Name: Aurchisman Mukherjee

Department of Philosophy, UG-2

Sociology GE Assignment

1. INTRODUCTION

The Dark Side of the Family

Since family or kin relations form a part of everybody’s existence, family life encompasses
almost the entire range of our emotional experience. Family relations can be warm and
fulfilling. But they can also be full of tension, leading members to emotional despair, and
filling them with a deep sense of anxiety and guilt. The oppressive aspects of family life can
lead to separation or divorce, or the association of family relations with mental illness.
Among the most devastating of consequences, however, fall incestuous abuse of children and
sexual violence.

Sexual abuse of children is a widespread phenomenon and mostly happens within the
context of the family. Sexual abuse can be defined as the engagement in sexual acts with a
person below the age of consent. Incest refers to sexual relations between close kin. Not all
incest is sexual abuse; for example, sexual relations between brother and sister qualify as
incest but not sexual abuse. Sexual abuse occurs when an adult exploits a child for sexual
purposes. The most common form of incest is however also sexual abuse.

Incest, or more generally sexual abuse, has over the last twenty years been ‘discovered.’
Although the knowledge of such acts existed throughout the past, strong taboos against them
led to the assumption that they weren’t widespread. Recent findings have sadly proved
otherwise. In the United States, data has shown, acts of sexual abuse increased by 600 per
cent between 1976 and 1982.

It can be said with some surety that this increase in acts of sexual abuse is a result of more
direct legal attention recently afforded to the phenomenon. With equal surety can it be
estimated that the available data reveals only the tip of the iceberg. Surveys caried out in the
1980s in the USA and in Britain revealed that nearly a third of all women experienced sexual
abuse, or unwanted touching, in their childhood; the number for men was 10 per cent.

It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to define sexual abuse because of the numerous
forms it assumes. A general definition can be provided, although it is bound to subject to
varying interpretations. One widely used formulation states that sexual abuse occurs when
‘another person, who is sexually mature, engages the child in any activity which the other
person expects to lead to their own sexual arousal. This might involve sexual intercourse,
touching, exposure of sexual organs, showing pornographic material, or talking about things
in an erotic way.

Why have reports incest and sexual abuse come into the public so suddenly? One
explanation is that, in the past, strong taboos against such activities prevented welfare
workers and social researchers from asking questions about them to parents or children. The
feminist movement played an important role in drawing attention to child sexual abuse as
one element of wider campaigns against sexual harassment and exploitation. Researchers
then began to probe into suspected cases of child abuse and many more came to light. The
‘discovery’ of sexual abuse incidents began in the USA, and has since become an
international phenomenon.

Though it is difficult to ascertain exactly how many acts of sexual abuse are incestuous, it is
probable that most cases occur within the context of family. Studies indicate that about 70-
80 per cent of incest cases are father-daughter or stepfather-daughter relationships.
However, many other forms of incestuous relations such as uncle-niece, brother-sister,
father-son, mother-child as well as grandparent-grandchild have also occurred. Sometimes
incestuous contact is transitory, involving either fondling of the child’s sexual organs, or the
encouragement of the child to touch the adult’s genitals. Other acts are more extensive,
sometimes lasting over several years. Victims of sexual abuse are mostly children over two
years old, however incidences involving infants have also been reported. Furthermore, there
have been found to occur multiple incestuous relations of sexual abuse within the same
family group.

Forced or threat of violence is involved in many acts of incest. In some cases, children are
more or less complying victims, but such cases are rare. Children are, after all, sexual
creatures and can engage in mild sexual play with each other. However, numerous studies
have proved that children find sexual contact with parents or other adult members of the
family exasperating and repugnant. There is now considerable material indicating that child
sexual abuse has long-term effects for its sufferers.

Violence Within the Family

Domestic violence occurs when physical abuse is directed by one family member towards
another or others. Violence within the family is largely a male domain, with most domestic
violence being perpetrated by men against children, especially those under six years old.
Physical abuse by husbands against wives is the second most common type of domestic
violence. Women, however, can also be perpetrators of physical violence against young
children or their husbands.

