of police
commandoes to enforce the lockdown—were driven not just by epidemiological
concerns but also by a media-driven social panic built upon widespread negative
stereotypes that have historically worked to marginalize coastal communities in
Kerala, as elsewhere in the world (see, e.g., Nadel-Klein, 2003).
A number of recent studies have underscored how the COVID-19 pandemic
had its most devastating consequences on vulnerable or marginal communities
(Bourgeron, 2022; Bratich, 2021; Buheji et al., 2020; Crane & Pearson, 2020;
Haneefa, 2021; Manderson & Lavine, 2020 Singer & Rylko-Bauer 2021). We
build on these studies to argue that, in order to understand the impact and
responses to the pandemic on coastal fishing communities in south Kerala,
attention should be paid not only to conditions of socio-economic precarity and
vulnerability but also to the ways these conditions have been expressed through
and compounded by what we name as bio-moral marginality. By bio-moral
marginality we refer to, firstly, the attribution of specific—and largely stereotyped
and negative—physical attributes and moral dispositions to the bodies and
behaviour of people belonging to coastal fishing communities; secondly, to the
processes through which this attribution then constitutes the ground upon which
a social panic concerning the spread of the COVID-19 virus unfolded in south
Kerala. The alleged inability of such communities to maintain appropriate
standards of cleanliness and hygiene, or to respond in a disciplined manner to
government medical advisories, made them the target of public fears,
accusations and, eventually, repressive interventions. Similarly, elsewhere in
India, it was the subaltern or marginalized communities—that is, those social
groups whose everyday life is overdetermined by the intersection of (historical
and cumulative) discriminations grounded on hierarchies of caste, religion, class,
gender or sexuality—who, in the early wave of the pandemic, became the
target of widespread rumours and allegations concerning their role as vectors for
the spread of the virus.
While the embodied modalities of subordination and exclusion we discuss
might be thought of as confined to the effects of an enduring legacy of caste-
based discriminations peculiar to South Asia, we suggest that the concept of bio-
moral marginality enriches more broadly the scope of critical epidemiology. It
does this by directing attention to and revealing the relations drawn in popular
imagination and public discourses between the material conditions and lifeworld
of marginal communities—sex workers, rural migrants, the homeless, asylum-
seeker—and their attributed moral dispositions (see, e.g., Carr, 2015). Taken
together, they (re) produce generalized hostility and justify disciplinary, even
punitive, interventions (see, e.g., Dhall & Boyce, 2015; Van Hollen, 2010;
Roelen et al., 2020). Here, the post-pandemic ‘health of the nation’ appears to be
constituted upon the extent to which the state and its agencies manage to contain
and police the practices of those people and communities considered—for a
variety of reasons—to be beyond the pale of modern lifestyles and bourgeoise
decency (Evans, 2018; Kidambi, 2004). The approach we propose allows us not
only to explore the material consequences of the COVID-19 epidemic on the
livelihood of (socially, economically and culturally) marginal/ized communities,
but also to discuss some ways in which such communities respond to existing or
emerging modalities of bio-moral stigmatization
(see, e.g., Lancione, 2016). In other words, bio-moral marginality addresses the
multiple and overlapping dimensions and drivers of socio-economic marginality,
and how these have contributed to the differential consequences and responses
to the COVID-19 epidemic.
We focus on five fishing villages in the Thiruvananthapuram district, where
we have been conducting research since October 2019: Puthiyathura, Marianad,
Poonthura, Pulluvila and Anchuthengu. A questionnaire was used to collect
initial data from 10 households in each of Puthiyathura and Marianad. The
questionnaire covered a wide range of issues concerning the effects of COVID-19
—from the social and economic impact of the lockdown on the livelihood of
fishing households, to the scope and efficacy of relief interventions from the
state government, local parish churches and other social organizations—and
provided the basis for follow-up face-to-face semi-structured interviews in all
five villages once the first lockdown was lifted. Semi-structured interviews were
also conducted by telephone during the second lockdown, to cross-check and
strengthen the information gathered from the questionnaires and the first round
of interviews, as well as to collect more data on local responses to and
evaluations of the more stringent government restrictions upon movement and
sociality. As well as collecting relevant government orders and health
directives concerning the COVID-19 emergency, we also followed how the
mainstream media—newspapers and television news channels, in particular—
reported the events leading to the second lockdown.
On Bio-moral Marginality
Our concept of bio-moral marginality draws on McKim Marriott’s
understanding of personhood in South Asia, whereby people belonging to
different castes or communities are considered to be constituted and defined by
specific articulations of coded substance. According to Marriott, a person’s
moral dispositions, character and emotional nature—a person’s code—coincide
with the same person’s physical attributes or substance (Marriott, 1976; Marriott
& Inden, 1977; see also Daniel, 1984). People’s coded substances are not simply
differentiated by virtue of belonging to a particular community or inhabiting a
specific socio-physical environment, but are attributed differential value
according to the logic of caste hierarchy. In other words, for Marriott there is
something understood as intrinsically different and superior in the
physical/bodily substance, as well as in the behaviour and moral disposition, of a
high caste Brahmin. At the same time, a fisher or a Dalit—whose caste status,
within the hegemonic logic of Brahmanical Hinduism, is deemed to be lower—
would have a less refined or inferior bio-moral constitution, for instance, a ‘hot’
body ensuing from manual labour, non-vegetarian diet and consumption of
alcohol, and a corresponding impulsive, hot-tempered and unruly character
(Osella & Osella, 2002, 2008). Importantly, Marriott introduces the concept of
the (perme- able and partible) dividual to suggest that a person’s coded substance
can be passed on to others, and at the same time absorb the coded substance of
those with whom one interacts or exchanges (cooked food, in particular) (see
Babb, 1981; Daniel, ibid.; Marriott, ibid. ). Put simply, a person should avoid the
absorption of ‘lower’
Jament et 5
coded substance, while accepting, even welcoming the coded substance of those
deemed to belong to a higher caste/community.
The shortcomings in McKim Marriott’s attempts (see, e.g., Marriott, 1989) to
delineate an all-encompassing ‘ethnosociology of India’ built upon (pristine and
timeless) ‘Hindu categories’ are all too obvious (for critiques, see Babb, 1990;
Larson, 1990; Moffatt, 1990). Distancing ourselves from Marriott’s Orientalism,
we read notions of (hierarchically ordered) coded substance through what Vivek
Narayan defines as caste scripts (2021). Caste scripts, to use Narayan’s words,
‘characterize those assumptions, judgments, substances, and practices that
encaste human experience and social meaning’ (pp. 275–276). In turn, by
‘encasted experience’, Narayan refers to ‘performative process through which
the caste order ascribes values and attributes to human lives by blurring the
boundaries between code, material and behavior’ (ibid: 3ff). Read through the
lenses of critical Dalit studies, Marriott’s coded substances must be located
within wider discursive and material practices (caste scripts) which seek to
naturalize, and thus legitimate Brahmanical/Savarna caste order (see also
Moffatt, 1990), firstly by ascribing different bio-moral dispositions to the
(casted) social body, and, secondly, by attributing hierarchical value to these
difference.
We also draw attention to critical research which has explored ways through
which nineteenth-century racial sciences—themselves promoting notions of bio-
moral difference between and within populations or ‘races’—not only were
deployed to bolster social hierarchies in the colonies as much as the metropoles, 3
but were ‘appropriated by the indigenous elites to justify South Asian hierarchy
on the one hand, and to assert parity with the European upper classes on the
other’ (Guha, 1998, p. 428; see also Bates, 1995; Sebastian 2015). Colonial
scientific discourse, that is, provided a novel, secularized language for the
articulation and assertion of caste-based hierarchies and discriminations,
expressed this time in terms of ‘natural’ (positive or negative) socio-cultural
dispositions towards embracing colonial and post-colonial modernity (Natrajan,
2011; Subramanian, 2009, 2019). We can see such a logic at work in the
management of the 1896 plague (see, e.g., Arnold, 1993; Kidambi, 2004), but
also in the 1970s sterilization campaign which unfolded during Indira Gandhi’s
emergency (see, e.g., Tarlo, 2003; Williams, 2014). In both instances, the main
targets of coercive government interventions were predominantly poor, low
caste or marginalized communities whose actual behaviour and moral
dispositions were identified as the root causes of the problems faced by a
modernizing India (Evans, 2018).
In colonial and post-colonial Kerala, and India at large, encasted discourses
about the apparent perils of exchange (with those deemed as ‘caste inferiors’)
have intersected with, and even morphed into modern scientific notions about
hygiene, illness and well-being. For instance, Sanal Mohan writes that in Kerala,
‘even as late as the early decades of the twentieth century the [high status] Syrian
Christians would invoke health sciences and notions of hygiene to support the
segregation of Dalit Christians in the churches’ (2016, p. 75). Indeed, in the
encasted popular imagination of post-colonial Kerala, coastal fishing
communities appear as recal- citrant ‘caste primitives’, lacking the (cultural,
social and economic) wherewithal necessary to engender processes of
modernization and reform, and thus to constitute
themselves as modern citizens (Arnold, 2013; Binoy, 2021; Narayan, 2021;

