Introduction to the BASAS 2021 special section

ABSTRACT

This special section is dedicated to the BASAS conference 2021. The conference coincided with the devastating second wave of Covid-19 in India, which started in March and peaked in May 2021. Case numbers and mortality in South Asian countries were very high and their health systems too struggled to keep up with these unprecedented times. As governments across South Asia appeared to fail their populations, a sense of crisis was shared by conference participants, many of whom were personally affected by this wave. This conference was unique in that it took place after a two-year gap due to the Covid-19 pandemic and in that it was the first fully online BASAS conference. The papers in the special section draw attention to significant areas of research in South Asia.

KEYWORDS:

• BASAS 2021
• Edinburgh
• Conference
• special section
• South Asia
• crisis
• online conference

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ayaz Qureshi

Ayaz Qureshi is a Lecturer in Medical Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. He works on sexual and reproductive health, NGOs, bureaucracy, healthcare systems and labour relations in Pakistan. His monograph, ‘AIDS in Pakistan: Bureaucracy, Public Goods and NGOs’, is the first full-length study of the politics of HIV/AIDS in Pakistan. This book encourages readers to reconsider the orthodoxy of policies regarding public-private partnership by critiquing the resulting changes in the bureaucracy, civil society and public goods.

Wilfried Swenden

Wilfried Swenden is a Professor of South Asian and Comparative Politics and at present Head of Politics and International Relations at the University of Edinburgh. He works mainly on centre-state relations in South Asia with a particular focus on India. He recently co-edited a special issue on centre-state relations in India with Territory, Politics and Governance (2022) and contributed various research papers on this subject, which were published o.a. in Publius: the Journal of Federalism, India Review, the International Political Science Review, Government and Opposition and the Swiss Political Science Review. Recent research projects on these topics were funded by the Leverhulme Trust and the British Academy.