Journalists in the mainstream Western media often show surprise even as they report on governments in the Global South navigating the COVID-19 pandemic with relative success compared to the chaos in the U.S. and UK. But the success story that they narrate is typically one of individual leadership or culture, as if individuals and cultures are not embedded in political spaces. This article is about Kerala, a state in the southern part of India that elected the world’s second democratically elected communist government in 1957. Kerala is currently governed by the Left Democratic Front led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
Kerala has rightfully received many accolades in the past few months for its relative success in handling the pandemic. K.K. Shailaja, lovingly addressed as Shailaja Teacher, is minister of health and social welfare in Kerala. Many news outlets have called Shailaja Teacher the ”rock star health minister“ and “corona slayer“ for her leadership in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic. This communist woman’s press conferences will not get the same kind of adulation that Andrew Cuomo receives even though the New York governor did not take the pandemic seriously enough during the critical period at the beginning of the outbreak. But for those who understand Malayalam (the regional language of Kerala), Shailaja Teacher and her team’s press conferences exude confidence and trust among Kerala’s citizens.
Read the full article: https://www.liberationnews.org/how-a-communist-led-government-in-kerala-responded-to-the-covid-19-pandemic/
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