Ram, 1991; Subramanian, 2009). Importantly, the negative stereotypes coastal
fishing communities are the object of are not simply discursive practices of
representation but performative acts which normalize and naturalize hierarchi-
cal values, whereby politics of exclusion and discrimination become inscribed
in the everyday as both inevitable and necessary (Narayan, 2021; Paik, 2022).
That is, the confluence of (encasted) notions of personhood and modern bio-
politics constitute those who are deemed to lack the dispositions and/or
resources to embody the biomedical underpinnings of modern citizenship as
risky, unsanitary subjects (Briggs, 2004; Briggs & Mantini-Briggs, 2003; see
also Carr, 2015; Ong, 1995; Onoma, 2017; Shah, 2001). Bio-moral marginality
— the historical outcome of heterogenous discursive and material practices
directed towards naturalizing caste inequalities—allows us then to reveal the
encasting of the COVID-19 epidemic, whereby subaltern communities—Kerala
fishers, the urban poor at large—were identified and feared as site of contagion,
and thus became the object of moral panic and, as a result, of strong-harmed
interventions. Here, the concept of bio-moral marginality enables us not only to
shed light on the ways layered modalities of discrimination framed responses to
the COVID emergency, but also to show how these constituted the ground for
the articulation of protests.
Fishing Communities in South Kerala

This study is located in the densely populated coastal region of Kerala. The
state’s 590 km coastline is home to about one million people belonging to
various marine fishing communities—differentiated by caste status as well as
religious affiliation as Christian, Muslim or Hindu—with around 180,000
fishermen and their families living in 222 villages (Government of Kerala,
2016). Comprising more than 50,000 active seagoing fishermen in 42 fishing
villages (Government of Kerala, 2021) and the highest number of active women
fish vendors in the state, the coast of Thiruvananthapuram district is strongly
associated with artisanal fishing.4 The majority of fishers in the
Thiruvananthapuram district, and the adjoining Kanyakumari district of Tamil
Nadu, belong to the Mukkuvar community5 (Ram, 1991; Subramanian, 2009).
They are Latin Catholics, classified as an Other Backward Community on the
basis of their historical socio-economic marginality. Apart from fostering
grassroots community organization and trade unions, the Catholic Church plays
an important—albeit at times controversial—role as an intermediary between
fishers and state bureaucracy (Ashni & Santhosh, 2019; Kurien, 1985; Sundar,
2012; Subramanian, 2009). Most families within our study areas rely primarily
on fishing (men) and selling fish (women) for their livelihood, or combine the
latter with other sources of income such as driving three-wheelers and running
small shops (Devika, 2017). This, however, does not exclude a degree of socio-
economic differentiation driven, amongst other causes, by the remittances of
those who have migrated to the Gulf countries of West Asia, participation to
fish marketing and trade or access to salaried employment, as well as the relative
success of more skilled or experienced fishers. In turn, socio-economic
Jament et 7
differentiation is reflected in local everyday politics, whereby wealthier or more
entrepreneurial men can gain prominence in church parish councils,
cooperatives and so on, and through these channels they can promote particular
economic or political interests (see also Subramanian, 2009).
Despite the apparent success of the well-known ‘Kerala model of
development’ (see Franke & Chasin, 1994; Isaac & Franke, 2000) which, in
combination with the influx of migrants’ remittances from West Asia, has led
the state to achieve quality-of-life indicators comparable to those of so-called
developed nations, the socio-economic conditions of Kerala fishing communities
have remained lower than those of higher-status communities in the state. Not
only do fishers live in a crowded environment subject to the destructive effects
of coastal erosion but rank below the state average with reference to access to
health services and education, ownership of land and income (Devika, 2017;
Kurien, 1995; Sathiadhas, 2006; Shyam et al., 2014). Regardless of state
interventions, more than 50% of fishers’ households are deemed to be below the
poverty line—as opposed to a state average of 11% (Ganga, 2020)—and they
often suffer considerable indebtedness (Shyam et al., 2014).6 The bulk of fishing
income goes towards covering daily household expenses, acquiring or servicing
fishing gear and repaying debts. Without regular and successful fishing—as
happened during the COVID-19 emergency as the result of various restrictions,
including bans on fishing and selling fish—income becomes uncertain or reduced,
leading to increased indebtedness which then amplifies the precariousness of
artisanal fishers’ livelihood (Campling et al., 2012; Devika, 2017; Parappurathu
et al., 2019; Shyam et al., 2014). While artisanal fishing communities emerged as
the outliers of the ‘Kerala model of development’ (Kurien, 1995; see also
Subramanian, 2009), post-1991 economic liberalization has increased
inequalities—on the basis of access to new fishing technologies and markets, for
instance—and magnified even further the precariousness of artisanal fishers’
livelihoods (Devika, 2017; see also Subrahmanian & Prasad, 2008).
The socio-economic marginality of artisanal fishers is compounded by their
historically low social status in Kerala’s casted hierarchy (Devika, 2017; Kurien,
2004; Ram, 1991; Subramanian, 2009). Until the early twentieth century, fishers
were the object of blatant caste-based discrimination based on notions of ritual
pollution, and regardless of their sixteenth-century conversion into Christianity,
they continue to be marginalized by ‘forward’ Christian communities by virtue
of their status (Subramanian, 2009; see also Mohan, 2015). Today, their low
status is grounded in their relative poverty as well as in their alleged vulgarity
and poor education, their intense and extrovert sociality, and their fiery
responses to any encroachment on their autonomy (cf Osella & Osella, 2000).
Inland communities, popular press, police and even state bureaucracy often
stereotype coastal communities as beyond the rules of law and civility, and
unable to uplift themselves, while fishers are deemed to be volatile—if not
altogether violent and dangerous (see, e.g., Aswathy & Kalpana, 2019; Punathil,
2018). Fish-vending women—the ‘public face’ of the community, by virtue of
their trade in markets and neighbourhoods outside coastal areas—are the object
of further stigmatization, considered dirty and smelly, immodest and vulgar in
their behaviour, and often standing accused of combining fish selling with
prostitution (Aswathy & Kalpana, 2019; Busby, 2000). As in the
case of Dalit women performing in popular Marathi theatre discussed by

