Pandemic Disruptions and Odisha's Lessons in Governance (Public Health, Data Protection and Other Essays)

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With only 0.55 beds available for every 1,000 people, India's public health system struggled to cope with the COVID-19 crisis, even while out-of-pocket expenditure pushed millions back into poverty leading to economic, educational, and equity distress. Also, with the increase in the use of technology, concerns about data privacy and citizens' right to privacy emerged. Tensions between the State and Centre over the allocation of funds built up as budgetary resources started dwindling for both. Children becoming orphans and girls vulnerable to child marriages and trafficking was another disturbing fallout.

Amidst these multifarious challenges in several sectors, there were States like Odisha which stood out, by adopting the famed 5T framework of governance which forms the overacting policy approach in what has now gained prominence as the Odisha Model of growth and development. Odisha Government's handling of the covid crisis riding on its earlier experience in handling natural disasters has been applauded nationally as well as globally.

Pandemic Disruptions and Odisha's Lessons in Governance compiles various essays that the author wrote during the pandemic years outlining India's and Odisha's fight against COVID and all the concomitant unintended consequences while also commenting on how either policy planning or implementation could possibly have been better, setting out a roadmap for the future. Several of these policy prescriptions were later adopted by the Government.

A former career bureaucrat, Dr Amar Patnaik is currently a Member of Parliament in Rajya Sabha from Odisha representing the Biju Janata Dal. He is the recipient of the Sansad Ratna Award 2022. A PhD in institutional economics, he is a member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance, Consultative Committee on Forest, Environment and Climate Change, and Joint Committee on Biological Diversity. He is also a member of the Public Accounts Committee and the Committee on Public Undertakings. He regularly writes on issues relating to economics, finance, technology, data privacy, and the environment.

This book is a culmination of the various essays that I wrote on pertinent contemporary issues that emerged in India during the pandemic years of 2020-21 and 2021-2022. Since the pandemic struck the world, many fissures emerged which needed to be analysed to understand where India stood in the world. They pertained to healthcare, vaccines, online education for children as schools and colleges shut down and the increasing use of technology to mitigate these concerns. With the use of technology, there was emergence of the issue of data privacy and citizen's right to privacy.

Added to these was also the issue of disaster management and the state's capacity to negotiate these on a sustainable basis even as financial and budgetary resources of both the Centre and State were dwindling. This book is a commentary on these topics with some concrete suggestions as to how either policy planning or implementation of policy could have been better during that extant period.

Amar Patnaik is one of the most active and engaged MPs in the Rajya Sabha. He came to Parliament after a distinguished career in the civil service and that background, expertise and experience is always reflected in both his short interventions and longer speeches in the Council of States. Belonging to a regional party, he has naturally to give primacy to issues of concern, relevance and interest to Odisha which he represents. But he has managed to cover a wider canvas as well.

Over the past two years he has also emerged as a very thoughtful analyst of and commentator on diverse public policy issues in the print media-a media that is under threat from other forms of communication but still has a distinctive importance of its own. This anthology brings together his sharp writings on variety of topics-health, education, technology, environment, economy, financial management and social welfare. They are based not only on his long years in public administration but also on what he has observed and learnt as a MP.