The home is in fact the most dangerous place in modern society. In statistical terms, a person
of any age and any sex is far more likely to be subject to physical abuse at home than on the
street. One in four murders in the UK is committed by one family member against another.

It is occasionally claimed women are as abusive as men towards children and their spouses.
Some surveys show that women hit men as much as the reverse. However, the abuse of men
by women is often more episodic and restrained, much less likely to cause prolonged harm or
suffering. ‘Woman battering’ – the regular brutalization of wives by their husbands – is a
phenomenon that has no equivalent the other way round. Men who abuse children are also
much more likely to do it in a sustained way, causing longstanding injuries and emotional
suffering.

2. DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN INDIA DURING COVID-19 LOCKDOWN

Context
Domestic violence is the most widespread form of violence against women (VAW) in
India, with 30% of all women over the age of 15 being subjected to domestic violence, both
in parental and matrimonial homes (IIPS and ICF 2017: 563). In 2019, 8,195 women were
killed by their husbands and their relatives for dowry (7,162 dowry deaths [NCRB 2020a:
196, Table 3A.2(i)] and 1,033 murders – motive dowry [NCRB 2020a: 161, Table 2A.2]),
and 1,815 women were abetted to die by suicide due to dowry-related issues (NCRB
2020b: 208, Table 2). Thus, more than 27 women were killed or died by suicide every day
due to domestic violence. Further, 1,26,575 women reported cases of cruelty by their
husband and his relatives (NCRB 2020a: 197, Table 3A.2[i]). "Cruelty by Husband or His
Relatives" accounted for 30.9% of all IPC (Indian Penal Code) crimes against women
(NCRB 2020a: xii).1

These are the reported cases; far more cases are unreported due to social acceptance of
domestic violence.
The COVID-19 lockdown, led to an increase in the scale, frequency, and intensity of VAW
in their purportedly "safe" homes. It posed severe limitations to women's ability to escape
violence and seek help though their support networks, including family, friends,
neighbours, state agencies, CSOs, and other support services. Constarints on mobility,
scarcity of transport, and lack of access to a phone or the ability to recharge it, were the
main restricting factors, all compounded by the constant presence of the abusers at
home.

United Nations (UN) Women called domestic violence a "shadow pandemic" in early
April. Data shared by the National Commission for Women (NCW) indicates a 2.5-fold
increase in cases of domestic violence registered between 27 February and 31 May 2020,
with 1,477 domestic violence complaints.2 In April and May 2020, 47.2% of all cases they
received were related to domestic violence as compared to 20.6% between January and
March 2020.3 Data from 18 women's organisations4 reflected an increase of between 20%
and 68% in domestic violence compared to cases they dealt with before the lockdown,
with two organisations indicating three-four times their regular caseload.

What follows is a case study on Swayam, an organisation based in Kolkata, working on

incidences of VAWs for the last 25 years. Through an analysis of the cases Swayam dealt with
during the lockdown, we hope to be able to explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic
on domestic violence, the shifts in its forms and intensity, and women's responses to it.

Case Study: Swayam

Increase in Domestic Violence

One organisation, Swayam, analysed new cases of women who approached their main
crisis intervention centre (CIC) in Kolkata pre-lockdown in January-February 2020,
during the full lockdown in April-May 2020 and as lockdown was being lifted in June-July
2020 (referred to as post lockdown henceforth), to understand how COVID-19 affected
them. A total of 535 women of all age-groups and backgrounds approached Swayam via
phone, email, or directly for support during these phases. During full lockdown, women
could only access the organisation over the phone and email. Approximately 89% of the
reposrts were of domestic violence in both matrimonial and natal families, and the rest
were cases of cybercrime, sexual abuse/harassment, boyfriend violence, underage
elopement, and issues with neighbours. When compared with the overall number of
domestic violence complaints received pre-lockdown, there was a 55% increase during full
lockdown, skyrocketing to over 171% post lockdown, denoting increasing desperation.
Cases received of domestic violence against married women by their husbands and in-laws
increased by 44% during full lockdown and went up to 156% post lockdown, compared to
the pre-lockdown period. Clearly, violence escalates exponentially with restrictions on the
mobility of both the abuser and the survivor. As restrictions relaxed, women were able to
come out and report domestic violence.