Shailaja Piak (2022), the alleged vulgarity of fish-vending women ‘attaches not
to the task or even the art primarily but to the body of the person that performs it
and thus forecloses [other] economic opportunities’ (p. 3). That is, the bio-moral
nature of fish-vending women is represented and constituted as the opposite of
the modest and respectable modern (savarna/upper caste) middle-class woman,
the extrovert sociality of fish-vending women becoming simultaneously object of
repulsion and attraction, of policing and reform.
In the 1980s, artisanal fishers came together under grassroots organizations and
trade unions to oppose the introduction of trawling and large-scale mechanized
fishing (see, e.g., Dietrich & Nayak, 2002; Kurien, 1991; Kurien & Achari,
1988; Meynen, 1989).7 This political mobilization—supported by progressive
sections of the Catholic Church and by seasoned activists from the state and
beyond—lent artisanal fishers a collective voice, bargaining power and some
recognition of the dignity of their work (Nayak, 2017). At the same time, fishing
communities developed novel ways to organize fishing, to regulate fish sales
and establish auction- based prices, to protect the work of fish-vending women,
and more. However, while over the years they have been the object of state-led
developmental interventions designed to uplift their socio-economic conditions
(see, e.g., Kurien, 2004; Kurien & Paul, 2001), in post-economic liberalization
Kerala they are marked out as a backward and uneducated community, unable,
even unwilling to reap the benefits of market-led (and state-supported)
‘modernizations’ of the fishing industry and coastal economies at large (Devika,
2017).
The First Lockdown and the Politics of

Anti-COVID Intervention
On 3 February 2020, the Kerala state government declared a ‘state calamity’
after a medical student returning from Wuhan tested positive for COVID-19 on
30 January. Three thousand people were put under home quarantine. As the
virus began to spread across the state—with Pathanamthitta district as the
epicentre—the government enforced strict quarantine measures for those either
testing positive for COVID-19 or who had been in contact with a confirmed
case, accompanied by a ban on public gatherings. Schools and colleges were
closed down, and religious institutions—temples, mosques and churches—were
asked to suspend all public worship. Meanwhile, provisions aimed at securing
the welfare of the most vulnerable sections of the society were put in place. For
instance, the government ensured the continuity of midday meals programme in
schools via home deliveries of food parcels, and emergency shelter was
provided for migrant labourers working in the state. By 15 March, the Kerala
Health Ministry inaugurated the ‘Break the Chain’ campaign aimed at
encouraging hand washing and the use of sanitizers to limit viral transmission.
This was followed by the announcement of the allocation of
`20,000 crores (roughly 2.7 billion US dollars) from the state’s purse to finance
interventions to contain the pandemic, and to support the livelihood of the local
Jament et 9
population. These measures included an overall strengthening of healthcare
provisions, distribution of free food rations, implementation of job creation
schemes, and early disbursement of old-age pensions. On 23 March, the Kerala
government declared a state-wide lockdown, accompanied by the enforcement
of strict social distancing measures.
The lockdown measures implemented by the Kerala state and, later, by the
fed- eral government of India, had significant implications for the livelihood of
coastal communities. On 30 March, the state’s Fisheries Department issued a
prohibitive order under the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1987, and the Disaster
Management Act, 2005. The order stated the following:
(1) Auction in fishing harbours, fish landing centres, beaches are strictly
prohibited.
(2) Public gathering of fishermen/fishers/fish vendors is strictly prohibited.
(3) In the absence of auction, the price of landed fish must be fixed by
Matsyafed authorities in consultation with the local Fisheries Department
officials, Fisheries co-operatives and Harbour Management Societies on
the basis of average price obtained during the previous week in each
landing place.
(4) Traditional fishing crafts are permitted to go for fishing. However, the
trawlers and the mechanized vessels are strictly prohibited.
The order also entrusted District Fisheries officers to ‘sensitize the
fishermen through concerned Fishermen Associations’ to comply with
the regu- latory guidelines and the Director of Fisheries to send ‘daily
compliance reports’ to the government. (G.O.(Rt)No.201/2020/F&P)
The effects of this on artisanal fishers and their families were felt immediately.
Whilst the state government allowed the operation of ‘traditional fishing
crafts’— albeit with strict limits on the size of fishing crews—in villages such as
Marianad, the church’s parish council imposed a month-long total fishing ban. 8
In both Puthiyathura and Marianad our respondents explained that during the
lockdown they had lost between half and a third of their fishing days, with an
equivalent reduction in income. As a result, fishers’ households accumulated
considerable debts, and only half of the fishers had any hope of recovering
income losses during the forthcoming monsoon season, when fish catches are
normally large. Most importantly, however, the introduction of restrictions and
novel regulations on fish auctions not only diminished fishers’ income further by
fixing prices, but made it almost impossible for women vendors to access fish on
credit. Those few women who did manage to acquire fish, found that the
lockdown substantially restricted their daily vending rounds, thus reducing their
income. Unsurprisingly, fisher men and women complained about the economic
losses resulting from the lockdown and about the restrictions imposed on
everyday sociality, as well as about the lack of clarity and consistency in the
rules restricting fishing and regulating fish auctions. And yet, our respondents
in both Puthiyathura and Marianad balanced the shortcomings of the lockdown
against the material support, especially the extension of financial help and
distribution of free food rations they had received from the
state, local panchayats and Matsyafed [Kerala state-sponsored fishers’

cooperative]. Moreover, alongside disseminating information on COVID-19
prevention, churches distributed `2,000 (circa 28 US dollars) to every
parishioner’s household. Local people expressed a high degree of satisfaction
with the aid they received from these different bodies, and regardless of the
economic losses they had suffered, coastal communities showed substantial
compliance with both preventive measures and lockdown restrictions. In other
words, during the first lockdown, interventions to prevent the spread of the virus
and support the livelihood of fishing communities in the Thiruvananthapuram
district, as well as the response and compliance of the local population appear to
confirm the widely reported and commented upon the success of the ‘Kerala
model’ of response to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, when the resurgence
of the virus led to a second lockdown (June–August 2020), the compact between
state and coastal communities began to unravel.
The Second Lockdown and the Making of

