APRIL 12, 2020
KARO-NA! Bridging the Gap!
At this point no one can conclusively identify the origin of coronavirus and at the same time, it is very difficult to predict when we will be done with this disease. However, end to end of this spectrum is bringing in fore multiple aspects which require examination and analysis to determine outcome and impact of this disease for different countries, people, and economy. In this piece, I would like to highlight two important aspects, which are playing an important role in the way the world is handling the present crisis; (a) governmental system and governance structure of different countries and (b) concentration of power and wealth in a few hands.
There has always been a debate as to which model of governance is close to perfection. Generally, the parameters to judge supremacy of one over another are - participation of citizenry in government formation, government policies relating to people’s welfare, protection of people’s right, rule of law, defence power, development of science and technology, and wealth creation. Although, there is no perfect structure to determine a model of perfection in this regard, however, any model where people are permitted to participate directly or indirectly in the governance system is considered close to perfection. Seeing the progress of China in the last few decades, political pundits are willing to make a compromise on natural rights of human beings and ready to give primacy to economic growth over the welfare system. In war against coronavirus, governments across the world are exposed. Irrespective of the governance system, there is a wide gap in leadership style and understanding of its objective, between top leadership and leaders at state/regional level. America is a classic example where its President has a perfunctory view of the situation and on the other hand, State Governors are taking it seriously and leading by standing at ground zero. The silos based functioning of central and state governance is exposed in this gap, which is making its citizens pay a heavy price. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared “state of emergency” on April 7 in seven prefectures including Tokyo. However, the message was not clear and 50% of the Japanese were on the street working their usual day out. Realising the mistake, the Governor of each prefecture was asked to implement the lockdown. In the time of crisis, tandem and cohesion are the biggest attributes to mitigate the impact. On the other hand, the largest democracy on the earth, India in spite of its clumsy democratic setup has handled the situation fairly well. The Indian Constitution permits different political parties ruling the states and centre and all political functionaries take their right of speech and expression to criticise opposite parties very seriously. In the current crisis, all political parties have shown an examplenary unanimity in taking hard decisions without criticising the central government. This one simple aspect has produced different results, in terms of infections and mortality rates, for different governing systems.
Another aspect of relevance is direct correlation of concentration of power and wealth in a few hands, although such concentration is a hallmark of humanity. The capitalism and advent of technology has produced a stark gap between “haves” and “have nots”; as a result, this pandemic has hit the most vulnerable population the hardest. The way the virus spreads, this vulnerable class is creating the biggest risk for the entire world. India recently saw a sea of humanity walking back from urban cities to their homes in rural areas. I agree that there is no perfect formula or mechanics to equi-distribute wealth among two sets of people. The reference of “equi-distribution” here means government policies creating protection including health for a large size of population, which I am classifying as “have nots”. In order to create protection for the entire human population, it is imperative that concentration of power and wealth should be limited and there should be widespread use of wealth and resources to mitigate miseries of the poor around the world. The current coronavirus crisis is a grim reminder to all of us to bring parity among two sections of the human population and governments need to take the lead in it.