Of these 344 women who approached Swayam, the organisation was able to follow
through and support 252 women. The rest were referred to other organisations, and
Swayam abided with their requests not to contact them unless they contacted the
organisation. The organisation was unable to reach those whose phones were switched off,
or who did not pick up calls or respond to emails.

From Swayam's interactions with the women, it was evident that their economic status
affected their access to support services. Restrictions on mobility, and lack of transport
and access to phones had a negative impact on poor women's access to support services,
resulting in more women from middle- and upper-class backgrounds seeking help. Pre-
lockdown, more than 55% of the women who approached Swayam were poor. They
included domestic workers, daily wage earners, hawker, and migrant labourers, mostly
from rural areas and urban slums from diverse communities and included Muslims and
Hindus. Around 40% were from the middle class, working as primary and high school
teachers, in government or private service, in small-scale businesses, from Kolkata and
rural areas. About 5% were from upper-class backgrounds and were professionals,
professors, high school teachers, or worked in the information technology (IT) sector, in
banking, in big business, and were from Kolkata and its outskirts.

In contrast during the lockdown, only 23% women who approached Swayam were poor,
and 59% were from middle-class, and 15% from upper-class backgrounds. Poor women
who did not have access to the telephone or mail were unable to seek help, whilst the
abuser's constant presence and watchfulness prevented others.

It is notable that a much larger percentage of women who had faced domestic violence for
over 16 years approached Swayam for the fi rst time during the lockdown: 24% as
compared to 8% pre-lockdown. The lockdown exacerbated abuse making it necessary to
seek help after such a long time.

A striking increase in violence occurred among young unmarried women, some employed,
some students, in their natal families from their father, brother, sometimes both parents,
and other family members. Whilst these young women represented just 3% of the total
number of cases during pre-lockdown, they represented 20% of the total number of cases
during lockdown and 16% post lockdown. Pre-lockdown, the young women were mostly
from poorer backgrounds who were being forced to marry. During lockdown and post
lockdown, we got cases from mostly middle- and upper-class families. A noticeable trend
was college-going girls reporting that being home 24 hours a day resulted in their being
under constant surveillance, their movements and actions controlled, their use of social
media restricted, their privacy violated, and facing verbal and physical abuse by their
parents, sometimes exacerbated by alcohol consumption. Some left home seeking refuge
in university hostels, friends' homes, paying-guest (PG) accommodations or hotels. There
were cases where both the survivor and her mother had faced abuse for a long time, but
they reported an escalation of beatings, verbal abuse, threats to throw them out of the
house, and financial deprivation during the lockdown. Others had witnessed their father
abusing their mother physically, mentally, and financially since childhood, but had not
faced violence directly. However, during the lockdown, their father began to abuse them
as well. There was a reported case of a father threatening to rape his daughter as well as a
case of sexual abuse by a father. There were cases of fathers forcing their daughters to get
married either because they or their daughter had lost their jobs.

Forms of Violence

Over 90% of women reported increased levels of physical, emotional, sexual, and
economic abuse during the lockdown. They reported being subjected to severe beating
(with bamboo poles/spades), kicking, slapping, arm-twisting, hair pulling, pushing,
punching, suffocation, physical abuse during pregnancy, and denial of food, and two cases
of dowry-related murders. Women who faced verbal abuse prior to the lockdown stated it
had escalated to physical abuse during the lockdown. Those who faced physical abuse like
slapping prior to the lockdown, reported being beaten with slippers or anything else
around the house during the lockdown, and the severity of the abuse was much higher. A
schoolteacher's husband, who would deliberately pour oil or powder on the kitchen floor
so she would fall and get hurt, began physically abusing her during the lockdown. Women
said the frequency and duration of abuse had increased during lockdown. Fear of abuse
and inability to leave the house to run even to a neighbour's house for help was crippling.

