-The Hindu The State has managed the crisis by building on legacies of egalitarianism, social rights and public trust The global coronavirus pandemic is a natural, albeit brutal experiment. Just about every part of the world has been impacted and the range of responses we are seeing at the national and subnational levels reveal not only existing inequalities but also the political and institutional capacity of governments to respond. Nowhere is this...
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Needed, greater decentralisation of power -Suhrith Parthasarathy
-The Hindu Even as States have taken up positions of leadership in the pandemic response, federal limitations are becoming hurdles Over the course of the last few weeks, as we have found ourselves in the throes of a pandemic, one of the striking features of governance has been the signal role played by State Chief Ministers across India. Even before the Union government invoked the Disaster Management Act, 2005, many State governments...
More »Amartya Sen writes: Overcoming a pandemic may look like fighting a war, but the real need is far from that
-The Indian Express Amartya Sen writes: Tackling a social calamity is not like fighting a war which works best when a leader can use top-down power to order everyone to do what the leader wants — with no need for consultation. In contrast, what is needed for dealing with a social calamity is participatory governance and alert public discussion. We have reason to take pride in the fact that India is the...
More »Not just IAS and police, India’s Covid-19 fight must use panchayats and municipalities too -Pradeep Chhibber and Rahul Verma
-ThePrint.in Once again, the prolonged period of Covid-19 pandemic crisis will shine the light on India’s state capacity. But should India depend only on its elite bureaucracy? As India completes the first week of its 21-day nationwide lockdown to battle the spread of the Covid-19 virus, it is increasingly clear that the worst is not over yet. If not another round of lockdown, India may witness at least similar measures that will...
More »India adrift, optimism hard to sustain -Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen
-The Telegraph Prospects of the future damaged by failing development policy to collapsing Democracy The recent estimate of GDP growth for the third quarter of 2019-20, at around 4.7 per cent, has prompted a predictable sense of gloom. However, even the 4.7 per cent estimate is deceptive, since in per-capita terms, the corresponding figure would be just above 3 per cent. This, sadly, is no more than half the growth rate of...
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