Image source: Hindu Business Line

Harisankar K Sathyapalan & Sreeparvathy Gopalakrishna Pillai

The State of Kerala has been in the forefront of fighting COVID-19 ever since the coronavirus hit India. From successfully treating the first three infected patients to halting a much disastrous community spread, the well-coordinated efforts of the State government, especially of its top-class public health system, has attracted much global attention. However, amid round-the-clock measures to sustain a flattened curve, the government is now faced with a political crisis. A technology-driven data collection project aimed at increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of its fight against the pandemic has pushed the government to a defensive position. More specifically, a contractual arrangement between the State government’s IT division and a US-based tech company, Sprinklr, for collecting, storing and processing the health data of Keralites has raised many doubts in the minds of not only the opposition parties but also the general public.

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Harisankar is Assistant Professor, and Sreeparvathy is Doctoral Researcher at the School of Legal Studies, Cochin University of Science and Technology. Views are personal.Views expressed are personal and need not reflect or represent the views of Centre for Public Policy Research.

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