The 10-day Onam celebrations in Kerala will come to a close on August 21 with Thiruvonam. Onam is the state’s largest festival, spanning religious lines and drawing many of the region’s migrant workers home. In many ways, Onam also heralds the start of the festive season in India, which lasts until Christmas/New Year. Holiday demand has always been important for the economy, but it will be especially important this year for pandemic-affected markets. The Onam celebrations this year could be a make-or-break moment for the southern state, which, after being hailed as a model in the fight against the pandemic, is dealing with an uncontrollable surge in Covid-19 cases. Covid-19 cases began to rise in Kerala around Onam last year, putting an end to the state’s claims of successfully containing the pandemic. If there is a similar increase in cases this year, the situation may spiral out of control, at least in terms of the medical infrastructure’s ability to cope.
1) Onam was when Covid-19 infections started rising in Kerala last year
Despite the fact that India imposed a 68-day nationwide lockdown on March 25, 2020, to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 virus, the pandemic’s trajectory in Kerala and the rest of India was very different in the early stages. As restrictions were eased, the number of cases in the rest of India began to rise steadily. Kerala, on the other hand, defied the trend and received widespread praise for its response to the pandemic.
With Onam on August 30, 2020, the situation in Kerala changed. A comparison of normalised values of the seven-day average of daily new infections for Kerala and the rest of India on a scale of 0 to 1 (0 being the minimum and 1 being the maximum) clearly demonstrates this, with a sudden spike in Kerala’s case trajectory around the last week of August 2020. In contrast to the rest of the country, the first wave of Covid-19 took longer to subside in Kerala. It didn’t help that the state had two rounds of elections, with local body elections in December and assembly elections in April.
2) A festive boost to mobility may have played a role in the 2020 surge and it appears to be happening again
Because festivals are so important to businesses, governments are constantly under pressure to relax restrictions. This is also true in Kerala. Before Onam last year, the state government eased restrictions, such as allowing people to dine in restaurants. Both before Eid and Onam this year, the government announced relaxations. Data from Google mobility indices for the state show a sharp increase around Onam last year, indicating the impact of this. The trends in mobility at retail establishments and transit stations, which could capture crowding in markets and inbound travel (of potentially infected) persons to the state, are of particular interest.
Even though the Covid-19 situation is much worse, mobility indices appear to have risen sharply again before Onam this year. Kerala, in fact, has more cases than the rest of the country combined. Both last year and now, the rise in mobility corresponds to the rise in Covid-19 cases in the state. The surge in 2020 may have been aided by a festive boost to mobility, and it appears to be happening again this year.
3) Why does the Kerala experience matter for the rest of the country?
To be sure, Kerala’s medical infrastructure has not collapsed as a result of the pandemic, as it did in most of the country during the pandemic’s second wave. While daily new cases and positivity rates remain high, they have decreased from their peak levels in Kerala. So, why does Kerala’s current situation matter to the rest of the country? One, Onam is the first in a series of upcoming festivals, all of which are critical for the economy’s recovery.
