No More Mansplaining

be understood by indexing them to the everyday socialities that we inhabit.

In the many discussions on news channels, following the Prime Minister’s address to the nation, political analysts have remarked on the question of the daily wage labourer, who would, out of necessity, not be in a position to miss a day of work.

Is it possible to imagine distancing, social or merely physical, without putting in place adequate provisions for this person? The call to the “fellow citizen” to show self-restraint and resolve to fulfil duty in the service of the nation seems iniquitous given that the experience of citizenship is not democratic for all citizens.

This is precisely why an analyst’s invocation of Shaheen Bagh on a news channel, following the PM’s address, as likely to cause a community spread of the coronavirus is misplaced for it undermines the everyday risks that people are willing to take to make ends meet and to aspire for a better future for themselves. Contagion is but one risk among many.

I want to focus a bit more on a different kind of daily labourer, the female domestic help, whose work has not only been impacted by social distancing but her experience of being distanced for reasons of contagion ties into existing caste practices of social distancing.

In interviews conducted with domestic helps from a gated community in an Indian city, the stories that emerged are illustrative of how