A virus becomes deadlier when it deepens inequality and widens social divisions. The experience of COVID-19 has been devastating right across the globe, particularly in areas of the Global South that were already grappling with scarcity, poverty, the lack of proper sanitation, and inadequate health services. India has become one of the most disturbing examples.

A tragedy of breathtaking scale is unfolding before our eyes. Rising death rates, loss of income, lack of health care, discriminatory quarantine measures, and draconian state policies have also led to the growth of economic precarity. The far-reaching consequences of this will extend far beyond the duration of the pandemic.

The COVID-19 catastrophe is a humanitarian crisis that stems from the operations of capital and the state to brutalize, control, curb, extract, and dispossess ordinary people. The poor have suffered most from the violence of the pandemic, but the rich have not been spared either. As Arundhati Roy wrote in an article on India’s coronavirus disaster for the Guardian: “For now, among the sick and dying, there is a vestige of democracy. The rich have been felled, too.”