At the moment everybody is fearing for his survival as thecoronavirus outbreak refuses to die down. Everybody is worried what the futurehold for them and the loved ones from now. Those who immediately lost income orare vulnerable to lose job in next few months will be wondering how to lay handon a job or how to protect their income in the aftermath of the pandemic toensure economic survival. Those self employed will be struggling for beingwithout any income in the lockdown and would equally be worrying how to rebuildtheir businesses in line with the possible changed socio-economic order.
A lot has been debated (and continue to be debated) that theongoing lockdown put in place to break the chain of the infection fromspreading has led to deep economic crisis and almost all sectors arecollapsing. Lockdown has been pushing the world economy into deep recession andnow forcing the governments to re-look at the option of pursuing it further.Even some world leaders call for easing lockdown measures to let the economicwheel begin to rotate.
As we understand that the wheel of economy is a businesscycle to make a profit. When businesses are halted to function, there is noselling or buying of products and services. This means there would be noprofits, which means employment generation would be affected. Even thosealready employed by the businesses would be losing jobs. Those out of job wouldbe adding more woes to the cycle as they wont be able to spend in absence ofincome. This is here situation spirals into an economic depression.
Experts say that in a normal crisis the prescription forsolving this is simple, the government spends, and it spends until people startconsuming and working again.
But such normal interventions won’t work in a situation whenlockdown has been put in place to stop people going to work, to prevent spreadof the disease. Precisely, it’s a very critical situation which has thrown twinchallenges – fighting health emergency by bringing economy to a grinding halt.In a way, it’s self-induced misery to combat the pandemic.
Meanwhile, the outbreak of COVID-19 infection and forcinglockdowns across global geographies is all set to redefine the modern world asit has considerably brought the pace of all economies – be it developed ordeveloping economies, down to almost a grinding halt. Even as countries arefully engaged in curbing the spread of this deadly virus, the fact is that evenafter controlling the pandemic, the governments cannot afford to shift theirfocus away from it. By the time the infection is netted the global scenariowould be left with many unprecedented challenges to negotiate. Whilenegotiating these challenges, the socio-economic order is inevitably to change.
A number of futures will emerge on the scene. The possiblefutures will depend upon the response of the overall society and the respectivegovernments across the globe to this unprecedented coronavirus induced healthemergency and its aftermath. It will be a situation where yesterdays prioritieswill lose priority status and sectors which were treated less significant wouldassume importance. This crisis has and will continue to throw a series ofopportunities to the countries to rebuild their socio-economic infrastructureand produce something better to improve the quality of life of theircitizens.
The pandemic has exposed the present world order on manyfronts. When we look at the quality of life in the given modern outlook, it’sthe fragility of health system of even most developed countries like US, whichsurfaced. Surprisingly, these countries too are equally struggling to curb thespread of this infection, when, otherwise they were supposed to be strongpillars against this kind of health emergency. Even the fastest developingcountries like India got exposed for having a fragile healthcare system inplace and seems helpless to handle the COVID-19 challenge in absence ofappropriate health infrastructure.
While removing the lid on the poor healthcare facilities,the pandemic also put a big question mark on the huge defense expenditure ofthese countries. Investing huge money on war machinery in the name of nationalsecurity and attaining a status of most powerful nation in terms of militarypower has remained an outstanding feature of the present worldorder. Now the COVID-19 infection has proves this as a wasteful investment. Themodern weaponry is no answer to this deadly disease which has threatened humanexistence irrespective of geographical borders.
Precisely, the pandemic proved world powers’ huge investmentin defense infrastructure a futile investment as the huge arms and warmachinery has been left useless in this situation. At the same time, thepandemic is a strong reminder that it’s the vibrant healthcare infrastructure,not defense infrastructure which leads to high quality of life and economicprosperity.
So, in the changing world order, which is possibly on cards,there is every possibility that governments would be now forced tofocus on rebuilding the health sector and put in place strong infrastructure.There’s hope that post pandemic the governments will make major investment inresearch and development of healthcare facilities to prevent and combat anypandemic in future. For this, we will see major shift in budget allocationswhere health sector will get its due share, if not more than the fundsallocated to defense sector.
Let me borrow some facts and figures to understand thefunding of health sector by the countries belonging to the Organization ofEconomic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Today these countries are spendingover 10 per cent of their GDP on healthcare. The US spends 16.9 per cent of itsGDP on healthcare. India is spending around 3.6 percent of theGDP and the public expenditure component is only 1.5 per cent.
Healthcare system in India both in urban and rural sectorhas always faced dire need of funds to build infrastructure in terms of morehospitals, equip primary health centers with modern medical equipments andemploy more doctors and nurses. Amid economic slowdown in the past fewyears, when the economy was growing at a low rate of 5 per cent, there wasalways less hope of government garnering more revenue from business and public.This slowdown didn’t allow the government to expand spending on health. Infact, it led to further shrinking of funds to the health sector and left thegovernment healthcare facilities in shambles.
It has been a nightmare for patients to keep waiting in thequeue for hours in government run human saving institutes. Notably, privatehospitals are often more accessible but are unaffordable for the commonpatients.
According to the Centre for Disease, Dynamics, Economics andPolicy, Washington, there is a shortage of 600,000 doctors and two millionnurses in India. The number of doctors per 1000 population in India is lowerthan in advanced and other middle-income countries with one government doctorfor every 10, 189 people. There is shortage of hospital beds also that leads toterrible congestion in public hospitals where one can see patients lying in thehospital corridors for want of space.
In succinct, COVID induced socio-economic changes, whichwill have impact on the political landscape, are inevitable in the aftermath ofpandemic. First thing which governments have to learn is to be proactive todisasters and don’t overreact to problems. The priority should be to put inplace such measures which will prevent a disaster to happen rather than takingheroic measures to respond. In other words, the need is not to panic butprepare and preparing for health emergencies in future means the governmentshould spend sufficient money in health sector.
(The views are of the author & not the institution he works for)