 Today's topic I'm going to speak about is governance and corona. First, what is corona? Right now, the entire world is facing this pandemic of corona. This is spread across the world. And what is pandemic means? This is spreading across countries and across people of varied backgrounds. This we call it as pandemic. Some of the examples of pandemics occurred before corona was like SARS or malaria type or plague or good examples we saw in this week. Next thing is what is governance? Governance is about decision making process in the society. To be very simple, it's addition for well-being of the society was taken care by stakeholders. And for the stakeholders in decision making processes, we can say it's international bodies, governments. When you say governments, for example, in India, we can split into three levels. That is central government, state government, and local government. Next, we have corporate. Next, we have the most important stakeholders in any decision making process of the society, people themselves. All these we call them as stakeholders. Right now we need to see the interaction between corona and the governance process or decision making process in Indian society. Before going to start this idea of corona and governance process interaction, briefly we see the history of pandemics. When you say history of pandemics, the first recorded pandemic was 4000 BC happened in Athens, which killed around two-third population in Athens and North Africa. And that time pandemic was typhoid period. And if you say two-third population, means it's around 66% of population wiped out. Out of 100 people, 60 people died. And in our near past, that is by 1918, there was a Spanish rule. And we know that why it got the name Spanish rule. It started in Madrid and it spread across Europe and other countries. And it resulted in 15 million deaths. 15 million deaths means to understand the impact. 1 million equal to 10 lakh. So if you say 15 million, you can understand what the death rate of that particular pandemic. In our past, that is by 2000s, we have SARS where death was around 700. It is not a pandemic, it's an epidemic. And finally right now we are facing corona. In corona, death rate is around 2%. Out of all infected people, 2% is the death rate. Global level is around 3%. India is around 2.3 to 2.4%. So what we can understand here, based on the death rates, right from Athens 400 BC to 2020 corona pandemic, you can understand that the death rate has reduced a lot. Losing human life is always bad. But when compared to the rate of losing from Athens to today's corona, you can clearly understand that our governance process has improved a lot in controlling the pandemic situations. Governance process is nothing but a decision making process. Here we will start with this international governance or international bodies whose role we are playing here. Better way to understand this international governance is after this corona pandemic, we came across a term called WHO or World Health Organization for playing a major role in world level for controlling this pandemic. From the name it's so we can understand world health. We are focusing on global health or human health. So they are having a very active role in it. And to understand the primary role of WHO, what WHO does is first they identify the cluster where the disease happens. Take the example of corona here, where it happened in China, it's happened in the city of Wuhan. They first identify the clusters and they send a specialist to this cluster to understand what is happening in that particular diseases. Once they identify that particular cluster is emerging as a biggest problem, then they began to provide guidelines to global countries. And also finally they are responsible for declaring, for example, like this corona, they have declared public emergency of international concern. So they said that probably this corona will have a huge world level impact. So from this we can clearly understand what is the role of WHO. WHO gives the key body right now in controlling the pandemic situation because they have world map of corona impact and they study what is happening across the world and also they copy the best practices what is happening across the world and they give it to particular nations. For example, if you take corona outbreak, we can see that US and Brazil is facing the biggest impact and compared with other countries. So WHO comes here and gives the guidelines. This is the role of international governance or international connecting between all different nations. Then comes the national level governance. When you say national level governance, right now we can see the role of union government in India. If you say union government means the key role is played by Ministry of Health and Family Welfare along with another institution called ICMR, Indian Council for Medical Research. First we will see what is the role of all... If you take the role of national governance, national governance, here I am speaking about the union government. When you say union government, there are two important players right now in India for controlling this pandemic. One is Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and next is the institution ICMR, Indian Council for Medical Research. So we need to know what is the role of these two institutions. One is a government entity, another is an institution. When you take this Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the primary role is to coordinate with state governments and also to coordinate with ICMR for controlling the pandemic. The next thing is they want to provide the basic resources for containing this pandemic and what is basic resources here means, for example, mask or PPE kits, all need to be provided by the union government, especially for the state governments. That is taken care by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and lastly the primary role is to make people aware what is the status of India regarding this Corona pandemic. And what is ICMR as it states Indian Council for Medical Research. It's a premier body responsible for health science or medical research. Right now they are providing guidelines for state governments and also for hospital establishments or need to be done. And one of the biggest aspects of the role of ICMR is recently they have decoded this Corona virus, DNA and this helps in creating a local kit for testing Corona. So this clearly shows what is the role of ICMR. So when you take national level governance, that comes with the role of Ministry and ICMR institution. But we can also compare regarding this Corona pandemic national level performance. When you say national performance, we take two countries, worst performance and good performance. We say worst performance, we can say about the US of Brazil. One of the major reason why US of Brazil is not able to contain pandemic was first and primary problem was the leadership of these countries never understand the impact of Corona. Even Brazilian president saying that this is like a normal fever and cough people doesn't need to panic. And he was not a role model for the people. How he is not a role model is he was not wearing a mask in public meetings and he's saying that I'm not able, I will not be impact by Corona in a strong man and all this political statements. And this has a huge impact in Brazil right now. Even the Minister of Health resigned because of this stupidity. Similarly, if you take US, another biggest problem in US is where they have basic problem with all the necessary items like mask or PPE kits in hospitals. Another biggest issue in US is as entire hospital systems are privatized as there is no public health infrastructure, they paid a heavy price for it. Another reason of failure of US is they have the psyche that there will not be any disease like emergency for their