Introducing The Care Manifesto "Our world is one in which carelessness reigns." Thus begins The Care Manifesto, a little orange book with six chapters written by the Care Collective comprising of five activist academics: Andreas Chatzidakis, Jamie Hakim, Jo Littler, Catherine Rottenberg, and Lynne Segal. In the wake of the pandemic, we are all too aware of this carelessness. It turns out that we had stopped caring pre-pandemic, the authors say, where the social infrastructure of several

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... s was decimated by a politics of austerity and neoliberal economic policies over the past forty years. This of course will come as no surprise to feminists. Yet there is something unique about the post-pandemic moment that warrants a feminist restatement of the problems we face, alongside a clarion call for the reconstruction of a new post-pandemic future. On both counts, The Care Manifesto does not disappoint. Indeed, it is difficult to disagree with much of what the Manifesto sets out. Thus I aim to offer some reflections approaching it as a materialist feminist, socio-legal scholar working on social reproduction in India. Before that, how does the Manifesto define care? we not only mean 'hands-on' care, or the work people do when directly looking after the physical and emotional needs of otherscritical and urgent as this dimension of caring remains. 'Care' is also a social capacity and activity involving the nurturing of all that is necessary for the welfare and flourishing of life. Above all, to put care centre stage means recognising and embracing our interdependencies. In this manifesto we therefore use the term 'care' capaciously to embrace familial care, the hands-on care that workers carry out in care homes and hospitals and that teachers do in King's College London, London, UK *