KOCHI:
“Transparency is paramount in the fight against any virus and dealing with any health crisis”, said Rajeev Sadanandan, Advisor to the Chief Minister of Kerala on management of the COVID Pandemic, and former Additional Chief Secretary of Government of Kerala in-charge of Health and Family Welfare.
He was talking at a panel discussion oragnised by the Centre for Public Policy Research (CPPR) on January 14, 2021 (Thursday) on Responding to Covid-19: Reflections & Lessons from Kerala, India and China as part of the release of CPPR’s research paper titled ‘A Comparative Study on COVID-19 Outbreak in the Hubei Province of China and the Indian State of Kerala’.
Sadanandan also spoke on the importance of developing technology that can detect emerging pathogens before it turns into an epidemic, as well as the need for electronic data collection and maintenance of health records to deal with any health emergency.
The research paper, written by a team led by Muraleedharan Nair (Senior Fellow of CPPR and Former Indian Consul in China), did a comparative study of the COVID-19 outbreak response of the two administrative divisions of similar status, i.e. the state of Kerala in India and the province of Hubei in China. The study examined how the two entities dealt with the problem with a focus on emergency provisions enacted, technology utilisation, leadership, the role of media and the role of local bodies, among others.
Muraleedharan started by introducing the paper and threw light on the difficulties in gaining information from China as there was a blanket of restrictions on the information that was being released. He highlighted the use of technology by the Chinese government which helped the country to control the spread of the disease. China used it for collective studies and monitoring citizens and urged the Kerala government to set up such a population data which can be used in planning social welfare programmes and during calamities.
P K Hormis Tharakan, Advisor to CPPR and former Chief of Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), and Director General of Police of Kerala released the research paper. The discussion also delved into other aspects as well. Dr Dhanuraj, Chairman and Managing Trustee, CPPR, who moderated the session, reflected on the COVID-19 taskforce to which Dr Reuben Abraham, CEO of IDFC Foundation and IDFC Institute, commented that Kerala was ahead in planning. Kerala was fairly prepared and tapped into its patriot network. “We set up a homogenous national taskforce, keeping in mind the implications such as the disturbances in supply chain and economic meltdown. We had an expert group around the world to help and advise the government when in need,” Dr Abraham said.
“We should also understand what countries like Taiwan and Vietnam have done to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, and we have a lot to learn from these countries,” he added. He noted that Taiwan had been monitoring Chinese social media since early December when a pneumonia cluster was discovered in the Chinese province of Hubei. He added that Vietnam had already devised effective response strategies realising that China will not be forthcoming about the information on the virus. He also pointed out that Singapore has already launched a variety of planning programmes to combat different risks, including unknown viruses, and added that a multi-disciplinary approach to risk management is needed as the world is faced with more risks.
Dr K N Raghavan, Chairman and Executive Director of Rubber Board, Government of India, commented on the power of a democratic setup in comparison to an autocratic rule like in China in winning a war like COVID pandemic. “Inner strength and resilience of democracy has served the world much better in preventing or reducing the impact of the pandemic,” he said.
Sadananadan pointed out that “Kerala’s decentralised government and the civil society systems responded to the pandemic really well. We had a much softer landing in tackling the problem than expected, this was only because the Kerala government knows how to utilise the social capital it has at its disposal”.
