Kerala’s Strategies on COVID · •Mobilize institutions and people •Build trust. Executive decision making •Central point of coordination •Expertise over politics •Communication

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