Kerala shows the way

Kerala has underlined the importance of two aspects about the role of leadership in tackling the crisis. One, the effectiveness of bottom-up involving people at the grassroots with preparedness, planning and implementation rather than top down, talk down oneperson centric approach. Second, the inspirational role played by a woman in a crucial area like healthcare has demonstrated that effective disease containment is possible not only in a democracy, but in a poor one. Similar successes have been reported in countries that have women heads of government/state Bangladesh, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway and Taiwan.