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Development in Practice
ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cdip20
The liminal impact of lockdown on the Baheliya
community
Sushanta Kumar Sarma, Dhwani Lalai & Ishan Agrawal
To cite this article: Sushanta Kumar Sarma, Dhwani Lalai & Ishan Agrawal (2021): The
liminal impact of lockdown on the Baheliya community, Development in Practice, DOI:
10.1080/09614524.2021.1937569
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09614524.2021.1937569
Published online: 19 Aug 2021.
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The liminal impact of lockdown on the Baheliya community
Sushanta Kumar Sarma, Dhwani Lalai and Ishan Agrawal
ABSTRACT
Baheliya, a nomadic tribe, were confined on the outskirts of a village in
Madhya Pradesh, India due to the sudden lockdown announced by the
government. How does the lockdown impact the nomad community?
Using the lens of liminality, this paper details the experience of the
community as they struggle between a detached past and an uncertain
future. It describes the features of a liminal phase; namely, freedom,
egalitarianism, communion, and creativity as experienced by the
members from the Baheliya community.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 30 October 2020
Accepted 19 May 2021
KEYWORDS
Pandemic; COVID; lockdown;
liminality; Baheliya
Introduction
Our life has been spent only roaming from one place to another. (Elder from the Baheliya community)
What would be the experience of a mobile community when they are confined to one place due to
the pandemic? The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted human life beyond comprehension. The
lockdown, induced as a measure to contain the spread of the virus, halted the work life and
brought immense miseries to people living on the margins. It forced people to abandon their
routine life and cope with the confinement of home or neighbourhood. While “Stay home; stay
safe”has become the new mantra to survive; it has also raised a major concern for those without
a place called “home”like the members of the Baheliya community. Baheliya is a denotified commu-
nity primarily from Uttar Pradesh, India (Saksena 1975). This community remains mobile throughout
the year and earns their livelihood through bird trade and working as farm labour. In this article, we
examine the impact of the lockdown on a group of families from the Baheliya community trapped
outside a village in Bichhiya block of Mandla, India. We report the experiences of the community
through the lens of liminality (Gennep 1977; Turner 1969). We found that the lockdown pushed
the community into a phase of transition through separation from their past social constraints
and traditional livelihood. Although the threshold of liminality does not erupt into a change in
life position of the community, they experienced the typical characteristics of a liminal phase –
freedom, egalitarianism, communion, and creativity (Yang 2000).
The families came to Budhanwara village in Bichhiya block to work as farm labourers during the
Rabi harvest. They have been coming to the village for many years now. They would work in the agri-
cultural fields and feed their families before moving to the next village. During the lockdown in
March 2020, the families were unable to earn any wages due to the unavailability of labour work.
They did not have the option of travelling to their next destination and were stuck at the outskirts
of Budhanwara village. Without wages, they were unable to feed their families. Most of the members
did not have any of the documents required to avail government schemes. There were resistances
from the villagers as the families tried to apply for job cards from the government. The villagers
opposed this move as they feared that after getting employment, the families would settle down
permanently in their village. The lockdown pushed the families in a phase of transition as they
were detached from the past in terms of their occupation and geography and were unsure of
© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
CONTACT Sushanta Kumar Sarma sushanta@irma.ac.in
DEVELOPMENT IN PRACTICE
https://doi.org/10.1080/09614524.2021.1937569
their future. We contacted the community during the pandemic relief work at the beginning of April.
Over the next three months, we made repeated contacts with the community and had multiple inter-
actions to understand their experiences and routine.
The triggers for a liminal phase
Liminality is a transitional phase between two formal states in human life. Originally coined by
Gennep (1977), the liminal or margin is the middle phase between separation and aggregation.
These three phases constitute the transition in community life from one state to another. Although
originated from anthropological studies and popularised by Turner (1969), liminality has been used
to understand change in the political and cultural studies. In recent years, liminality has found a place
in management and organisational studies as well (Söderlund and Borg 2017). The phase of separ-
ation is marked by detachment from an earlier point or position in life. During the liminal phase, the
community does not carry most of the attributes of the previous position or stage. In the final stage
of aggregation, the community attains a stable position with defined attributes and obligations to
follow norms and ethical standards of the societal structure.
The liminal phase as the phase of threshold has attracted attention from anthropologists and soci-
ologists because of its ability to explain the nuances of transition on the human subject from one
position to another. The liminal stage is triggered from three forms of separation of the human
subject. They are spatial, temporal, and moral/social. For the families from the Baheliya community
stationed outside Budhanwara village, the lockdown triggered all the three forms of separations.