Forms of emotional abuse cited were verbal humiliation, forcible eviction from the home,
desertion, restrictions of mobility and contact with parental family, abusing parental
family, denying medication, negative remarks about appearance, and demeaning and
disrespectful comments in front of the children. They also included threats of divorce,
abandonment, and being thrown out of the house as well as murder, constant criticism,
and policing at home, not being allowed to speak to anyone or work outside, throwing
cooked food on the floor, taking away her documents, and a tendency of the abuser to self-
harm like hitting their own head against a wall.

Further, all members of the family being at home all the time led to a massive increase in
housework and care work that women were expected to fulfil. Demands on them and
their time increased, leading to enhanced tensions and abuse. Women who were working
from home had the double burden of housework and office work. One woman reported
her husband smashing her laptop while she was working.

Some women shared that their husbands had become more paranoid and suspicious
during the lockdown, accusing them of extramarital affairs, whilst others discovered that
their husbands had extramarital relationships. Unable to meet their extramarital partners,
they openly flaunted the affair by talking on the phone for hours, leading to conflict and
violence at home.

Another form of violence that women confronted included the abuser refusing to abide by
any lockdown norms of wearing masks, staying at home, washing hands, or bathing on
entering the home. Yet, they insisted on having sex with their wives, who were terrified for
their own health and that of other family members.

Women reported increased sexual abuse by their husband, forced sexual acts (for example,
tying with ropes or displaying pornography to enact the same), groping in front of
children, marital rape, unprotected sex leading to unwanted pregnancies, criticising
private parts, and rape attempts by brothers-in-law.

Women suffered severe economic abuse and food insecurity during this period.
Perpetrators losing their jobs and income led to their inability to meet basic family needs.
Their frustration, anxiety, and tensions led to violence against women in the family, who
were the easiest targets and who could not retaliate. In some instances, husbands did not
provide for their wives and children, or abandoned them and left home. Women who were
separated and dependent on maintenance from their spouses reported payments being
stopped and their inability to access courts to file for execution of maintenance orders.
Women who were daily wage earners, were self-employed or were domestic workers or in
the informal sector who lost their livelihoods faced exacerbated financial distress.
Domestic workers reported not being paid during the lockdown or receiving partial
payments. Reports abounded of dowry demands being made, husbands taking away
earnings, creating debts, not allowing their wives to work outside, and depriving them of
their marital property rights. Without an income or maintenance, basic rations for survival
became an urgent need for survivors.

Married women who returned to their parental home due to domestic violence also
reported being pressurised by their natal family members to return to their matrimonial
home, as they were considered an economic burden on the family. Those who had married
without their family's consent were worse off, as they did not get any support from their
parental family. For example, in one case, a woman had an inter-religious marriage and
had returned to her parental home when she faced violence. During the lockdown, her
husband visited her on numerous occasions when he was drunk and verbally and
physically abused her. She felt unable to ask her brothers for help, nor did they intervene.
Older women reported physical and mental abuse and deprivation of food and shelter by
their sons.

Impact of Lockdown

Over 37% of women facing domestic violence fled or were thrown out of their homes
during the lockdown and took shelter with friends and relatives or stayed in hotels, since
shelter homes, fearing COVID-19, did not accommodate women. Many walked long
distances to safety often with little children; a few were helped by the police through the
intervention of women's groups, and others, with great difficulty, cost, and risk organised
personal transport through friends and relatives. Some with access to a safe place were
unable to do so due lack of transport and money. Others stayed in abusive homes as no
alternative shelter was available. Over 20% women fled home post lockdown.

Increased violence during lockdown, the fear and anxiety around COVID-19, compounded
by financial insecurity took a critical toll on women's mental health and affected their
sleep, appetite, general functionality, and interpersonal relations. Single women and
elderly women living alone were depressed and unable to communicate with or meet
friends or relatives. Those trapped with the abusers were traumatised, helpless and scared
for their lives. There was a significant increase in the number of survivors reporting
suicidal ideation.