Fishing Communities as ‘Superspread Zones’
At the beginning of July, Poonthura—a coastal area in the Thiruvananthapuram
City Corporation—and Pulluvila—a village in Karumkulam Grama Panchayath
in the Thiruvananthapuram district—became the apparent epicentre of a dan-
gerous ‘superspread’ episode. After returning from a fish-buying trip to nearby
Kanyakumari (Tamil Nadu), a fish merchant from the Kumarichantha market
(under Poonthura police jurisdiction9) tested positive for COVID-19. Soon after,
Poonthura and adjoining areas became the focus of a media-driven social panic,
leading to drastic government action. The Kumarichantha fish trader appeared to
have passed on the virus to ten other people through direct contact, while
another 12 cases of contagion from unidentified sources were found in the village
and nearby areas. The government responded swiftly, establishing containment
zones in the affected coastal areas, thereby limiting mobility and public amenities.
A draconian ‘triple lockdown’—enforced and monitored by the police—was
declared for the whole of Thiruvananthapuram City Corporation.10
As the crisis began to unfold, the Kerala Chief Minister singled out the ‘fish
vendor of Poonthura’11 as a dangerous ‘superspreader’, an accusation soon taken
up by the local press. Under the title ‘Spreading like fire, crossing 100’, on
8 July, the popular Malayala Manorama newspaper reported that out of 44 new
COVID-19 cases in the district, 22 were inhabitants from Poonthura (Malayala
Manorama, July 8, p. 3). The article continued, ‘It is a matter of anxiety (parib-
hranthi) that there has been a rise of people affected by the disease in Poonthura
and reports of its spread to other coastal areas. Many local shops remained open
even during the lockdown. It is also challenging to see people gathering in
streets’ (p. 3). Similarly to the vernacular press, the English language The Hindu
newspaper reported that, ‘Many of those infected are fish vendors who used to
transport fish from the Kumarichanda market’ (p. 3). The virus was also
beginning to spread in Pulluvila and neighbouring villages in the Karumkulam
Grama Panchayath. Local
Jament et 1
social organizations demanded the implementation of thorough virus testing and
contact-tracing in the affected coastal villages, as well as the establishment of
quarantine facilities in these localities.
Amidst growing anxiety about an alarming rise in COVID-19 cases, over the
following days fishers and fish vendors continued to be blamed for the spread of
the pandemic across the district. On 8 July, the television channel Mathrabhumi
News hosted a discussion entitled ‘Poonthura on high alert’.12 Opening the
debate, the anchor reported that the rate of infection in coastal areas was ten
times higher than the current state average. Such a ‘scary situation’
(bheethippeduthunna) justified the strict measures ordered by the Kerala Chief
Minister, in that in Poonthura, ‘there are high chances of people carrying the
infection and going elsewhere’. The anchor mentioned that, while a ‘rapid action
force’ might be deployed in the village, the district’s coastal area from Poovar
(22 km south of Poonthura close to the district’s border with Tamil Nadu) to
Shankhumukham (6 km to the north, close to Thiruvananthapuram airport) were
witnessing a similar rapid spread of the virus. While admitting the possible
unreliability of infection statistics, a medical doctor who participated in the
discussion criticized coastal inhabitants’ ‘lack of alertness’ (jagrathakkuravu)
about COVID-19 precautions, concluding that, ‘if Dharavi [Mumbai’s biggest
slum] can successfully resist COVID-19, so could Poonthura’. The same day,
Asianet News reported an ‘extremely serious situation in Poonthura’, calling it a
‘superspread zone’ which made it a ‘centre of anxiety’ (ashankakendram).
The following day, Poonthura remained in the news. In response to what
Malayala Manorama called the ‘threat of social spread’ (p. 1), the state
government deployed 25 armed police commandoes in the village. The
commandoes held a ‘flag march’ around the village, warning the local population
via a loudspeaker that, ‘those who get out of their home unnecessarily will be
caught with the help of the commandos and sent to far off quarantine centres’ (p.
1). The Thiruvananthapuram City Mayor was reported to have requested the
coastal police and Coast Guard to stop Poonthura fishers from going back and
forth to Tamil Nadu during their fishing expeditions. In the meantime, Kerala
Kaumudi openly criticized those coastal villagers who increased the social
spreading of COVID-19 in densely populated places such as Poonthura by
ignoring social distancing norms in fish auctions and markets. The article
argued that Poonthura fish-vending women brought ‘fish and Covid’ to the
doorsteps of Thiruvananthapuram households, creating fear and panic in the city.
Poonthura had been sealed off from the rest of the district, and the article
reported that the city Police Commissioner had confirmed that villagers who left
their homes unnecessarily would be removed ‘to remote quarantine centres’.
With an increase of COVID-19 cases in the state as a whole, on 10 July, the
Malayala Manorama suggested (p. 1) that the ‘super-spread’ in Poonthura was
spilling over to other parts of the district, ‘causing great concern’. Kerala
Kaumudi reported that the chief minister had deployed 500 police personnel in
Poonthura, and the Poonthura Corporation Ward had been declared ‘a critical
containment zone with strict control on people’s movement and closure of shops
after 11 am’. The newspaper warned that the whole of Thiruvananthapuram was
moving towards a ‘superspreading’ situation, and the state government was
likely ‘to
introduce the triple lockdown in the city’ (p. 2). However, regardless of the
introduction of stringent containment measures and a total ban on fishing,
COVID-19 cases in Poonthura continued to rise.13
In the meantime, a virus testing facility was established in Poonthura’s
primary health centre, and the government announced a programme of
sanitization of all the houses in the village, as well as the provision of 5 kg of
rice to all resident families. These measures, however, appeared to do little to
assuage the mounting tension in Poonthura, where the local population felt
themselves to be under siege, unable to buy food as all shops remained closed
the whole day, without access to adequate local quarantine facilities, and
experiencing what they considered as unwarranted harassment from the police.
These concerns led to open protests, which received widespread media attention
for several days.
On 10 July, the television channel Mathruhumi News announced that, ‘In
COVID superspread zone Poonthura, people are in the streets arguing with the
police in violation of lockdown norms.’14 Local people, it continued, ‘cannot
accept or inter- nalise lockdown rules’, especially those concerning limits on
grocery-shopping time, and police enforcement of the same. The reporter
repeatedly mentioned instances of ‘lockdown violations and people not wearing
face masks’, showing images recorded earlier in the day of a local woman
protesting vocally against the lockdown rules, while bystanders whistled and
clapped in support. The same report moved on to show a clip—looped several
times during the news—in which local people followed a health workers’ car,
shouting protests against the workers’ arrival. On the same day, another
television channel, Asianet, opened its local news programme under the
headline, ‘Protest in Poonthura, people demand relaxations in lockdown
restrictions’15. The news anchor asked the reporter broadcasting from Poonthura
whether the evolving situation in the village amounted to ‘a plain violation of
the triple lockdown’. The reporter responded by explaining local people’s
concerns and reasons for the protests: unworkable restrictions on food shopping,
ban on fishing and lack of adequate facilities for people in isolation at home or
in the quarantine centre. Importantly, many complained of ‘false reporting about
Poonthura’, whereby COVID-19 cases from other areas were attributed to the
village, thus inflating local contagion numbers. Whilst the government appeared
to respond to these protests by extending shop opening times, and allowing
fishing and selling of fish within the locality, Asianet carried a full-length
interview with Kerala Health Minister K.
K. Shailaja, who severely criticized the protests in Poonthura. Shailaja teacher,
as she is popularly known in Kerala, adopted an admonishing tone, asking
Poonthura people ‘to stop dragging Kerala towards a big disaster’, and inviting
‘all the citizens to advise these people’. ‘We do this work [to control COVID-
19]’, she continued, ‘in a very adventurous way, and they [Poonthura people]
should realise it...This is not a joke, and the [local] leaders should drive it home
