COVID19 — What will change?

Things will never be the same again. We keep hearing this. The globalisation of the pandemic unleashed by the Coronavirus (COVID19) is unprecedented, affecting people across most countries, bringing them to a grinding halt. All sectors of the economy have been hit, and the recovery path is uncertain. The domino effect is seen on both sides, production as well as consumption. Supply chains have been broken, and it waits to be seen how many of them are temporary and can bounce back once the situation gets better.

In India, as in most parts of the world, the worst hit are those engaged in the informal economy. To put things in perspective, over 90% of India’s workforce of 480 million persons are in the informal economy, including 119 million farmers, 144 million landless agricultural workers, and 219 million non-agricultural workers. Majority of them are primary income earners in their families. For them, in the absence of daily wages, they will not have food to eat, or money to pay rent for their homes. In the absence of social security, they stand to be pushed into poverty and lower levels of human development. With uncertainity over how long the lockdown is to continue, the edifice of livelihoods for a substantial number of workers appears to stand on shaky ground.

In the days after the lockdown was announced on 24th March 2020, there have been several reports of migrants (India has over 100 million internal migrants) moving back from cities to their homes in rural areas, many walking with their families carrying their meagre possessions, without food or water. Transport was scarce as all rail and road services were halted as part of the lockdown. Driven out of their temporary homes in cities, many have faced inhuman treatment as they try to enter their home states, as they are seen as carriers of the disease. There have been reports of death as well, from starvation, exhaustion and road accidents.

What stands out in weighing the response of different states in India, is the importance of welfare measures and social security nets that are in place, and not just how wealthy the states are. States with better local governments, decentralised, with adequate resources and functionaries (designated people with capabilities), have been able to respond better.

The importance of public health systems is also drawn into sharp focus, and there have been obvious comparisons between India’s outlay for defence, which is about five times more than outlay for health[i]. States which have better public health institutions are better geared to deal with situations such as these in a more systematic manner. There is much to learn from the response of Kerala, which has an aggressive testing, isolation and treatment protocol. With over 5% of the population of the state being non-residents who have returned from other countries, Kerala could not have taken chances and did not.

The origins of the pandemic also calls into question the dominant economic choices that countries have made, especially with regard to the indiscriminate and unsustainable extraction of natural resources. The issues around resource utilisation across the world needs more thought, deeper understanding and deliberation.

So what will change as the pandemic lives out its time, a cure is found, and vaccines are developed? Will there be any fundamental change in the choices we make, the way things are done in our country or in the global economic order?

31st March 2020

Read more:

1. Maria Abi-Habib and Sameer Yasir, March 29th 2020, India’s Coronavirus Lockdown Leaves Vast Numbers Stranded and Hungry: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/world/asia/coronavirus-india-migrants.html?fbclid=IwAR2Gm9pGVuTT7mOpYoNU_WNziZ3pLPChck0peqjii6FVTqXuOcd4M782cPY

2. Rajiv Khandelwal and Divya Varma, 27th March 2020, A back-breaking lockdown that harms the poor : https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/panorama/a-back-breaking-lockdown-that-harms-the-poor-818089.html

3. Vijay Mahajan, 26th March 2020, Supporting informal workers during the COVID-19 crisis: https://idronline.org/supporting-informal-workers-during-the-covid-19-crisis/

4. Nileena MS, 28th March 2020, How the Kerala government is shaping and implementing its COVID-19 response: https://caravanmagazine.in/health/covid-19-coronavirus-kerala-vijayan-shailaja-healthcare-system

[i] Defence accounts for 11% of India’s overall expenditures and health accounts for 2%. India’s defence allocation this year (2019–2020) is Rs 2,82,733 crore and health allocation is Rs 63,538. The defence budget is 4.8 times the health budget. (https://thewire.in/health/indias-defence-budget-is-nearly-five-times-the-health-budget)