Children of survivors were also negatively affected by the pandemic. Pre-lockdown,

children of women living with their abusers found ways to cope with the situation by
staying out of the house, going to play, meeting friends, and attending school or college.
During the lockdown, the stressful situation at home increased, but children were
stranded without their coping mechanisms. Schools and colleges were shut, mobility
restricted, and children's stress levels were high.

Children witnessed increased violence by their father towards their mother and, if they
intervened, faced violence. In a couple of cases, college-going daughters encouraged their
mother to leave abusive husbands. In other instances, the father left the home during the
lockdown, leaving the mother and child to fend for themselves financially. Financial
insecurity added to the stress the children faced.

The transition to online classes post lockdown was challenging for many young students
as the new medium was difficult to grasp, and focusing attention online was demanding.
Constant monitoring of the child by the mother also increased pressure on the child.
Whilst online classes resulted in increased schoolwork, children found no outlet for stress
release. In some cases, fathers refused to let children use the computer or phone for their
classes.

Responses of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs)

Despite the obstacles that CSOs faced in reaching out to survivors due to the lockdown
and COVID-19 restrictions, they worked in close coordination, instituting, compiling, and
popularising helplines, providing services/rations to survivors, sharing their
expertise/strategies, and referring cases to each other, thereby providing survivors critical
support and information on relief entitlements and COVID-19 declared by the
government. They gathered evidence about the impact of the lockdown on women and
the gaps in state services. They collectively advocated with and proposed numerous
recommendations to the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Niti Aayog, NCW
and other state agencies to facilitate survivors' access to support services. They spoke
widely to the press to create awareness about domestic violence and conducted campaigns
to highlight the issue. #LockdownOnDomesticViolence, a powerful video in English, Hindi,
Bengali, and Marathi,5 urging citizens to report and support women seeking help, was a
unique collaboration between civil society, celebrities and state agencies initiated by
Akshara.6

In situations of crisis, it is critical that survivors have knowledge about and access to
quality support services that are operational, coordinated, and adequate. However,
despite circulars and steps taken by the state agencies since the end of March 2020, CSOs
and women's experiences of accessing support services showed that most One-Stop
Centers (OSCs), helplines, courts, health services, shelter homes, protection officers, legal
aid services and other services were not responsive during the lockdown. Towards the
end of May, a few of these services, including protection officers and outpatient
departments (OPDs), started functioning to some extent.
At a time when women needed support the most, they were let down by the system. Since
survivor support services had not been included in the "essential services" list prior to
lockdown, there was no preparedness to roll out these services even when some of them
were deemed "essential" after the lockdown. There were no Standard Operating
Procedures (SOPs), infrastructure, or back up support to ensure that they were
functional. Thus, the urgent need for a well-advertised, functional, common, national
helpline number backed by support services for survivors also came to the fore.

Post lockdown, transport eased to a certain extent and women's access to support services
and support networks increased. In some cases, the husband going back to work released
the tension related to his constant demands, allowing women the time and space to seek
help. Women were able to meet family and friends, and the feeling of isolation and
helplessness reduced somewhat. The financial situation of those able to return to work
diffused tensions. Courts began to accept filing of new cases of domestic violence but
hearings of all cases, new and existing were on hold. However, no new orders were passed
at a time when courts needed to be responsive and provide emergency orders of
protection, residence, maintenance, and child custody to address the crisis situations
women were in. Women's access to legal rights remained curtailed. Lack of clear-cut
protocols meant that shelter homes continued to stall accepting women.

3. CONCLUSION: FAMILY, INTIMACY, VIOLENCE, AND COVID-19

Explaining Domestic Violence

Why is domestic violence so prevalent? Many factors play a role. Emotional intensity and
personal intimacy are characteristic of the family. Love and hate often mixed, disputes
between spouses or between parents and children can unleash deep antagonisms that would
otherwise not be the case in other social settings. Minor quarrels can lead to full-scale
hostilities.