amongst their followers’. She warned against undermining the collective efforts
to controlling the disease ‘at the last moment’, thus leading ‘people to slaughter’
(janangale kolakku kodukkaruthu). Kairali News presented a more sensationalist
reporting of the events in Poonthura, under the headline, ‘Lockdown violation in
Poonthura, people protest, clash with police.’16 It repeatedly talked about a
‘situation of tension’, resulting in local people confronting police and health
Jament et 1
workers. It showed protesters
sloganeering, with some men and women shouting and then engaging in
arguments with bystanders. Standing away from the scene, the reporter noted that
‘people were not wearing any masks’. Citing the words of police personnel
present at the scene, the reporter commented that, as ‘there is no other way to
convince these people’, the police had contacted local religious leaders to press
people to abandon the protest and return home. Nevertheless, Kairali News
acknowledged ‘real issues’ behind what it described as the ‘tense situation’ in
Poonthura. ‘They struggle with the sea to make a living’, it told its audience, ‘so
naturally they are likely to respond in a robust manner. the misunderstanding
[about the lockdown] among the people
might require some awareness generation’.
After initial negative reporting, the strength of feelings expressed during
the protests found its way in the media. They started to highlight apparent
shortcomings in government interventions in coastal areas, eventually adopting
a more sympathetic stance to the concerns of fishing communities. On 11 July,
Malayala Manorama returned to the Poonthura incidents with a banner headline
entitled, ‘Governance failure in lining up help: Frustrated, people on the streets
in Poonthura’ (p. 3). Reporting that around 250 people had gathered in a
demonstration against food shortages created by the partial closure of provision
shops, it cited the Poonthura parish priest who called the protest ‘a natural
reaction.’ It also reported that, amidst growing fears about the spreading of the
virus through social contact, the Kerala chief minister had clarified that the
current lockdown made all public gatherings illegal and that the police could
intervene to enforce the rule of law. However, police had refrained from doing so,
recognizing an ‘exceptional situation’. Meanwhile, the Indian Medical
Association (IMA) condemned Poonthura people’s ‘bad behaviour towards
health workers’. The same day, Kerala Kaumudi appeared with an article
entitled, ‘Caution and care thrown to wind’ as Poonthura residents protest (p. 3).
The article reported that Kerala Health Minister Shailaja Teacher had revealed
that ‘people with vested interests’ instigated the protest by spreading rumours
about an inflated count of infected people in Poonthura. She warned of an
impending ‘catastrophe’ if protests continued, claiming that ‘the disease was
spreading from the coasts to elsewhere’.
By 12 July, the Poonthura protest fuelled heated exchanges between the Left
Democratic Front government, and the Congress-led United Democratic Front
opposition, leading to an inevitable politicization of the pandemic. Observing
the return of ‘peace in Poonthura’, Malayala Manorama reported that the
government had responded to ‘the needs of the local people’. Under the
triumphant headline, ‘Awake at last: COVID treatment facilities, 40 tonnes of
rice, essential provisions’ (p. 3), the newspaper explained that, while the
government had allocated 5 kg of rice to ‘8110 Public Distribution System
ration-cardholders in Poonthura’, the Kerala Chief Minister had distanced his
party [CPI(M)] activists from the protest, which he attributed to ‘a conspiracy by
the opposition’ (p. 3). This claim was denied in the same article by the local
parish priest who countered that ‘his people’ were simply trying to get access to
food supplies. Indeed, the opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala [Indian
National Congress party] was reported to have declared that the same fishers who
had received public praise and recognition for their search and rescue efforts
during the 2018 monsoon floods, were now ‘insulted’ by the chief minister.
Jament et 1
With time, public concerns about the alleged prevalence of COVID-19 in
Poonthura were extended to the whole coastal belt. On 12 July, for instance, The
Hindu wrote that ‘COVID-19 is threatening to engulf Kerala’s coastal belt, as
densely populated fisher colonies with their crowded living environs… should
be seen as one large community cluster, because coastal living conditions are the
same everywhere’ (p. 1). The entire coastline of Kerala was now under
suspicion of spreading the virus to the whole state, with calls for strict ‘control
measures’. Crowded living conditions ‘everywhere on the coast’ became a cause
for public concern. Newspapers and news television channels also reported a
dramatic goodwill gesture in Poonthura, whereby health workers were
‘welcomed with a shower of flowers’ when they arrived in the village (Malayala
Manorama p. 3), and the chief minister thanked ‘the people of Poonthura’ for
such a public gesture. The Kerala Kaumudi also published a photograph of the
minister responsible for Thiruvananthapuram opening temporary hospital
facilities in Poonthura in the presence of the local parish priest.
As the Poonthura protest faded from news headlines, reports about the
‘severe spread’ of COVID-19 along the coastal belt continued unabated
throughout the months of July and August. On 18 July, the government
announced a ‘complete lockdown’ of the coast, having identified five ‘big
clusters’ of contagion, including ‘extremely severe’ spread in Poonthura and
Pulluvila villages. Suddenly, Pulluvila appeared in the COVID map, while other
fishing villages in the district (such as Anchuthengu and Perumathura) were
also marked out as ‘hotspots’. The coastal belt was portrayed as a place like
Mumbai’s Dharavi—an inner city township often referred to in derogatory
terms as ‘Asia’s largest slum’—in which crowded habitation and lack of
sanitation facilitate rapid and extensive spread of the pandemic (Mathrubhumi
News, 29 July).17 Meanwhile, after initial hesitation, the Chief Minister had
confirmed that ‘there is social spreading of the disease in the state capital’
(Kerala Kaumudi, p. 1), with Poonthura and Pulluvila as the ‘main spots’.
Inevitably, strict containment action followed, leading to a full lockdown of the
coastal area from Anchuthengu to Pozhiyoor. Amidst growing confusion about
the size and scale of the contagion in the district, Kerala Kaumudi’s headlines
reflected a mounting apprehension: ‘Anxiety of social spreading’ (18 July);
‘COVID tightens its grip’ (21 July); ‘More than 1,000 cases in one day’ (23
July) explaining an ‘extremely complex situation’; ‘COVID still keeps its grip’
(27 July). With the monsoon in full swing, coastal fishing villages had other
problems to deal with. Adding to the predicaments of stringent restrictions on
fishing and fish sales during the usually profitable monsoon season, a number of
high waves incidents destroyed several houses and roads along the coast.
Eventually the virus abated, and by mid-August lockdown in the
Thiruvananthapuram district was lifted, except in ‘critical containment zones’,
which were located especially on the coast. Before and during the second
lockdown, coastal fishing communities in the Thiruvananthapuram district
became the object of intense public scrutiny and government interventions,
fuelled by a growing panic about the sudden social transmission of the virus.
For a time, in their reports, popular vernacular newspapers and television
channels mobilized (either explicitly or implicitly) widespread stereotypes about
fishing communities, to blame the latter’s practices, dispositions
and lifestyle for the spread of the virus, as well as for an apparent lack of
compliance with medical advice and government regulations. Indeed, contrary to
public representations, fishing communities not only voluntarily made
available local public structures for setting up emergency treatment centres but
mobilized a network of mutual support to provide relief for the most vulnerable
households—from distrib- uting provisions, to organizing transport to treatment
centres and hospitals—and local youths placed bottles of sanitizer, buckets of
water and soap in public places to encourage hand washing (see Crane &
Pearson, 2021). Such a spontaneous mobilization against the spread of COVID-
19 did not find room either in the media or government reports. As coastal
communities found themselves unable to voice their grievances with media and
government agencies, they made themselves heard through protests which
eventually resulted in more sensitive news coverage and supportive
interventions.
Living Under Lockdowns

