ABSTRACT
This chapter, set in the context of COVID-19, is the story of four researchers, located in the Sociology department of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in India. It is a recounting of their experiences and reflections of life before and after COVID-19. This paper rests on an understanding that the pandemic exacerbated extant social inequalities and hastened political and economic processes that were already in place. JNU was under attack by India’s rightwing regime much before COVID-19 struck. The autoethnographies show how the lockdown and closure of hostels in an essentially residential campus also meant a closure of education and opportunities in the widest sense. The impact was however differently felt across gender, class, caste and across India’s rural urban divides. Thus, while online education made learning an impossibility for those with irregular access to the Internet, it also meant new opportunities to connect and further knowledge. A blog, Doing Sociology, was thus begun.
