Community Perception of COVID-19 and Local Response Mechanism in India

Abstract

This paper has conducted a literature review of the international scenario of the local governance and covid19 (including best practices) followed by an empirical examination of risk perception and state of local governance in the two most populous states in India (UP and Bihar) with a joint population of over 300 million. Plenty of work during COVID 19 suggests multiple problems, solutions and best local practices. However, very little is known about linkages between pandemic, its community perception and local response mechanism in high population countries having scarce resources. The result of logistic regression (N=2041) shows non-migrants and females perceive no risk of COVID despite having heard of Corona, showing a perception and behavioural issue that requires special local governing attention in such societies. Further, analysis reveals infection rate is high in the districts where complete elected council is not present and are only governed by chiefs of the villages. In such a deficient state of local governance, the COVID problem could be handled by community policing instead of totally relying on strict lockdown.