A new study published in PLOS One documents the desperate measures taken by vulnerable Indian families during the COVID-19 pandemic — from skipping meals to selling assets — and reveals which households suffered most and why.
When COVID-19 disrupted livelihoods across India, millions of vulnerable families were forced into a grim series of trade-offs — cutting back on food, pulling children out of school, and liquidating the few assets they had — just to get through each day. New research from Lancaster University and the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IIT Kanpur) details how these households navigated the pandemic and what structural factors determined whether they survived it intact.
The study, published June 10 in PLOS One, is based on 343 interviews conducted in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Goa between December 2022 and March 2023. Researchers spoke with 86 families in total, selecting a subset whose hardships were most severe and sustained. The interviews captured the experiences of men, women, and children as young as 7 years old.
Impossible Choices at the Dinner Table
As employment dried up during lockdowns, families first tried to stretch what they had. That meant swapping out preferred foods for cheaper staples like potatoes and cereals, shrinking portion sizes, and cutting dairy and meat from their diets almost entirely. Researchers noted that this kind of dietary narrowing raises serious concerns about long-term nutritional health.
Women bore a disproportionate share of that burden. Many practiced what the researchers call “maternal buffering” — quietly reducing their own portions so that children and male household members had enough to eat. In shared homes, families began cooking together to save fuel and lower costs.
When those adjustments weren’t enough, households moved to more drastic measures: taking on loans, skipping meals altogether, sending children to live with grandparents or relatives, and selling household assets to cover basic food expenses.
Migrant Workers Left Most Exposed
Among the groups studied, circular and recent migrant workers were the most exposed. When the pandemic triggered a wave of reverse migration — workers returning to their home villages after losing urban jobs — the pressure on rural economies intensified sharply, compounding existing inequalities.
But returning home wasn’t necessarily a lifeline. For families with fewer resources, the move placed added financial strain on a single earning member who was now responsible for a larger household. Social hierarchies rooted in caste and class also shaped which families could lean on community networks for support and which could not.
A particularly stark example: one family of seasonal migrant brick kiln workers found that their food ration entitlement was registered in their home state, making them ineligible for government rations at their place of work. With no formal support available, they relied on daily meals provided through a local hospital partnering with a non-governmental organization.
Government Support Proved Critical — But Had Gaps
India’s Public Distribution System (PDS), a federal program that provides subsidized cereals and staples to eligible households, proved to be a vital safety net during the crisis. The government doubled cereal allocations and added items such as oil and chickpeas to encourage dietary variety. For families with access, these expansions were described by researchers as a crucial lifeline.
Yet the PDS’s structural limitation — that benefits are tied to a household’s place of registration — left migrant workers in a particularly precarious position. Many could not access rations in the cities or towns where they actually lived and worked, a portability problem that long predates the pandemic.
Why It Matters
The findings carry implications beyond India. As the researchers note, “[c]onflicts, disease outbreaks and global interdependencies that disrupt global supply chains are becoming increasingly common,” making resilience planning more urgent worldwide.
“In an increasingly uncertain world, it is important to understand that household responses to global threats are not just about the crisis itself, but the existing structural inequalities and vulnerabilities that people are already coping with,” lead author Charumita Vasudev, a research associate in the School of Social Sciences at Lancaster University, said in a news release.
That observation points to a central takeaway: a household’s ability to weather a crisis has less to do with the crisis itself and more to do with the inequalities that existed long before it arrived.
Vasudev also argued that public programs like the PDS must be redesigned to account for those underlying vulnerabilities.
“Public policies like the PDS form the backbone of household’s resilience strategies. They, thus need to account for contextual vulnerabilities to ensure that short-term coping during crisis does not risk deepening of inequalities in the longer term,” Vasudev added.
For students studying public health, economics, social policy, or development — or for anyone trying to understand how global shocks ripple through the most vulnerable communities — this research offers a detailed and sobering look at what it actually means to cope when the safety net has holes in it.
Source: Lancaster University