Spatial separation was triggered as the community was confined to the outskirts of the village
and separated from their next destination. During the routine period, they would have moved to
the next village in a nearby district to work as daily wage labourers. But with the restrictions on
all kinds of movement, they remained captive in their temporary shelter. They were also unable
to go back to their native villages, which are situated around 100 km away from Budhanwara.
The pandemic separated the community from their routine temporal order. As it happened with
most of the working class, the community’s working routine changed completely. On a normal day,
the members would have moved around from one village to another either singing bhajans or
working on agricultural lands. But since April, they were hardly going out for singing or working.
The restriction in movement also created a barrier in maintaining social ties with the villagers for
their livelihood. In fact, their temporary settlement outside the village and attempts to participate
in employment guarantee schemes further deepened the separation from the existing social ties.
The three forms of separation had pushed the community into a crisis severely affecting their liveli-
hood and created a sense of desperation due to an uncertain future. The emotion was evident as one
of the older members from the community described their position:
We have been living like this for generations …just moving from one place to another and working, now even if
we think about settling, we cannot do it because we have nothing at all …how will we buy land, how will we
build a house? And now we are unable to find any work too …we do whatever is possible, just so that we can
get little food for one meal in a day.
We found that such desperation triggered new aspirations as well as anxiety within the community.
Turner described this liminal phase as an “instant of pure potentiality”(1974, 75) where the commu-
nity is momentarily detached from the past and the future is yet to be evolved. Turner was pessi-
mistic about the role a liminal phase can play in bringing revolutionary changes to tribal
societies. Tribal societies often have overwhelming influences of societal structure through norms
and rituals on human position. Irrespective of the degree of transitional force, such societies do
not witness major revolutionary changes. Such instances of pure potentiality are often short-lived
and in Turner’s words not more than a “subversive flicker”1974, 76. We found the liminal phase
within the Baheliya community is akin to Turner’s description of subversive flicker. Although the lock-
down pushed the community into a liminal phase, the absence of an economic–political–social
2S.K. SARMA ET AL.
structure failed to bring any revolutionary change in the position of human life within the
community.
Characteristics of a liminal phase
The lockdown caused by the pandemic placed the life of members from the Baheliya community into
a trajectory akin to non-tribal communities looking for a settled habitation to practise farming.
Although temporary, the community experienced high levels of emotion and a detachment from
the past. Baheliya, whose livelihood has been historically centred around their ability to remain
mobile across hundreds of villages, looked for stability and hoped to station themselves within a
defined geographical area. They expressed their desire to reject the existing societal norms,
adopted new practices for survival, developed a new sense of community while dealing with admin-
istration and members of local governance, and also became creative while changing their routine
life. The available data indicate that the community exhibited the four characteristics of a liminal
phase. These are: freedom, egalitarianism, communion, and creativity.
Freedom is the outcome of rejection of those rules and norms that have structured the social life
prior to the liminal phase. Baheliya have been roaming around seeking their livelihood for several
generations. They have been living in temporary shelters around habitats and have depended on
meagre income from working as labourers in agricultural fields or from the income received in
cash or kind while singing bhajans. The lockdown confined them to one place and offered an oppor-
tunity for freedom. The freedom from moving around in search of food and living in temporary shel-
ters. Many of the members expressed their desire to settle down in a fixed place and do manual
labour in agricultural fields. When asked why they wanted to settle down, two of the respondents
replied:
We are tired now. We are tired of roaming around. Now we just want to settle, and do some work and feed our-
selves. (Respondent 1)
We’ve roamed around enough. We want our children’s life to be better. What if the lockdown is imposed for two
years …then what will we do? Where will we go? That’s why we thought that now we want to settle perma-
nently. (Respondent 2)
The community also wanted to break free from their traditional livelihood of singing bhajans; rather,
they wanted to focus on farm activities. They understand that ownership of land is difficult and
hence are willing to work as labourers in the fields. But after a day’s work, they wished to return
to a place called home. During our interaction with the members, we found that they acknowledged
the role of education in generating opportunities in life and were keen to ensure education for their
children:
Now we are thinking further into the future, we are thinking of improving our children’s lives at least. Our life was
just spent like this …uneducated and foolish, but at least our children will get an education and lead better lives.
(Respondent 2)
The community demonstrated evidence of egalitarianism during the transition period. They wit-
nessed reversal of the structural relations in terms of leadership. Prior to the lockdown, the elders
within the community would come forward to interact with outsiders and would take major
decisions impacting the whole community. Since they were following the traditional sources of live-
lihood within the defined social positions, the conventional wisdom from the experiences of older
generations were relevant and helpful. But with the restrictions during the lockdown, the community
needed to find new ways to survive. They started liaising with block officials, and Panchayat
members to find inroads as beneficiaries of government schemes. This resulted in a reversal of
the leadership role within the community. The young people came forward to explore avenues to
support their livelihood and habitation and eventually took up the leadership position within the
community.
