Kerala’s Innovations and Flexibility for Covid-19 Recovery: Storytelling using Systems Thinking

Abstract

During the early five months of the first phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, the South Indian state of Kerala regularly appeared in world media, presenting an impactful case of Covid-19 innovations. The purpose of this article is to uniquely present Kerala’s success of flattening the Covid-19 curve during that period, employing storytelling using systems thinking. Contributing to the literature stream linking flexible systems management and systems thinking, this study presents the interconnected whole of Kerala’s Covid-19 innovations for pandemic management. The reference mode that was developed using the systems thinking and modelling methodology confirmed Kerala’s exemplary performance in flattening the Covid-19 curve during the first five months of 2020. The systems model built showed six feedback loops explaining how Covid-19 spreading was controlled in Kerala by different types of innovations and an effective public health system. Overall, with a strong inbuilt social fabric, experienced leadership that withered Nipah-virus outbreak, and robust public health system at its advantage, Kerala flattened the Covid-19 curve using its intertwined social, policing, communication and technological innovations.

Ayurvedic Response to COVID-19 Pandemic in Kerala, India and Its Impact on Quarantined Individuals – A Community Case Study

“…With a dynamic decentralized governance system having been built over the years, and active involvement of the general public at the grass-roots level, Kerala has been able to effectively manage earlier crises arising out of natural calamities and even the Nipah outbreak of 2018 and 2019 (28,60). Additionally, proper communication strategy, integration of technology with public health-care delivery and active community involvement have contributed to the successful operationalization of the Ayurvedic strategies for mitigating the impact of COVID-19 pandemic in the state (30).…”

“…With a significant influx of COVID-19 positive persons from other states and countries in the early phases of the pandemic, Kerala built up an active COVID-19 containment strategy (29). The state also steppedup contact tracing, testing and tracking in a bid to flatten the curve and to minimize the burden on hospitals (30). The state health machinery strongly emphasized the need for Covid-appropriate behavior viz.…”

Social Sustainability Challenges Towards Flexible Supply Chain Management: Post-COVID-19 Perspective

“…In another study conducted by He and Harris ( 2020 ), argued that this pandemic has brought out an excellent opportunity to combat emergency global social and environmental challenges by businessmen, adopting genuine and authentic CSR. Meanwhile, Elias ( 2021 ) investigated the successful flexible strategies to combat the 1st wave of COVID-19 in Kerala, India. Paul and Chowdhury ( 2020 ) proposed some strategies to deal with SC disruption considering a case of a high-demand item, i.e.…”

Individual Resilience in the Organization in the Face of Crisis: Study of the Concept in the Context of COVID-19

“…Beyond the unprecedented nature of this health crisis, we observe that no sector of activity is exempt and that all organizations are affected. The repercussions are political, social, societal, economic and financial as well as organizational (Ahmed et al, 2021;Elias, 2021;Frimousse & Peretti, 2020;Paramita et al, 2021;Paul & Chowdhury, 2020;Ufua et al 2021).…”