After Poonthura, a number of popular protests took place in other fishing villages
which were being targeted by COVID-prevention measures, as well as by the
media’s negative stereotypes—Anchuthengu and Pulluvila in particular. As far
as we could gather from direct observation and follow-up interviews with local
inhabitants, these protests were largely spontaneous, organized by the villagers,
without any explicit support from religious or political organizations. Most
significantly, women appeared to be prominent in all of them. A common thread
of complaints appears to run through the protests, from loss of livelihoods and
perceived lack of adequate government support and health provisions, to overly
aggressive policing of the lockdown, and most importantly, extensive limitations
on people’s movement. We have already seen that, during the first lockdown,
fishers’ livelihoods were affected severely by the disruption of fishing and
constraints imposed on the selling of fish. The consequences on incomes of
fishing households were somewhat cushioned by the extension of material
support from both government and local parishes, as well as by access to various
modalities of formal and informal credit. From July onwards, however, the
disruption of fishers’ livelihoods was more intense, in that a series of bans on
fishing coincided with the arrival of the monsoon, a time of hazardous but
extremely economically rewarding fishing. A feeling of increased economic
precarity was all too apparent in the conversations we had with fishers during
the second lockdown. ‘You know we are fishermen, we don’t have other jobs
and life other than this’, Michael, a 45-year-old fisher from the Poonthura
Corporation Ward, told us. ‘We can only continue our family life as a result of
what we do and earn from our fishing job at sea. There is no other way!’ Maria, a
51-year-old fish-vending woman from Anchuthengu, continued, ‘For a coastal
person, there is no life without fish. We have never experienced such dif-
ficulties, even at the time of Ockhi cyclone. People at home are struggling now.
What do we do with this 5 kg rice the government gave us? Even for a rice meal,
we need other ingredients to go with it and for that we need money, right?
Current
Jament et 1
[electricity] bills, and other expenses are mounting, we have been facing
massive difficulties [in a higher tone]. This is very difficult time for all of us.’
The economic hardship engendered by restrictions and bans on fishing was
compounded by the feeling that lockdown rules had been implemented without
taking into consideration actual seasonal work practices. Fishers from Pulluvila,
one of the lockdown areas, explained that ‘In aani–aadi [monsoon] season we
go fishing from the Vizhinjam fishing harbour, now the government say that we
are not allowed to go there, and from here [Pulluvila] we can go only one day a
week. Who takes these decisions? We go today, we may not get enough fish
even to match our costs, and we may not cover this cost the next day’
(Silvadason, a 47-year-old fisher from Pulluvila). Even when fishers from COVID-
affected areas were allowed to resume fishing from the Vizhinjam fishing
harbour, their condi- tion remained precarious. Indeed, during the second
lockdown, seven of the ten respondents we interviewed reported very high
(50%–75%) levels of income loss this time, two others high (30%–50%) levels
and one extremely high (>75%) level. Not a single respondent was optimistic
about recovering the losses, and the monsoon days were almost over by the last
week of August when the interviews were conducted. Seven households had to
borrow substantial amounts of money (up to
`10,000, or more in one case) and two others had defaulted on repaying old
debts. This time, nobody received any direct assistance from the church, though
some families were given food aid from the Kerala Catholic Youth Movement
(KCYM). Although respondents said there had been ‘no intervention’ from the
church, they refrained from criticizing it openly. All the respondents reported
having received free rations from the government, though six of them noted that
these services were not easily accessible, due to lockdown and containment
measures. A comment we often heard from fishers was, ‘We don’t want any aid,
just let us do our work!’.
Just as important in many a fishing household’s economy has been the loss
of income due to restrictions on women selling fish. As the lockdown unfolded
in coastal ‘containment zones’, restrictions on women’s trade changed, moving
from a complete ban, to the permission to sell fish within the women’s own
tightly restricted locality, and, later, women in possession of a ‘COVID negative
certifi- cate’ were allowed to resume sales beyond the area of residence, but only
for a few hours per day. ‘I used to sell fish daily worth `15,000–20,000’ a 49-
year-old, experienced fish-vending woman from Anchuthengu told us, and now
it has been reduced to `2,000–3,000.
Unable to sell fish at the roadside or local markets, some women fish vendors
tried their luck outside their containment zone. Given the media panic about the
‘super-spread’ of COVID-19 in coastal areas, they experienced unfriendliness,
even open hostility, ‘Markets are not yet open, therefore we have been selling
fish on the road side, but when we go to the individual houses to sell fish from
the door as we used to do, our usual houses don’t buy fish, others are reluctant,
as they say that Corona is spread through people from Poonthura’ (Leeanamma,
a 43-year-old fish-vending woman from Poonthura). Whilst other respondents
also reported heavy-handed harassment from the police—fines were issued, fish-
carrying baskets were confiscated or destroyed—once they tried to enter the city,
a major problem faced by women vendors was a change in the fish market.
Women found it difficult
to buy fish for re-selling, as the majority of daily catches were now going to ‘big
merchants and bulk-buyers’ who monopolized fish auctions. And when women
could buy enough fish to re-sell, they complained that it was at a higher price
than usual, reducing considerably their possible income.
Unsurprisingly, it was women fish vendors who led some of the protests against
the lockdown and COVID-containment measures. A number of other issues
agitated those men and women who participated in these apparently spontaneous
demonstra- tions. Alongside complaints against bans on fishing and fish selling
which diminished their livelihood, local people talked to us about their concern
with the lack of adequate or prompt medical interventions in their villages, as
well as a generalized confusion regarding COVID testing and self-isolation.
Others complained of harsh treatment when they had to seek medical treatment
in local hospitals, as well as of daily police harassment. Most importantly,
everyone resented the ways coastal communities had been scapegoated and vilified
for the spread of COVID-19 in the whole district, often on the basis of what local
people knew to be inflated infection figures or totally unproven rumours about
instances of contagion.
On 24 August, various bans on fishing and restrictions on movement between
villages were lifted, and life returned to a degree of normality. It is certainly
difficult to estimate the extent of the economic losses the COVID-19 emergency
brought onto fishing households. What is certain, however, is that over the
course of the two lockdowns, fishing communities’ perception of and response
to government interventions changed considerably, moving from acceptance and
support, to a degree of resentment and even open protest.
COVID-19 and the Politics of Bio-moral Marginality

