Covid-19 can change the World — For the better!
The First World War, that killed 20 million people, was touted as the ‘war to end all wars’. Yet just two decades later, the world erupted into the Second World War, killing over 70 million. Hitler’s death camps alone killed over five million. But a decisive event in August 1945 changed the way wars were fought ever since. While the two hundred thousand killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a minuscule fraction of the total casualties of the war — less than half a percent — the nuclear nations agreed on a covenant that is upheld till date.
Preventable diseases like diabetes, heart attacks and even the common flu, kill many more each year than the worst-case projection numbers of Covid-19, but like the Atom bombs dropped in Japan, this pandemic has a brisance effect far more than what the actual casualties warrant. The disproportionate effect is because of the viruses’ s contagion effect, not from its fatality rate, which is relatively low. It is not the absolute number of deaths which terrifies people, instead, it is the rapidity of its proliferation.
Covid-19 can change the world, its organisations, societies and even individuals — hopefully for the better.
Firstly, like nuclear weapons and terrorism, common enemies incentivize cooperative solutions. This pandemic acts as a catalyst for other global challenges like climate change and social inequity. The world now holds China accountable for the havoc just like the superpowers were held accountable to prevent nuclear proliferation. National leaders are now answerable for issues that have global repercussions not just to their own citizens — but to the world. The pandemic is an opportunity to pressure governments across the world to prioritize global long-term challenges ahead of parochial short-term electoral agendas and create frameworks with shared strategic intent and delegated local execution. Like any global crisis, it is also a trial by fire for leaders who will be evaluated against international and national comparisons like Trump is being contrasted to Trudeau or the Governors of California and New York.
Secondly, the pandemic is an opportunity for corporates to shift from a self-serving profit orientation towards an inclusive growth mindset. Offshoring manufacturing and services to unregulated sweatshops of the third world created fragile supply chains whose disruption have devastated powerful conglomerates. The aftermath of this pandemic will necessitate increased localisation of production, beginning with critical items like medicine and communications equipment, extending into areas like food and dairy supply. Most of the world’s communication equipment, including the phones used by state, commercial and military organisations, have Chinese black boxes inside them. Countries will localise those value chains reducing external dependence to safeguard economic and national security.
The localisation will drive costs up and that is not such a bad thing as we will see later.
Localisation will also require countries to invest in improving internal competencies in higher education, research and development rather than farming them out to other nations. More importantly, resources that were heavily skewed towards researching the rich man’s lifestyle diseases will now be channelized into maladies that affect everyone. Regardless of the validity of bio-weapon conspiracy theories surrounding the pandemic, creaking medical infrastructure will have to be fixed.
Businesses and corporates will value their employees and business partners as humans rather than faceless entities at the end of a contractual chain. While capitalism is deep-rooted and public memory is short, several businesses have demonstrated unprecedented social responsibility. Institutions like Harvard have been called out for their pettiness while conglomerates like Tata have been lauded for their largesse globally.
This mindset shift will also increase interdependence on neighbours rather than distant countries. Regional platforms like SAARC will become more relevant than global platforms like the World Economic Forum. Nations will choose to become relevant fishes in local lakes than irrelevant minnows in the global ocean.
Thirdly, the lockdown has immense socio-psychological value. During crisis’s, people realize that a handful of neighbours are more valuable than thousands of followers on social media. The value of ‘flesh and blood’ social networks emerge during tough times. In many communities, youth have reached out to care for the elderly during the lockdown creating new cross-generational relationships.
The upper-middle class and richer strata of India will hopefully appreciate the value of less privileged masses who serve them. Posting videos of household chores may be fun for a few days, but as days extend into weeks and months, the dignity of labour will be valued. The necessity of finding happiness in whatever is available will hopefully teach us that pursuit of the latest models of gadgets, clothing and other material possessions is capitalistic addiction — not happiness. Though localisation will increase their costs, it is a small price to learn the lesson of enough.
It is indeed an irony that the Chinese symbol for crisis is commonly interpreted as a juxtaposition of the two words — danger and opportunity. Crises are an unavoidable part of the VUCA world of the future. How nations leverage the crisis will determine the world after Corona for them.
