COVID-19 and Federalism in India: Capturing the Effects of State and Central Responses on Mobility

In response to the rapidly spreading COVID-19 pandemic, governments resorted to containment and closure measures to reduce population mobility and ensure social distancing. Initially, India’s state governments enacted varying social-distancing policies until the Central government overrode states to impose a nationwide lockdown on 24th March. This paper examines the relative impact of state- and central-level social-distancing policies on changes in mobility, comparing the periods before and after the national lockdown. A district-level panel dataset is formed, compiling data on social-distancing policies and changes in population mobility patterns. Panel regressions reveal that the incremental effect of each social-distancing policy varied across states in the pre-24th March period. The national lockdown led to much larger, though varying, reductions in mobility across all states. Overall, states which were able to achieve higher compliance in terms of reducing mobility in the pre-lockdown phase performed better in the national lockdown. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1057/s41287-021-00463-4.