Kerala’s Strategies on COVIDPatrick Heller

Professor of Sociology and International and Public Affairs

Brown University, USA

State Variation in Federal Democracies

Overview

• Strategies• Epidemiological and welfare• Human resource mobilization

But strategy only as good as delivery system:

• Executive decision-making

• State capacity and the chain of command• Infrastructural• Coordination

• Inter-agency• Inter-level

• State-Civil Society Synergy

• Citizenship and trust

Strategy

• Plan, plan and plan (people’s plan, nipah, floods)

• Identify, trace, test and isolate

• Anticipate and address welfare effects

• Mobilize institutions and people

• Build trust

Executive decision making

• Central point of coordination

• Expertise over politics

• Communication

• Setting a moral standard

State capacity and chain of decision-making

• Infrastructural• Public health care system

• Coordination• Inter-agency

• Authoritative• Mobilizing and binding officials

• Eliciting compliance

• Decentralized

State-Civil Society Synergy

• Co-production• Mobilizing societal resources

• Kudumbasree

Citizenship and trust

• Eliciting compliance

• Enforcement and participation• Social distancing and surveillance coupled with welfare and participation

Policy lessons

• Kerala exceptionalism?

• Wide variation in state responses

• All hands on deck

• Plan and coordinate

• Work with civil society