DEVELOPMENT IN PRACTICE 3
In a tribal society, women primarily engaged themselves with cooking, cleaning, child rearing,
fetching water, and such like (Guha, Patel, and Parekh 2017). However, there seemed to be
changes in gender relations in the daily life of the Baheliya community. Earlier, when the main occu-
pation revolved around singing bhajans, it was both the men and the women who went about in the
villages. The grains or money were given to the group or pair by the people residing in that village.
However, during the lockdown when this occupation was no longer viable, the Baheliya community
had to resort to going from door to door to seek alms. This role was played almost entirely by the
women in the community. It was they who had to bear the task of seeking and bringing grains and
food for the family. The women usually would go to the houses in one hamlet on one day and to
another hamlet on the next day and so on; and continued this in rotation. In case they did not
receive enough from the village they were residing in, they would go to the hamlets of the neigh-
bouring villages and also to the peripheral settlements in Bichhiya town occasionally.
The third characteristic of the liminal phase is that of communion. It represents the emotion of the
community as they were trying to refashion themselves. In the initial period of lockdown, there was a
sense of desperation within the community due to the uncertainty of their livelihood. There was
tension caused by conflict with the villagers as they tried to station themselves outside Budhanwara.
From desperation and tension, the community became hopeful as they started talking with the block
officials about job cards. The members spoke to the CEO of Janpad Panchayat requesting land from the
government for rehabilitation. In the initial weeks, there was an enthusiasm among the members and
many of them volunteered to meet the officials. With inaccessibility to the officials even after repeated
attempts and a growing demand to find alternative sources of livelihood, the members gradually
started losing hope in the process. Many gave up pursuing the officials and started focusing on
finding work to survive. Turner argues that societal norms are too overwhelming for the community
to break out during the liminal phase. Hence often a drastic change is not seen even after a liminal
period. We found this to be true where the community is looking for an opportunity to reject their tra-
ditional way of living, but the socio-political structure is not enabling enough for them to do so.
The fourth characteristic of a liminal phase is creativity. New practices, symbols, and rituals are
generated during a liminal phase. We found the members started attempting many things for the
first time. For example, they collected mahua flowers from the forest and sold them in exchange
for rice. One member shared the experience in the following way:
We collected mahua as well for the first time. Because of this corona, we couldn’t go anywhere. Otherwise, we
would have gone from village to village singing and dancing. But now we were stuck here. So, we collected
mahua so as to earn some money and feed ourselves.
The community ensured that they avoided conflict of any kind with the locals while collecting
mahua. They entered the forest to collect flowers only after the locals had completed their collection
and thus avoided any kind of resistance. The community had been living in tents made of cloths for
all these years. Such tents were easy to dismantle and carry wherever the families moved. With the
uncertainty of lockdown, the families looked for more stable housing and created structures using
wood from the forest. The members were excited while narrating their experiences of building
these structures. One of the members shared the excitement as follows:
In our entire lives, this is the first time that we have cut wood to make these kutcha houses. First time in our
entire life! And also, the first time we have actually made such a structure as a house. So, some logs are slanting,
some are backward, some are improperly placed. We didn’t know any of this before.
The lockdown triggered creative responses from the community to cope with the challenges of live-
lihood and shelter. Such responses generated new opportunities of seeing the world. Even if but
such creativity has generated new ways of thinking within the community and resulted in a
hopeful state of emotions. The simple change in structure of habitation from cloth tent to
wooden structure with leaves on the roof changed the living experience of the community. The
4S.K. SARMA ET AL.
emotions triggered through the simple creative responses are beautifully summarised by one of the
members:
That house which we made itself …we feel that for us it is a palace worth crore of rupees. When I come back
from work and go inside that house, my hunger vanishes. It is the first time we made it. I can relax in the shade
and I feel so calm that I don’t even feel hungry anymore.
These statements refer to a deeper change in the position of human condition that the members
were experiencing during those times. This was a new understanding for themselves and their
way of living.
In terms of gender and intra-family relations, some aspects remain unchanged even in the liminal
phase. For instance, it was found that the women were as vocal as the men in the community while
communicating with outsiders and government officials. During negotiations with the Panchayat
representatives, women were also active participants in the discussion. Additionally, while visiting
local government representatives in Bichhiya town, women were invariably part of the group and
also took part in the decision making as to what would be a suitable day for the group to visit
the office. This is significant because in other communities often women do not play an active
role in negotiating with the government or other outside agencies.