A second factor is that many forms of violence within the family is actually tolerated.
Although socially sanctioned violence within families is usually confined in nature, it can
spill over into more brutal acts. In Britain, there hardly any children who have not been hit
or slapped by their parents, if only in a very minor way; in many instances, such acts are not
even considered to be ‘violence.’

Although less explicit, there is social approval of violence between spouses. In social settings
such as the office, or the school, it is considered wrong for someone to hit someone else. But
not in the family. Murray Strauss has argued that parenthood provides a ‘license for hitting,’
and that ‘the marriage license is a hitting license.’ Many studies have shown that a high
percentage of couples maintain that there can be legitimate circumstances for a spouse to
strike the other. About one in four Americans of both sexes believes that there can be good
reasons for a husband to strike his wife. A somewhat lower percentage maintain the reverse.

Domestic violence can also reflect patterns of violence external to the family. Many men who
physically abuse their wives or their children commit violent acts in other contexts as well. A
study of a sample of abused women has shown that more than half the abusive men were
violent with other sexual partners as well, and that more than 80 per cent of these men were
recorded to have committed violent acts in the non-family context.

Given the conditions of existence called upon by covid lockdown, the ‘home’ has assumed
particular significance, for it is to this place that we are confined. For those of us that have
jobs and can work from home the boundaries between work and home are blurred,
boundaries that have been carefully created by the economy. For those of us who no longer
have jobs, home takes on a completely different meaning.

To talk of the effect COVID has had on the home, we need first consider the nature of this
space. Not for all is the home a space for safety and refuge, for us to nurture our families and
be nurtured by our families. For many, home is space for labor, paid and unpaid. It is a place
of pain, and it is space where inequalities are produced and reproduced.

The presence of domestic workers in Indian middle-class families made it possible for the
women of those families to achieve modernity, in other words, made it possible for them to
go out for work, making them therefore modern women. But it also did something else. It
pushed to the fringe major questions of the division of labor within the middle-class
household. These questions are the gender division of labor: Who does the laundry? Who
changes the diapers? Who cooks? Who cleans? These questions of the gender division of
labor have been foundational to the second wave of feminism, but these questions have not
appeared int eh forefront of second-wave feminism in India, because neither the husband,
nor the wife were doing much of these. They were being done by domestic workers.
In other words, middle-class women were able to depend on class inequality to combat
gender inequality within the home. The institution of paid domestic work produces not just
clean homes and well-fed children, but it also reproduces inequalities of gender and class
inequalities within the home.

During the lockdown, most middle-class Indians have had to do without domestic workers.
During the lockdown, middle-class women have been described in many accounts
‘distraught,’ under the immense pressures of household work and inequality.

The question to the asked is about the double burden of work that middle-class women bear
will be deferred once domestic workers come back into the equation. One can then go on
pretending that the nuclear household is about the conjugal bonds of husband and wife.
Whereas, the conventional middle-class household is always a marriage of three: the
husband, the wife, and the domestic worker. In talking about the middle-class household, it
is not enough to look at the middle-class kitchen, and the middle-class bathroom, but also
the lives and homes of domestic workers themselves. Thus, the notion of what the pandemic
has made of the ‘home,’ should also lead us to think about what is happening within the
space of the working-class home.

The participation of men in household work still remains in the fringes. Men have
predominantly taken up works such as buying groceries. This only serves to reiterates the
boundary between the space of the ‘home’ and the space outside, which remains a space
dominated by men. While the men are away getting groceries, if we ask who is still doing the
cooking and the cleaning, especially when these activities do not include high-tech
equipment, we will find they are predominantly women. Whereas, women’s work outside the
home is not seen as legitimate work.

Many women often comment that this disequilibrium is something they could negotiate and
work out with their partners but not their parents of in-laws, because it is mostly the older
generations that expect certain traditions to be maintained, and also, the bulk of the care
that needs to be given to the elderly is expected to be rendered by women.

