Public Service Delivery in Turbulent Times Where Convergence Matters: Lessons from the Management of Covid-19 in Kerala
| DOI | 10.1177/00195561221083805 |
| Author | Prabhat Kumar Datta |
| Date | 01 June 2022 |
| Published date | 01 June 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Public Service Delivery
in Turbulent Times
Where Convergence
Matters: Lessons from
the Management of
Covid-19 in Kerala
Prabhat Kumar Datta1,2
Abstract
In turbulent times, the state is charged with three-fold core responsibilities,
namely, to reduce or arrest the impact of the crisis on the lives and property
of the citizens, to ensure effective and quicker service delivery, and to maintain
state–society relations. In this article, an attempt has been made to analyse how
the government of Kerala, which is regarded as one of the best performing states
in India, fought the battle of the first wave of Covid-19 in rural areas. An attempt
is made to capture and examine the role of the local government institutions and
civil society groups, more particularly Kudumbashree groups and to explore how
the state government coordinated and facilitated the work of the different state
and non-state actors for the convergence of the services delivered by them and
for the maintenance of conducive state–society relations.
Keywords
Public services, Covid-19, Kerala, village panchayats, Kudumbashree groups,
state–society relations
The modern ideas about the state began to take shape since the Age of
Enlightenment, dating from the late 17th century to the ending of the Napoleonic
Wars in 1815. It was a time when the ideas of the medieval times were in a state
of flux. It was believed that misery of an individual caused by poverty, ill-health
and old age and the like were neither the fallout of divine dispensation nor to be
Article
Indian Journal of Public
Administration
68(2) 233–244, 2022
© 2022 IIPA
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DOI: 10.1177/00195561221083805
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1 Department of Political Science, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India.
2 Xavier Law School, St Xavier’s University, Kolkata, India.
Corresponding author:
Prabhat Kumar Datta, Visiting Professor, Xavier Law School, St Xavier’s University, Action Area III
B, New Town, Kolkata 700160, India.
E-mail: dattaprabhat@gmail.com
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