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The politics of dirt in neoliberal India: COVID-19 and the inversion of risk


The discursive and material sites of COVID-19 render visible the politics of caste and class that make up the fabric of neoliberal India. 
The upwardly mobile yuppie class in this neoliberal India lives in gated communities, protected by precarious security guards that run identity checks on other precarious workers entering the gated communities. The urban landscape of neoliberal India is inundated with "smart gated communities," replete with technologies for keeping out risk.
Risk is dirty, and is attached to the casteist infrastructure of neoliberal India.
Caste thrives in neoliberal India, mixed in with social class, in perpetuating the stigma around dirt and disease. 
In much of our fieldwork with domestic workers working in India's IT hubs, smart cities, and high rises, we witness stories of dirt, that are deployed to discriminate, marginalize, mistreat, abuse, and attack precarious workers. For instance, in many high rises in Noida, there are separate elevators for domestic workers, the implicit assumption being "they are dirty." There are punishments directed at the lower caste precarious workers for entering the elevators of the residents, with glaring signage that point to the separate elevators for the precarious workers.
COVID-19 inverts this racist-casteist-classist discourse that makes up the infrastructure of neoliberal Indian urbanism.
The dirt of COVID-19 and the threat of the infection is carried by Yuppies and upwardly mobile Indians, traveling abroad and picking up the dirt (aka virus) in their trips abroad. 
The source of the infection is the traveling IT worker, investment banker, traveling through the networks of capital, picking up the dirt while interacting with capital.
By the hegemonic logic, these spaces of risk must be quarantined and contained to stop the spread of COVID-19.
It is the precarious classes that must avoid being contaminated by the Yuppies and Upwardly Mobile classes in order to stop the spread of COVID-19.

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