COVID‐19: Severity of the pandemic and responses of Indian states

• Published date: 01 November 2020
• Author: Sandeep Kumar Kujur,Diti Goswami
• Date: 01 November 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2362

PRACTITIONER PAPER

COVID-19: Severity of the pandemic and responses

of Indian states

Sandeep Kumar Kujur

1

|Diti Goswami

2

1

Department of Economics, Institute of Public

Enterprise, Hyderabad, India

2

Department of Humanities and Social

Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi,

New Delhi, India

Correspondence

Sandeep Kumar Kujur, Department of

Economics, Institute of Public Enterprise,

Hyderabad 500 101, Telangana, India.

Email: sandeep@ipeindia.org

Do Indian states with comprehensive labor measures experience low fatality due to

COVID-19? An analysis of the relationship between labor measures of the state gov-

ernment in India and the severity of the pandemic reveals that states such as Uttar

Pradesh, Delhi, Kerala, Odisha, and Bihar that have adopted inclusive labor measures

have witnessed lesser case fatality ratios. In contrast, states like West Bengal, Guja-

rat, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra with inadequate labor measures have

experienced high levels of COVID-19-related fatalities. The impressive approach

adopted by the successful states can be considered as a model to deal with the

despairing labor force during the global pandemic.

1|INTRODUCTION

The number of infected and deaths has been increasing rapidly across

the world, including in India ever since the novel coronavirus disease

2019 (COVID-19) was firstdetected in late December.In India, although

the rate of recovery is growing,the prevalence rate

1

of the disease is

also increasing over time (Figure 1).

2

To reduce the prevalence and

severity of this pandemic and address the market failure (Harilal, 2020,

Singh & Neog,2020), the central government of India has adopted vari-

ous labor market and migration-related measures such as relief packages

for laborers and industries, while enforcing a countrywide lockdown.

For instance,the Ministry of Finance declared the monetary assistance

to the tune of Rs. 1.70 lakh crore

3

under the “Pradhan Mantri Gareeb

Kalyan Yojana,”targeting as many as 80 crore people affected by the

lockdown. The wages of MGNREGA workers have been hiked from

Rs. 182 to Rs. 202 per day. An ex-gratia amount of Rs. 500 per month

for the next 3months is also promised for 20crore women withJan

Dhan Yojna. TheMinistry of External Affairs has formed a new depart-

ment to manage COVID-19 for the Indians staying inforeign countries

(International Labor Organisation, 2020; Rakshit & Basishtha, 2020).

However,considering the natureand scale of the pandemic,these mea-

sures initiated by the central government may not be sufficientto cater

to the vulnerability arisingfrom this pandemic. The limited administra-

tive machinery of the central government also may not be equipped to

manage the pandemic at the local level. Therefore, the measuresby the

state governments are equally crucial to cater effectively tothe specific

needs of various heterogeneous socialand economic groups.One of the

essential areas that need immediate attention of the states is the labor

sector. In response to the state-specific labor needs, the states have

adopted different measures like emergency relief, income replacement,

food-chain security, and health and public services to ensure the liveli-

hood and healthof poor, especially migrantsand the informal workers.

4

The abovementioned measures provided bythe various states will have

a direct effecton the livelihood and healthof the laborers. Therefore, it

is interesting to analyze the various measures adopted by the Indian

states toaddress the despair of thelaborers who have beenleft without

work and livelihood during this health emergency. In this study, we

locate the diverse measures adopted by the states and analyze its rela-

tionshipswith the case fatalityratio (CFR) of the pandemic.

5

We consider the severity of the disease as the ratio of red zones

to the total number of districts in a particular state. However, as there

is no standardized methodology

6

on which the red zones are defined,

we also consider other measures for the robustness. In this context,

we employ two nonparametric estimates of CFR (Ghani et al., 2005;

Jewell et al., 2007) to assess the intensity of the pandemic that

directly captures the virulence (Nishiura, 2010). Suppose at any given

time point s,D(s), R(s), and C(s) refer to the cumulative number of

deceased, recoveries, and cases, respectively. These two CFR esti-

mates are CFR1(s)=D(s)/C(s) and CFR2(s)=D(s)/{D(s)+R(s)}. The

drawback of CFR1 is that it ignores the censoring arising from the

patients who remain in the hospital, especially at the early stages of

the pandemic. On the other hand, CFR2 considers the patients' out-

comes over the longer term of the pandemic. Therefore, we consider

CFR2 as an improved method of computing the CFR.

Received: 22 June 2020Revised: 15 July 2020Accepted: 17 July 2020

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2362

J Public Affairs. 2020;20:e2362.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd1of7

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2362