Kerala’s experiment in harnessing the administrative acumen and efficacy of local governments in managing the COVID-19 crisis using social media tools has captured national attention and is set to be emulated by other States.
The multi-lingual social media and Internet-based audio and video training sessions created by the Kerala Institute of Local Administration on a range of topics such as formation and management of implementation teams, management of community kitchens and community quarantine centres and protective measures to be taken by COVID response teams have won the acclaim of the Union Panchayati Raj Ministry and uploaded on the platforms of the National Institute of Rural Development.
When the State government decided to rope in the local governments for arresting the wanton spread of the virus, they were entrusted with the onerous task of monitoring those in quarantine, assisting contact tracing and managing community kitchens and such other tasks. But for the management of community kitchens most of the elected members and officials were at a loss in handling the crisis.
KILA, which has specialised in capacity-building, stepped in to train and educate the elected members and utilised its vast network comprising faculty members, district coordinators and resource persons for disseminating the audio and video sessions it had created for the purpose. Most of the sessions have been translated into Tamil, Kannada, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Assamese and Odiya and are being posted in official platforms of the Panchayati Raj Ministry and other Central agencies.
The massive participation of local bodies and their latent capacity in reaching out to the masses have complemented the initiatives of the Health as well as other departments.
The sessions were disseminated among the elected members in time and hence they were duly empowered to handle the crisis without much confusion.
Though the three-tier governance mechanism is not so strong and networked in other States, the sessions could well be used for monitoring patients, those in quarantine and also checking the virus spread.
The portal https://cblsgi.kila.ac.in/ has proved to be useful for Kerala as well as other States and the model is set to be replicated by others too, sources said.
