Conclave Sessions
Session 1
State of India’s Workers’ Rights Since COVID-19
Session 2
Resilience, Resistance, and Reclamation: Post-Pandemic Impacts on Natural Resource-Based Communities
The pandemic was not only a public health emergency. It was also a turning point for labour in India. The pandemic years saw more than wage losses; they brought lasting changes to India’s labour landscape. Harsh lockdowns left millions without work or income, only to be followed by sweeping policy changes that stripped away labour protections. What was presented as “relief” often paved the way for deeper precarity: contractualisation replacing secure jobs, privatisation of essential services, and digital systems embedding new forms of control and exclusion.
In this session, three key shifts will be examined. Contractualisation, accelerated privatisation, and digitalisation, and how they were pushed through under the cover of the pandemic. Testimonies from waste pickers, street vendors, gig workers, and domestic workers will reveal how these changes continue to shape livelihoods today.
Five years after the COVID-19 pandemic, what initially looked like gaps in governance now appear as patterns shaped by state and corporate power. Lockdown measures—once framed as public health necessities—have been repurposed into enduring tools of control: from internet shutdowns in Manipur and Kashmir to curfew-style crackdowns in Bastar and clampdowns on agrarian protests. While indigenous communities sustained themselves with traditional knowledge, it was evictions, debts, land grabs, and corporatisation of natural resources that devastated livelihoods. Farmers, fishers, artisans, and forest dwellers were pushed into crisis even as mega-projects like Bharatmala, NIP, and NMP fast-tracked clearances for highways, mining, and ports.
The pandemic also coincided with key political shifts—dispersing anti-CAA and Shaheen Bagh mobilisations, and later, targeting farmers’ protests with repression. This session foregrounds testimonies from forest, coastal, peasant, and weaver communities, placing their lived experiences within broader patterns of authoritarianism, resistance, and resilience. It asks: what has changed—and what must be reclaimed.
Session 3
Health for All: A Destination Too Far
Session 4
Pandemic Impacts on India’s Public Education
This year marks five years since one of the most tragic health crises in recent history, the COVID-19 pandemic, which, in its worst phase in 2020, claimed countless lives and caused immeasurable suffering. Much of this loss could have been prevented with better foresight and wisdom, not only during the crisis itself but in the decades before it, by building a truly equitable, fully functional public health system in India.
The pandemic shook the country’s conscience. It brought health and healthcare into everyday conversation, breaking through the notion that these were technical matters best left to experts, a perception long reinforced by a medical establishment that often kept the public at a distance.
The National People’s Conclave takes this moment to revisit the hard lessons the pandemic made impossible to ignore, to examine where we stand today and why, and to carry forward the demands for the right to healthcare until they are fully met.
The pandemic triggered one of the deepest education crises in India’s history, affecting 32 crore children during the world’s fifth-longest school closure. Beyond academics, the shutdown of schools and ECCE centres meant the loss of nutrition, socialisation, and protection. Dropouts tripled, learning levels collapsed, and children from marginalised backgrounds—already facing income loss and digital exclusion—were the most severely hit. Even after reopening, assessments showed staggering learning deficits, while mass school closures, vacant teaching posts, and chronic underfunding have only widened inequities. Digital learning proved inadequate, leaving millions effectively without education.
At this Conclave, we examine how the pandemic and its aftermath reshaped India’s public education system—weakening access, deepening inequality, and accelerating privatisation—while also highlighting stories of resilience and community-led alternatives. Through testimonies and discussion, the session asks: what has changed in education since the pandemic, and what must be reclaimed to uphold the constitutional promise of quality education for every child?
Session 5
Women’s Rights & Gender Equality in the Times since Lockdown
Session 6
Artists, Artisans, and Indian Media Since the Pandemic
The pandemic and lockdowns did not just expose but deepened existing gender inequalities, hitting women across caste, class, and community lines. Job losses in the informal sector—domestic work, construction, factories—fell disproportionately on women, many of whom faced reduced pay, longer hours, or were pushed into precarious gig work while also bearing increased care responsibilities. Migration crises further compounded burdens, with women forced to walk long distances with children, cooking and surviving in unsafe conditions. Lockdowns also trapped women and children in violent households, with domestic violence complaints rising by 45% and distress calls overwhelming helplines. At the same time, access to healthcare, reproductive rights, and nutrition was curtailed, while digital exclusion and economic distress pushed many girls out of education.
This session asks: how did the pandemic accelerate the erosion of women’s rights and dignity, and under what justifications? Through testimonies and reflection, it situates women’s struggles at the heart of rethinking justice, equality, and accountability
The pandemic reshaped India’s cultural and media landscapes in ways that continue to reverberate. Artists, artisans, and performers—particularly from small-scale and marginalised backgrounds—suffered devastating economic losses, mental health struggles, and the collapse of livelihoods. While some adapted through digital platforms, these tools widened accessibility gaps and deepened exclusion. Media institutions, meanwhile, faced mounting state pressure, escalating arrests of journalists, and an environment of polarisation where dissent was equated with disorder. The vilification of Muslims during the Tablighi Jamaat episode revealed how communal narratives were weaponised in a moment of national crisis, leaving a lasting imprint on politics and public discourse. The pandemic also normalised surveillance, censorship, and control over what could be created, reported, or even imagined. Yet alongside repression came resilience: artists and communities carved new forms of expression and solidarity. This session asks what fundamentally changed in art, media, and cultural freedoms since the pandemic—and what these shifts mean for democracy and resistance today.