Public procurement during the pandemic: experience of India and China

Purpose - The paper examines the public procurement experiences of India and China during the Covid-19 pandemic and locates them in a framework it proposes. The paper aims to enrich the knowledge of how public procurement could be strategically used in emergencies. Design/methodology/approach - For the two countries, the paper sieved through government orders and notifications promulgated during and for the pandemic, examined the prevailing laws and statutes that were invoked and comprehensively scanned online news portals to gather evidence. In addition, the author also engaged with select, relevant people in the sector who offered useful information about ground-level scenario. Findings - It is found that as compared to China, in India (a) despite the presence of significant flexibilities, (b) there was a little divergence from standard procurement practices, perhaps explained by (c) weaker governance capacity and legitimacy, (c) more allocative (rather than structural) goals of procurement and (d) higher levels of centralization. Research limitations/implications - The findings of this paper are based entirely on secondary evidence limited to health care as a category of spend. This paper looks at two large countries and not their internal variations in procurement quality. The framework can also be enriched further by drawing additional categories to make the theoretical framework more promising. Practical implications - The underlying design and motivation of public procurement policies in India need significant changes to make procurement policies responsive to disasters. Also, one can learn decentralization during emergency from the otherwise centralized politics in China. Originality/value - To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper is the first attempt to compare pandemic procurement-related policies of the two large countries across the Himalayan border. It also attempts to develop a scale/framework on which emergency procurement in countries can be assessed.