As India’s second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic begins to recede, it has become clear some parts of the country have met the surge better than others. The state of Kerala in southern India, for example, has dealt with the pandemic in an exemplary fashion—with its mortality rate being the lowest in the country at 0.4 percent—even though it was home to the first COVID-19 case in all of India at the end of January last year. At the other end of the spectrum is Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state in the country, where the pandemic response has been little response at all.
