Protecting Workers? Crisis, COVID-19 and South Asia examines how countries across South Asia have addressed the challenges of safeguarding labour rights and ensuring health provisions for workers during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on comparative cases from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, the volume highlights how governments at multiple levels responded to both the public health emergency and the resulting economic crisis. The chapters pay close attention to the cascading impacts of these crises on workers’ lives and employ diverse methodological approaches—including statistical analysis, oral histories, written testimonies, and ethnographic accounts—to connect state-level policies with the lived experiences of workers and labour collectives. Bringing together contributions from scholars and practitioners across disciplines such as political science, economics, anthropology, human geography, sociology, and labour activism, the book offers a rich, multidimensional perspective on the pressures faced by South Asia’s working poor. It provides fresh insights into the region’s diversity and the evolving relationship between states and societies during times of upheaval, while also highlighting workers’ agency, resilience, and collective efforts to seek recognition, protection, and justice. The volume includes contributions from Iffat Jahan Antara, Naomi Hossain, Touhidul Islam, Himanshu Jha, Priya Sajjad, Muttukrishna Sarvananthan, Papia Sengupta, Chanchal Kumar Sharma, Jeevan Sharma, Maheen Sultan, and Aardra Surendran, along with editors Kanchana N. Ruwanpura and Wilfried Swenden.
Type: Book Chapter
Authors: Sultan, Maheen; Antara, Iffat Jahan; Islam, Touhidul
Year: 2026
