State Capacity, Ideology and the Management of COVID-19 in South Asia: India and Sri Lanka in Perspective

The COVID-19 pandemic changed the world beyond imagination, impacting governance and state capacity. It is the opportune time to ask, how did South Asia do? In this Perspective, we orient our attention towards two South Asian states: India and Sri Lanka. We focus on how COVID and its management impacted labour relations by highlighting labour-related policies formulated by both the states during the initial periods of the pandemic. Before the pandemic hit, India and Sri Lanka were already economically dwindling, marked by subdued economic growth, rising unemployment and inflation. Between 2017 and 2019, the Indian growth rate slipped to below 7% and 5%, respectively (World Bank, 2022a). Comparably, Sri Lanka’s growth rate dropped below 4% and 2%, in 2017–2018 and 2019 (World Bank, 2022b). Sri Lanka’s debt levels were already perilous and aggravated during the pandemic, resulting in its declaration of bankruptcy in 2022 (CBSL, 2022). The extent to which the state harnesses the benefits of growth depends on its capacity to extract resources (public revenue) and distribute or deploy, such