Asserting sovereignty across its territories remains the primary purpose of the modern State. There exist two kinds of sovereignties: legal sovereignty and de facto sovereignty. While legal sovereignty encompasses the formal ideologies of rule and legality, de facto sovereignty includes the actual ability to kill, punish, and discipline a specific fragment of society or a section of it. Non-State actors can also perform the latter deeds.
The defining feature of contemporary international politics is the global power struggle taking place at the intersection of technology and geopolitics. This power struggle has given way to a new ‘tech cold war’ between the United States and China. While the United States remains at the forefront of technological innovations, China has through decades of investment in gaining technological knowhow—at times through questionable means as well as through research and development—begun to compete with the best in the world.
This Article reviews Kerala’s efforts to check the spread of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) without additional expenditure or infrastructure and employing the state police forces. This was remarkable in the face of the fact that healthcare systems were stretched the world over and were struggling beyond capacity to treat the number of people affected by the virus. To add to the overstretched healthcare systems, there were reports of attacks on healthcare workers and facilities. The state of Kerala was among the first to report a coronavirus case in January 2020.
