India's response to the COVID-19 pandemic was a complex interplay of colonial-era law, federal tensions, and technological innovation. Discuss.

When the WHO characterised COVID-19 as a pandemic on 11 March 2020 [1], India faced a public health emergency with a nineteenth-century statute, a divided constitutional mandate over health, and an untested digital state — a combination that shaped both the strengths and the strains of its response.

Reliance on colonial-era law

• The Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897 — a brief, punitive statute drafted for plague control — became the primary instrument, though it neither defines an "epidemic" nor prescribes duties of care.
• Its inadequacy showed quickly: an Ordinance in April 2020 had to be promulgated to make violence against healthcare personnel a cognizable and non-bailable offence [2].
• The Disaster Management Act, 2005 was invoked for the first time for a disease, with the National Disaster Management Authority and Home Ministry issuing the March 2020 nationwide lockdown guidelines [3] — a disaster law substituting for absent public health legislation.

Federal tensions

• Public health and sanitation fall in the State List, yet lockdown design, relaxations and later vaccine procurement were centrally directed, narrowing state discretion.
• Migrant worker movement, inter-state border sealing and oxygen allocation during the second wave exposed weak Centre-State coordination; the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health recommended a dedicated institutional mechanism for Centre-State coordination and a pandemic wing within NDMA [3].
• Economic costs were borne unevenly, with GDP contracting 7.3% in 2020-21 [4], sharpening fiscal disputes.

Technological innovation

• COVAXIN, developed by ICMR-NIV with Bharat Biotech, made India one of the few countries with an indigenous vaccine [5].
• CoWIN enabled vaccination at scale, and INSACOG institutionalised genomic surveillance of variants.

Thus India improvised competently on technology while depending on borrowed and outdated legal scaffolding. A modern, rights-based public health law, a permanent Centre-State health coordination mechanism as the Standing Committee urged, and sustained investment in surveillance would convert crisis improvisation into durable preparedness — advancing the Article 21 promise of health as part of the right to life.