Let us shift focus from the middle-class homes to the working-class homes whose members
actually do middle-class domestic work. The shock of the 21-day lockdown, implemented
with a four-hour notice, starting 25 March, gave people no opportunity to work the situation
out. What happened immediately, was that there was panic, both in the middle-class
household, that needed to make sure that workers do not come in, and also the working-class
household, where there are women often going to middle-class homes to do chores, while
men worked at construction sites, factories, and so on.

The government made the suggestion that middle-class families should continue paying
domestic workers for work they were not able to provide. Salaried laborers with steady jobs
stand to be benefitted from this policy. There are no sets of rules in the informal sector, to
which domestic workers belong. This prevents posing the question of the domestic workers’
welfare as a matter of rights and instead poses it as a matter of the magnanimity and the
benevolence of the middle-class. Admittedly, there is an intimate relationship between
employer and employee in the case of domestic work, which means that getting someone
who understands the ways of your household, and behaves in the way you would like them
to, is considered more valuable than gainful employment. Many middle-class households
were reluctant to let go of workers they had become familiar with and who, in their turn, had
become familiar with the household. However, in a majority of cases, workers have only been
paid a fraction of their usual payment or not been paid at all.

Many stranded domestic workers had to migrate over large distances, amidst uncertainty
and chaos. Being informal sector workers, earn daily wages and have no access to subsidized
food or social security provided by the government. These workers have to maintain the
precarious balance between the rural economy, where they go in the monsoons to help with
the farming, and the urban economy, where they find wherever they can. The Indian
Railways on an average day run about twenty thousand trains; in the lockdown, they were
running only a few hundreds, to allow a trickle of workers to travel to their homes on the
weekends.

With the dual advent of the lockdown announcement and migration, the worker bodies, have
become contaminated bodies or contagious bodies. There is always ‘social distancing’ in the
middle-class household: where workers sit, touch, and eat is strictly regulated. This
regulation has only grown stronger during the lockdown. Intimately dependent but also
dangerously contagious, the informal sector workers are to be ignored and it is body of the
middle-class that needs to be preserved. But the contradiction is that the preservation of the
middle-class, from roads to food, has always been work provided by domestic workers, now
labeled migrant workers, the abject Others, who need apparently now to be expelled.

REFERENCES

1. The data has been taken from the following sources: (a) IIPS and ICF (2017): "National
Family Health Survey (NFHS-4), 2015--16: India," International Institute for Population
Sciences, Mumbai.
(b) NCRB (2020a): "Crime in India, 2019," National Crime Records Bureau, Ministry of
Home Affairs, Government of India, New Delhi.
(c) NCRB (2020b): "Accidental Deaths & Suicides in India, 2019," National Crime Records
Bureau, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, New Delhi.
2. Pandit, Ambika (2020): "Domestic Violence Accounts for over 47% Complaints to NCW in
'Lockdown,'" Times of India, 2 June, https://timesofi ndia.indiatimes. com/india/domestic-
violence-accountsfor- over-47-complaints-to-ncw-in-lockdown/articleshow/76161829.cms.
3. Chandra, Jagriti (2020): "NCW Records Sharp Spike in Domestic Violence amid
Lockdown," Hindu, 15 June,https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/ ncw-records-sharp-
spike-in-domesticviolence- amid-lockdown/article31835105.ece.

4. See, "CSO Response to VAW during Lockdown" and "Infographics of CSO Response to
Domestic Violence during Lockdown," (https://swayam. info/resources/other-resources/.)

5. Lockdown on Domestic Violence videos: Hindi (https://youtu.be/y0fgSE9nS2k), English

(https://youtu.be/v2e3JwxFmw8), Bengali (https:// youtu.be/WlqcLEQpMik), Marathi
(https:// youtu.be/AXkZYDQX3cM).
6. Akshara is a not-for-profit women's organization and resource center working for the
empowerment of women and girls, based in Mumbai.