State capacity, ideology and the management of Covid-19: India and Sri Lanka in perspective

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic changed the world beyond imagination, impacting governance and state capacity. It is the opportune time to ask, how did South Asia do? In this Perspective, we orient our attention towards two South Asian states: India and Sri Lanka. We focus on how Covid and its management impacted labour relations by highlighting labour-related policies formulated by both the states during the initial periods of the pandemic. 

Before the pandemic hit, India and Sri Lanka were already economically dwindling, marked by subdued economic growth, rising unemployment and inflation. Between 2017 and 2019, the Indian growth rate slipped to below 7 and 5 percent respectively (World Bank, 2022a). Comparably Sri
Lanka's growth rate, dropped below 4 and 2 percent, in 2017-18 and 2019 (World Bank, 2022b). Sri Lanka's debt levels were already perilous and aggravated during the pandemic resulting in its declaration of bankruptcy in 2022. (CBSL 2022).

The extent to which the state harnesses the benefits of growth depends on its capacity to extract resources (pubic revenue) and distribute/deploy, such resources (public expenditures) prudently, thereby commanding legitimacy from the public at large. Although both countries have been committed to economic liberalisation, neo-liberalism has impacted the provision of health and labour protection, more in India than in Sri Lanka, at least at a polity-wide level.

States in India have greater autonomy in formulating health and labour policies due to the federal mechanism established on the principle of decentralization of power. While federalism has undermined the emergence of a well-developed national health and labour protection infrastructure, it has also created space for the development of subnational health and labour regimes, which sometimes surpass, but sometimes also undercut the national standard. The scope for subnational
variance is much smaller in Sri Lanka, despite health being in the concurrent list of the 13th Amendment, made in 1987, to the Constitution. Although both the national and provincial governments have responsibility over health, the inadequacy of fiscal federalism in Sri Lanka has thwarted its realization.

The divergence between India and Sri Lanka stems not only from  variations in the centralization of the state (vertical concentration of power), but also from the extent to which power is concentrated in the executive or military at the expense of the legislature or parliament (horizontal concentration of power). The civil war and its aftermath in Sri Lanka have left the military in a stronger position, as was visible in their involvement in the management of the pandemic (Kadirgamar 2013; ITJP 2021; Ruwanpura 2022). Furthermore, although the dominance of the Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People’s Party) at the national level in India has generated a remarkable concentration of power in the Prime Minister’s Office, it remains lower than in Sri Lanka. There the ‘power-sharing’ features of the semi-presidential system (the assumed sharing of power between a directly elected President and a parliamentary  government headed by a Prime Minister) were crowded out by the effective concentration of power in and around the Rajapaksa family, until the breakdown of that regime (mid 2022). This concentration of power contributed to the partial side-lining of health officials in leading the pandemic response and weakened the advantages of Sri Lanka’s public health system and labour protection. Rising corruption and increasing indebtedness has eroded the institutional capacity of the Sri Lankan state.

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DOI

https://doi.org/10.1177/09731741221124279

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https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/publications/4817684e-13ce-4d6a-ab17-34989b31de5c