We have seen that the two lockdowns during the COVID-19 emergency
underscored and amplified the precarity of artisanal fishers’ livelihoods. Various
fishing bans and restrictions on fishing days, as well as reduced bargaining
power at fish auctions, substantially reduced the income of the majority of
households who rely on day-to-day catch and sales. Throughout the emergency,
little or no recognition was given to the critical importance of the monsoon
fishing season for recouping losses, reducing indebtedness and providing
opportunities for small savings cushion for fisher households. Whilst we have no
hard data to quantify the actual losses suffered by fishing households, all our
respondents reported a substantial diminution of their income, and increased
indebtedness (see also Bennet et al., 2020; Fiorella et al., 2021). Most
importantly, the lockdowns brought to the fore the marginality of fish-vending
women, whose voices and interests were side-lined in decisions about the
introduction of emergency measures for fish auctions and fish selling.
Regardless of the centrality of women’s activities within the economy of fishing
households, women found it increasingly difficult to buy fish on credit for
resale, and when they did manage to do so, they made little money, but suffered
harassment and overt hostility. Indeed, their livelihood might suffer a more
permanent decline, in that the COVID-19 emergency has witnessed the
emergence of new players and methods of selling, and transformations of the fish
market which might
Jament et 1
in future exclude women altogether. Wholesalers have gained a more dominant
position in fish auctions, and many young men—especially those who returned
to unemployment from labouring jobs in the Gulf countries of West Asia—have
started home deliveries of fish, booked by clients through the phone or via social
media.18 One way or another, women’s access to the market might now become
restricted, to the point of being economically unviable.
The build-up to and unfolding of the second lockdown reveals, in turn, how
the socio-economic marginality of artisanal fishing communities is amplified by
the (performative) work of stereotyped representations of their bio-moral dis-
positions, which has the effect of naturalizing marginality itself. The media and
government agencies were quick to assume that coastal communities would be
the natural breeding ground for contagion—overcrowding, poor housing, lack of
hygiene and inability or unwillingness to follow lockdown rules working
together to lead, inevitably, to ‘superspread’ episodes and social transmission of
the virus. In reality, this had not been the case—in that the virus spread from the
popular and busy Kumarichanda fish market to coastal communities, and not the
other way around.19 And yet, labelling the whole coast as a dangerous
‘superspread’ area not only shifted the blame for poor public health from
government neglect to the social practices of fishing communities but also
justified the implementation of strict containment measures, enforced even by
the deployment of armed police commandoes—a response unimaginable for
Thiruvananthapuram’s densely populated middle-class neighbourhoods.
Indeed, the social panic created by these stereotyped representations, implicit
in the media report and government response alike, not only led to heavy-handed
policing of coastal communities and victimization of its inhabitants—fish-vending
women in particular—but made government agencies deaf to the growing
concerns of the local population. Faced with a fast-growing and vicious
pandemic, even the most robust health infrastructure, such as those put to work
by the ‘Kerala model’ of disease control, are bound, inevitably, to fall short of
plans and expectations. Here we are not implying that the Kerala government
failed its citizens. With somewhat scarce resources but substantial popular
mobilization, the measures it implemented to control and contain the pandemic
have been far more effective and successful than those introduced elsewhere in
India, as well as in many a ‘western’ nation (Bourgeron, 2021; Bratich, 2021;
Crane & Pearson, 2021). Rather, we argue that the bio-moral marginality of
coastal fishing communities not only informed the social panic drummed up by
the media, but overdetermined, at least for a time, government responses and
actions.
The Left Democratic Front government treated with some suspicion the pro-
tests which took place in a number of coastal communities, a move informed by
a perception of coastal communities as ‘traditionally’ swayed by the Catholic
Church and its allegiance to Congress politics. It is certainly true that the
opposition parties coalescing in the United Democratic Front tried to turn the
fishers’ protests into political fodder for their campaign in the Kerala state
legislative assembly election, which took place in April 2021—and saw them
utterly defeated by LDF candidates. Indeed, the UDF had already tried a similar
move in December 2017,
when it attempted to gain political capital from fishers’ protests against govern-
ment failings in forewarning coastal communities of the arrival of the
devastating cyclone Ockhi, which eventually led to substantial loss of lives
amongst fishing crews who had gone to sea unaware of the impending danger.
What is significant about the cyclone Ockhi mass protest which took place in
Thiruvananthapuram on 11 December 2017, though, is the way in which the
media generated widespread panic in the city by predicting inevitable disorders -
even riots - from the protesting fishing communities. And the following day, it
was with some surprise that the media acknowledged that fishers’ legitimate
anger had not turned to violence: The huge protest had been combative but
peaceful. Just one year later, in a true media reversal, fishermen were widely
celebrated across the state as ‘super-heroes’ for their courageous and selfless
intervention to rescue people stranded by sudden and devastating floods.20 And yet,
as we have seen, by 2020 these same ‘super-heroes’ were represented once more
as villains, this time the reckless and dangerous ‘super- spreaders’ of contagion.
Indeed, such an apparently contradictory oscillation— which we saw at work
when the media were quick to praise fishers who, the day after protesting against
health worker, greeted with them with flowers—underscores the ways through
which fishers can be tolerated, even celebrated, only as long as they perform
their own abjection by turning themselves into docile subjects responsive to the
pedagogical interventions of the state (cf. Mamdani, 2002).
It is certainly true that fishing communities the world over experience mul-
tiple forms of economic and social marginality, often reviled and romanticized
in equal measure by inland society (see, e.g., Avni, 2017; Jentoft & Davis, 1993;
Ounanian et al., 2021; Pollnac & Poggie, 2008). However, unlike their Scottish
counterparts discussed by Jane Nadel-Klein (2003), the lifeworld of Kerala
coastal communities is seldom, if at all, romanticized in popular culture, thus
underscoring the depth of the bio-moral marginality experienced by Kerala’s
fishing communities. Here, the concept of bio-moral marginality is a crucial
tool for understanding the multiple nodes and modalities of (political, economic
and cultural) exclusion faced not only by fishing communities in coastal Kerala
but also by other subaltern communities in India—the urban poor and migrants,
for instance—who had to endure the discriminatory, or even overtly repressive
politics of the COVID-19 epidemic. Intersecting with and naturalizing wider
modalities of (political, economic and cultural) exclusion, the encasting of the
COVID-19 pandemic in terms of lacks or shortcomings in the bio-moral
attributes of the subalterns allowed for shifting the blame from failing state
responsibili- ties and infrastructures onto a rhetoric of community ignorance and
unhygienic dispositions.
Whilst such a move echoes a familiar rhetoric of neoliberal governance hold-
ing individuals responsible for what are, in fact, societal or state failures, at the
same time the politics and aesthetics engendered by and engendering bio-moral
marginality discussed in this article evoke historical experiences of social
abjection which continue to constitute the ground for social mobilization.
Reflecting on the consequences of the COVID-19 emergency in coastal areas, a
fish-vending woman from Poonthura who had been admitted to a local hospital,
told us:
Jament et 2
Since we were there due to COVID, we have done all cleaning and other work for
Karakonam Medical College [a local hospital located at the border between Kerala
and Tamil Nadu]. But the people on duty there don’t consider us humans. Look at the
photos [on her mobile phone], how the food and waste are put together. Yesterday we
collected all the waste and put it in bags, separately. Now they have put the food they
give us beside the waste, like what we do for the dogs. This is how they treat us! We
have many such stories to say.
Whilst these words lay bare the work of bio-moral marginality in attributing
