India’s fight against health emergencies: In search of a legal architecture
The ongoing pandemic of COVID-19 (caused by the novel coronavirus or SARS-CoV-2) has exposed glaring gaps in India’s domestic laws. Absent a rationally structured legislation to fall back on, the Union government in March advised states to invoke the Epidemic Diseases Act of 1897 to tackle the pandemic in their jurisdictions. The 123-year-old colonial law, however, does not even define what a disease is, let alone an epidemic or a pandemic. Ind