The COVID-19 pandemic was an unprecedented disruption that laid bare the existing
fault lines in India. Those at the margins of society, either due to their location, livelihood,
caste, or capacities to access healthcare, repeatedly bore the socio-economic and health
burdens of the pandemic. This report examines the impacts of the pandemic and the
policy responses to it, focussing on Indigenous Peoples (IPs) in the Nilgiri Biosphere
Reserve, which spans the three states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Kerala.
The impacts of COVID-19 on IPs were typically direct, such as food insecurity, loss of
livelihoods, lack of opportunities for work for return migrants, and restrictions in
movement during the lockdowns. There were also less tangible impacts such as impacts
on culture, primary school Adivasi students in the study sites losing almost two years of
education because of the shift to digital teaching, among others.