(encasted) hierarchical values to human life, they also underscore its continued
significance in the lives of the subaltern. Whilst we do not wish to claim naïve
continuities between colonial and post-colonial Kerala (see Arnold, 2020), we
note nevertheless that the discursive and material centrality of bio-moral
difference to the (re)production of caste hierarchies was all too evident to
subaltern socio- religious reform movements—from those of Pulayas and
Parayans, to those of Ezhavas—which animated the politics of late colonial
Kerala (see, e.g., Mohan, 2015; Narayan, 2021; Osella & Osella, 2000).
These movements articulated their critique of and militant opposition to the
practices of untouchability and unapproachability through the deployment of a
modern ethics of radical equality grounded in a notion of common humanity
which sought to disrupt the natural- ization of caste discriminations. It is
precisely in response to such a politics of refusal that the discourse of bio-moral
differences reappears, albeit in different guises, as the modern means to imagine
and express inequalities and status hierarchies. From this vantage point, it is
perhaps unsurprising that one of the most resented COVID-containment policy
at the centre of the protests we discussed in this article was the implementation
of strict lockdown measures limiting the movements of coastal communities.
Indeed, the right to circulate freely in public spaces (sanchara swathanthryam)
was and remains one of the most powerful expressions of assertive actions
against caste discrimination.21
Acknowledgements
We thank Caroline Aveland, Roderick Stirrat, J. Devika, Atreyee Sen, Vivek Narayan,
John Kurien, Geert de Neve, Rakhal Gaitonde and Sanjay Srivastava for their comments
on earlier drafts. Empirical data underpinning this research, plus other environmental and
contextual information, are available from the UK Data Service [at https://ukdataservice.
ac.uk]. Access is subject to registration at the UKDS, and due to ethical considerations,
some ethnographic data might be embargoed until 2028.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, author-
ship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
This research was supported by generous grants from the Sussex Sustainability Research
Programme and the UKRI Global Challenges Research Fund (Grant ES/T003103/1).
ORCID iD
Filippo Osella https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7054-9275
Notes
1. In recent years climatic changes have triggered a number of violent meteorological
events which not only provoked extensive damage across the state, but also claimed
many lives. As the result of the tropical cyclone Ockhi, for instance, more than 200
artisanal fishers lost their lives at sea, while 550 fishers were declared missing at sea.
The 2018 and 2019 floods claimed more than 500 lives in various rural locations
across Kerala.
2. This zoonotic virus spread by fruit bats affected areas of northern Kerala, leading to
the death of 17 people infected by the disease.
3. Discussing Victorian representations of Scottish fishers, Nadel-Klein writes that,
‘Fishers were seen as different not only for their way of life but for their general
appearance, including physiognomy, dress, and facial expressions. More than one
writer has described the fishermen in what sound to modern ears as racially
suggestive terms, stressing physiognomy as well as dress, facial expression and
supposed character. Descriptions of Scottish fishers that refer to dark features are
intriguing given the widespread belief that skin color was a particularly important
marker of a group’s evolutionary status’ (2003, p. 45).
4. Our study area consists mostly of fishers operating small motorized boats (of up to
34 feet length)—that are the most common fishing vessels—alongside motorized
fiberglass canoes and non-motorized catamaran rafts (SIFFS, 2017).
5. In this district, there are a number of pockets of Hindu and Muslim fishing communi-
ties who, regardless of their historical roots, might or might not recognize
themselves, or be recognized by others, as Mukkuvars (Alex, 2020; Punathil, 2018).
6. Whilst the cost of fishing—from fishing gear and engines, to petrol—has been
increasing at a steady pace (CMFRI, 2019), in recent years, Kerala marine fish catch
has declined, with reductions in species which are the mainstay of artisanal fishers
(CMFRI, 2015, 2019; Sathiadhas, 2006; State Planning Board, 2017).
7. In recent years, a new movement has emerged, this time in opposition to the
construc- tion of a privately-owned container port at the site of one of south Kerala’s
main fishing harbours (see, e.g., Ashni & Santhosh, 2019).
8. This move had been anticipated on 22 March with a one week ban on fishing.
9. Poonthura police jurisdiction includes not only Poonthura, but also other villages
such as Ambalathara, Kumarichanda, Puthenpally, Kamleswaram, Muttathara,
Kallumukku and Beemapalli. Police interventions or reported cases in this area are
recorded under Poonthura.
10. Triple lockdown entailed sealing all the 100 wards of the corporation, closing all
roads leading to the city, restriction of transport within the city, restricted movement
of people, widespread checking by the police, shutdown of public transport, closure
of all shops except medical stores and groceries, and police assistance for getting
essential goods (later withdrawn), as reported in the Malayala Manorama on 6 July.
The triple lockdown was declared in four districts in the state—Malappuram,
Thrissur, Ernaku- lam and Thiruvananthapuram—and was enforced by extensive
police mobilization, assisted by drones and geo-fencing technology to monitor
compliance.
11. Local people argued that the man in question did not even live in Poonthura, but
worked at Kumarichanda, outside the village (interviews from Poonthura and
Pulluvila).
Jament et 2
12. Mathrubhumi News (2020) Poonthura on high alert. https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=JUtTi3mh01E Accessed on 24 May 2021.
13. One of the complaints from the people in Poonthura was that in other places in the
city, COVID-19 tests were not extensive, and thus it would have been impossible to
determine as to whether the number of cases in their locality was raising at a faster
rate than elsewhere.
14. Mathrubhumi News (2020) Poonthura protest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
MA3w_Nu383I Accessed on 24 May 2021.
15. Asianet News (2020) Protest in Poonthura. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
762aSHIsHN4 Accessed on 24 May 2021.
16. Kairali News (2020) Poonthura. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROlX3OsELuk
Accessed on 24 May 2021.
17. Mathrubhumi News (2020). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBs3Ys7XsUA
Accessed on 24 May 2021.
18. They advertise on social media platforms information regarding the particular size,
quality and price of available fish. Access to capital, transport facilities and internet
skills has contributed to their success in entering the hitherto women-dominated fish-
retail market.
19. Over the years, the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation delayed the renovation of the
Kumarichanda market, allowing its physical structures to deteriorate to the point of
becoming an environmental hazard. A new market was eventually inaugurated by the
Thiruvananthapurm Mayor on 12 January 2022.
20. The Hindustan Times, Sons of the sea: Kerala’s fishermen are the unsung heroes of
relief work during the floods. https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/sons-of-
the-sea-kerala-s-fishermen-are-the-unsung-heroes-of-relief-wor k-during-the-floods/
story-WVD860u37XusZ5WTENqLiO.html, 2018 (Accessed 24 May 2021); Times of
India, Kerala floods: Fishermen set a new model in rescue mission.
https://timesofindia. indiatimes.com/city/thiruvananthapuram/ker ala-floods-
fishermen-set-a-new-model- in-rescue-mission/articleshow/65434376.cms (Accessed
23 May 2021); See also Joseph et al. (2020).
21. We thank one of this article’s anonymous reviewers for pointing us in this direction.
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Covid On The Coast: Pandemic Governance and Protests in Fishing Villages in South Kerala, India

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Research Article

Covid on the Coast: Journal of South Asian Development

and Protests in Fishing Sage Publications India Private Limited

Johnson Jament1, Max Martin1, M.S.

themselves as modern citizens (Arnold, 2013; Binoy, 2021; Narayan, 2021;

Fishing Communities in South Kerala

case of Dalit women performing in popular Marathi theatre discussed by

The First Lockdown and the Politics of

state, local panchayats and Matsyafed [Kerala state-sponsored fishers’

The Second Lockdown and the Making of

Living Under Lockdowns

COVID-19 and the Politics of Bio-moral Marginality

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Marriott, M. (1976). Hindu transactions: Diversity without dualism. In B. Kapferer (Ed.),

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