March 2021, South Asia 
India: Rebooting Tamil Nadu’s rural economy during COVID-19
SAMIK SUNDAR DAS

It was the beginning of 2020. In Tamil Nadu’s Salem district, local entrepreneur Vijayalakshmi and her husband were giving the finishing touches to the silver anklets they produce at their home-based enterprise.  Further north, near the seaside town of Puducherry, Ramani and her group of potters were looking forward to the arrival of tourists to buy their handcrafted wares.

Up in the picturesque Nilgiri Hills, a tribal farmers collective was preparing for yet another bumper harvest. And across the ocean in Singapore, Maheswaran, a land surveyor, was busy chalking out his work schedule for the next few weeks.

By May 2020, however, the COVID-19 pandemic had turned their worlds upside down. With orders drying up, Vijayalakshmi could no longer pay her workers.  “We were facing a complete shutdown. And this was the only work we knew!”

Near Puducherry, Ramani and her 20-member potters’ group faced a double blow.  “We couldn’t collect clay from the lake to make our pots and, in the absence of tourists, we had no customers,” she recounted.