The Covid-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc across political and economic activity, productivity, distribution cycles and spending and consumption patterns. But not to be underplayed in any way is the effect on the lives of millions of people about the world.
For instance, as soon as the pandemic reached India there were reports of people walking to their rural homes for days on end to escape its effects, unsure of the present or the future and with strong memories of the plight of refugees and displacement that followed partition in 1947.
The numbers are staggering to this day. More than 1-million people were killed in the brutal violence that followed partition, and at least 83,000 women and girls were raped or abducted. Fifteen million people migrated to Pakistan, and about 400,000 refugees walked from Pakistan to India.
Similarly, in March 2020 Insaaf Ali walked for more than 1,500km over 15 days from Mumbai to reach his home in Shravasti district in Uttar Pradesh. There are many similar stories about India and the rest of the world. The 20th century was described as “the age of the refugee” by Hugh Tinker (1921—2000), and the 21st is set to rival it.
“In almost every instance, the refugee instinct is spontaneous — unpremeditated — disorganised,” Tinker wrote in March 1975 (A Forgotten Long March: The Indian Exodus from Burma, 1942), “It is an individual ... no regular organisation assists him on his way and when he arrives eventually at his destination, nobody really wants him to stay ... The refugee is the world’s unwanted man.”
Back to the present, Covid-19 has resulted in the loss of many jobs after production and general economic activity ground to an almost complete halt everywhere. It is stating the obvious to say few were prepared for the fallout. We know — well, those of us who believe “an economy” includes people and their social relations — that almost every economic, banking or currency crisis is caused or worsened by awful political and social decisions.
I would let down my tribe if I were to omit saying that we live in a world that is stratified, and that there are mechanisms and tendencies that function whether or not we see them. Which means we should examine, deeper, what the problems are.
Having said all of the above, it is clear Covid-19 is not done with us. The news from about the world is mixed. In some ways it is unsurprising, and one is tempted to say to those people who suddenly found empathy for the precariat (the “what about job losses” crowd): “How do you like them apples?” But that would be impolite.
A snapshot of the world reveals that the Delta strain of Covid-19 now accounts for the majority of new cases in many European countries. The Financial Times reports that infection rates in Europe have been driven to their highest level in months. This has caused doubt over the European recovery.
Tokyo has been put under another state of emergency as cases surge in Japan on the eve of the Olympics. In Brazil, pregnant women have been hit hardest by the virus (I have a niece who is pregnant and no amount of economic rationalism will make me worry less). Lagos is considering a new lockdown as the virus spreads across the country.
In Vietnam, cases have risen 10-fold since April. In Australia, the Delta variant has spread across Sydney and increased to generate the highest daily caseload in a year. The headline of one Australian newspaper read: “New Zealanders fill flights fleeing Sydney”. Though Heathrow passengers are down 90%, to the extent that it is good news, Britain decided on Monday it would “reopen” to the world on July 19.
All told, the virus continues to destroy lives and livelihoods. It has caught policymakers unawares. We can go on and on about who has done what right or wrong, but nobody was prepared for this. What we can do is take a lesson from what we have learnt from studying four decades of crashes — economic, banking and currency — and look critically at the causes (the run-up phase), containment (the crisis phase) to mitigate amplification, and the creation of social buffers to protect the weakest in society.
This will require greater international collaboration, as raised in this space since November 2020, and the UN would have to accept crises like the Covid-19 pandemic (as it has itself stated) as a transnational communicable health crises and provide relief and assistance from the “run-up” phase, though “containment” and “amplification” as a global public good.
For now, that the poor are hardest hit by Covid-19 is a blot on the copybook of multilateral institutions.
• Lagardien, a visiting professor at the Wits University School of Governance, has worked in the office of the chief economist of the World Bank, as well as the secretariat of the National Planning Commission.
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