country. So they're not well prepared for it. On the other side, we didn't compare countries like South Korea where they effectively control Corona. One of the major reasons for that is already South Korea was exposed to SARS where they have all their necessary precaution measures whenever there's an outbreak of pandemic or epidemic. So they have all the procedures ready for it. So that helped South Korea very effectively. Similarly, some simple. This clearly shows that how national governance is important in pandemic situations. Next comes state level governance. When you take state level governance, it's nothing but the role of state governments. Here the union government use the guidelines and state governments are the level of governance where they implement at state level boundaries. And we can see that every state government is coming out with the directors for their people and also for their infrastructures and establishments how they want to do it. And here also we can compare the performance of India level state governments. For example, to take the best performance Kerala when compared with other states like Tamil Nadu or Maharashtra. What went right for Kerala and what went wrong for Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, for example, take Kerala. Kerala is a state always prepared at the level of disasters because that state is always exposed to disasters either it may be a natural disaster or any epidemics or pandemics. A great example for that is right now we can see that Kerala is exposed to multiple disasters. One is floods are happening and also we have corona but they are effectively controlling it because of their previous experiences and also they haven't known information that Gidma virus outbreak was there in Kerala. So Kerala government is very focused on controlling this pandemic situation because they have all the standard operating procedures. What is standard operating procedures? Once this corona outbreak happened Kerala created this state level control rooms, district level control rooms where state level control rooms are headed by principal secretaries, secretarial offices where the district level is headed by district collectors and they were coordinating with all different agencies and stakeholders for controlling corona. Here you can also see that they have a very good strategy of controlling corona. What are the strategies? First one is trace. They need to identify who are the potential people to have corona. They need to test them and finally quarantine. They have effectively done it. They say that in Kerala anyone coming outside of Kerala or reaching Kerala from outside or put under compulsory food industry quarantine and they are being monitored by the government establishments whether they have this corona or not. And also they effectively use the help of people also there. You know that Kerala is famous for Kodumbashree is a self-made group initiative in Kerala where women are being part of it and Kerala government effectively use the help of Kodumbashree to propagate the information about corona and its impact and also to provide the basic awareness among the people. This is how Kerala government was very effective in controlling corona. Similarly like Kerala government another government which was effectively doing that was Orissa and Orissa also have the same standard establishments and procedures to control corona because they were already exposed to disasters like floods or cyclones and all. With that they have a very perfect operating system for controlling corona. When it takes states like Tamil Nadu or Maharashtra they are not able to understand the impact of disaster and they made few errors in initial times of corona outbreak. A great example for that is like take example of Tamil Nadu and Chennai was a good example where people are very casual in the initial days of corona they never understood it. Even there was a market being run by the government for providing vegetables to the people and they understood it with no centre for corona and there was a cluster formed because of it. Similarly Maharashtra and Dharavi is another good example. So this clearly shows that how state level governance is also important. Next come district level governance when you say district level governance means that comes the role of district collector who is a key player in controlling corona along the district borders and you can see that every district is making the decisions based on the corona outbreak in India you can see that the district collector saying that the district is being blocked and every people are tested for corona and they are creating all the basic infrastructures for corona especially strengthening their primary health centres this is all happening across countries. So there comes the district level. Next is corporate governance when you say corporate governance the role of corporate comes into picture we know that corona's first biggest impact is economic impact and corporates are losing revenue even they are losing revenue corporates said that it's not mandatory for the people to come to the offices and they also stick to the government guidelines and whenever there is an issue for any country corporates is the first responders great example is you can take India where PM Catpons were created for responding to corona and corporates were the first one to give money to the government to control corona and corporates after few months of corona outbreak right now this unlock is being done and corporates is actively involved in reviving the economy you can see the government saying 30% of the employees they can allow to work with that's minimal spent they are trying to generate revenue and creating economic opportunities for Indian masses this is the greatest biggest aspect of corporates and also corporates under CSR activity corporate social responsibility they are protecting the people in their locality by providing food and basic necessities and also providing the basic amenities so this clearly shows how corporate is playing a role finally that comes to people people is the biggest stakeholder in any governance process without people support nothing can succeed a great example for that in India is search Bharat because of active people's participation search Bharat was an immense success similarly if you want to contain corona like pandemic people's participation should be most important here when you say people means the most vulnerable section for corona because of corona pandemic is old age people and people with diseases already they have some diseases like diabetes or cancer the problem is because of this two section of people they have a low immune system where corona can easily impact so that comes the people role here we can see that people should always follow guidelines and directives to them by the governments one good example is right now after corona outbreak people are changing their behaviors what is changing their behaviors means you can see that whenever they want to go for public places they are wearing a mask and they are meeting social distance and also they may focusing on personal hygiene this is the primary role of the people to contain corona so corona outbreak can be contained with the help of people and also people on their own interest act as a volunteer for helping the governments so ultimately we say corona outbreaks and its response there are multiple players involved right from international level union government, state government, district level corporates and people all this need to combine to find the best solution for corona pandemic and we are in the right direction right now in our country where all the players are effectively playing the role to contain corona hopefully we think that in the future 2 months corona pandemic will be contained in India and we go back to our normal life thank you