Germany is doing much better at responding to Covid than its EU peers. Its health minister explained it simply, "other countries had to build the lab networks, we already had them". Same lesson from Kerala - it already had things the other states are scrambling to build or mimic.

What are those things? At first glance, one might say that it is a higher degree of 'preparedness'. But that's off the mark. What is needed is 'capacity' to respond to any situation, not only the current one. And in public administration, that capacity comes from local strengths.

It is 28 years since the Constitutional Amendment for decentralised urban governance was passed. State after state has refused to implement it. And our higher judiciary has granted numerous adjournments on this, rather than insisting that a settled law be implemented.

If we use even half the success of Kerala as a benchmark, it's clear we could have prevented thousands of Covid cases and saved a few hundred lives if other states had similar capacities for local intervention. The price we are paying for poor governance is astronomical.