After the lifting of lockdown, many of the families migrated to cities to find labour work. In most
cases both the men and the women have migrated, leaving behind toddlers and young children in
the care of a few elders who have stayed back. This is not very unusual, as even in other communities
both adult men as well as women migrate seasonally for labour work. Additionally, since the Baheliya
community has a history of frequent migration, with no permanent settlement, it would be expected
that all adult members of the community who have the physical ability to migrate for labour work
would do so.
Conclusion
Up to the time of submission of this article, there has been no progress on the issue of permanent
settlement of the Baheliya community. There were no positive responses from the local authorities.
Most of the members have started working on agricultural fields to feed their families. They have
given up on the local officials and are continuing with life as usual. Although the community experi-
enced a liminal phase due to the lockdown, it has impacted their life on the margin without trans-
forming the position as generally expected.
The community perceived themselves as “marginalised”as they did not receive enough services
and were often excluded from the provision of government entitlements (Ghosh and Das 2020).
During the liaising with different government officials, the families expressed their aspirations to
settle down and to have their own houses. They were desirous of employment opportunities and
food security. They did not seem inclined to agriculture, but rather working as labourers to earn
wages that help them see their children go to school and the ability to manage for food and
health. The community was extremely keen especially for the next generation to be able to
receive formal education “to be able to lead a better life”. The community aspired to be part of
the settled culture. They sought to have new identities with Mahatma Gandhi Natioanl Rural Employ-
ment Gurantee Act (MGNREGA) job cards, ration cards, and voter I-cards that would put them on a
par with other citizens of the country they are trying to settle in. More importantly, the community
aspired to the dignity of a settled citizen who was not seen as an outsider or a troublemaker; as
someone who was not hauled up as the person responsible for any crime that happened in the
neighbourhood.
The policy implication of this work is to strengthen the safety net measures to be more inclusive.
For a nomad community like that of the Baheliya, their integration into the mainstream is a long
drawn-out process. While this is undoubtedly a critical step to take; there is a need to design
certain immediate interventions to tackle the adverse impact of a crisis like the pandemic. Compared
DEVELOPMENT IN PRACTICE 5
to the state or the central government, it is the local government who would be more effective in
designing such interventions. In the short run, the local government should take adequate measures
to offer a safety net to these communities to protect them from the vulnerabilities of life. Public
works, food transfers, cash transfers, and health insurance are some of the safety net measures
(Tambe et al. 2019) that can be implemented in a targeted way during a crisis like the pandemic.
These are critical for fighting poverty and reducing food security.
How does the lockdown make the community go through a liminal phase? This was the central
question of this paper. We looked at the trigger and characteristics of liminality for the Baheliya com-
munity. Although Turner (1969) was not very optimistic about the scope for liminality in a tribal
society, he was of the general opinion that a liminal phase can be transformative for people. He
saw liminality as the “pocket of development”that can completely change the course of human
life (76). By separating humans from their societal structure, the liminal phase empowers humans
to refashion their life position.
The pandemic has pushed thousands of migrant workers into a liminal phase as they have lost
their jobs and shelters. With cities becoming functional again, many of them have resumed their
routine life. But there are a few whose lives have changed as they have moved on to a different pos-
ition by taking up different livelihood choices. Many opted for an entrepreneurial career rather than
depending on cities to feed them. The lockdown has enforced different degrees of liminality on
human life. In instances where the human subjects have been substantially separated from their
past societal structure, the degree of liminality experienced would be high and one can expect
changes in life position. In such cases, the lockdown might have given human subjects the oppor-
tunity to completely break free from their past structurally constrained experience. In the case of the
Baheliya community, the degree of liminality created by lockdown was low and weak. The social
prejudices against the community and self-image of the members of the community may have
acted as barriers stopping the members from experiencing a cognitive and emotional freedom to
articulate a new identity. As a result, despite experiencing a liminal phase, the community could
not sustain a movement to assert a new identity.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Sushanta Kumar Sarma is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA), India. He studies the
duality in non-profit organisations in terms of forms, practices and culture. His past work has been published in, among
others, the International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, the Journal of Organizational Analysis, and the Economic
and Political Weekly.
Dhwani Lalai is Project Manager at Foundation for Ecological Security (FES). Her work revolves around conservation of
commons through collective action of community. She did her Master of Arts in Development from Azim Premji Uni-
versity, India.
Ishan Agrawal is General Manager (Program) at Foundation for Ecological Security (FES). Ishan has spent more than 12
years working with rural communities for conservation of commons. He holds a diploma in rural management from the
Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA), India.
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