ABSTRACT
This chapter is a prelude to the book. It provides an overview of the book with its approach, theoretical background, and relevance of the chapters. A pandemic constrains human freedom in many ways. The COVID-19 pandemic has jeopardized freedom of movement and access to employment, health care, and basic public services. The different chapters of the book show how the pandemic has adversely affected almost all sectors of the economy, multitude of lives in variety of ways. The findings from different chapters of the book have been discussed in this chapter from the perspective of different unfreedoms or lack of freedoms imposed by the pandemic, and how these unfreedoms feed on to each other. The role of institutions and public policies in unleashing unfreedom, which forms the meat of the book, has also been discussed. Taking a cue from the rest of the chapters, this chapter also discusses the policy implications which may become important knowledge to deal with the pandemic or any similar emergencies in the future.
