Nearpeer CSS Monthly Press Pack January 2020

Nearpeer CSS Monthly Press Pack January 2020

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Nearpeer CSS Monthly Press Pack May 2020

How to use this document?

T his document was compiled by the CSS wing of Nearpeer to help CSS aspirants by
providing them with all the important articles of last month from local as well as
international newspapers.

This will serve as an important guide in preparation as well as revision of not only current
affairs but many other compulsory and optional subjects such as Islamic Studies, Pakistan
Affairs, Sociology, Gender Studies, International Relations and Political Science.

This issue is designed to help the you in the following ways:

1- It will help you with catching up with all the happenings of the last month
2- It contains analyses of various issues of importance. Analyses is as important as knowing
the content of news
3- A diverse range of articles are selected from among local as well as international newspapers
and journals, so now you know you do not have to go through old archives of old newspapers
4- This will also serve as a quick revision guide for aspirants just before the exams
5- Candidates can use this issue in order to brush up their analytical as well as comprehension
skills
6- Additionally, they can also use it to improve their vocabulary and its usage

All the Best!

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Contents

THE ECONOMIC STORM BREWING IN SOUTH ASIA BY: MICHAEL KUGLEMAN

(ARAB NEWS) .................................................................................................................... 6
HEC: SEIZE THE CORONA MOMENT BY: DR. PERVEZ HOODBHOY (DAWN) ......... 7
MOVING TOWARDS COUNTER-URBANIZATION BY: BUSHRA ZEHRA ASKARI
(DAILY TIMES) .................................................................................................................. 9
MR. MARKET’S VERDICT (DAILY TIMES EDITORIAL) ............................................. 11
POST CRISIS GLOBAL REALITIES BY: MALEEHA LODHI (DAWN) ......................... 11
THE PANDEMIC WON’T MAKE CHINA THE WORLD’S LEADER (FOREIGN
AFFAIRS) .......................................................................................................................... 14
GENDER CRISIS AMID COVID-19 BY: ZILE HUMA (DAILY TIMES) ........................ 17
WHAT IS MISSING FROM AFGHAN PEACE TALKS (THE NEW YORK TIMES)....... 18
ARUNDHATI ROY: THE PANDEMIC IS A PORTAL ..................................................... 20
DISMANTLING ‘SWEET’ CARTELS BY: HUZAIMA BUKHARI AND DR. IKRAM UL
HAQ (THE NEWS) ............................................................................................................ 25
LEADING IN A PANDEMIC CRISIS BY: MALEEHA LODHI (DAWN) ........................ 27
ISLAMOPHOBIA TAINTS INDIA’S RESPONSE TO THE CORONAVIRUS BY: RANA
AYYUB (THE WASHINGTON POST) ............................................................................. 29
WHY SOFT POWER IS PIVOTAL BY: MALEEHA LODHI (DAWN) ............................ 31
PAKISTAN’S GDP GROWTH EXPECTATIONS (DAILY TIMES EDITORIAL) ............ 33
ONLINE LEARNING BY: FAISAL BARI (DAWN) ........................................................ 34
IMAGINING A JUSTICE BASED HEALTH SYSTEM BY: ISAAC CHOTINER (THE NEW
YORKER MAGAZINE) ..................................................................................................... 36
COVID, CLIMATE & PAKISTAN BY: ASHRAF JEHANGIR QAZI (DAWN) ................ 40
THE CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK MAY HURT IMRAN KHAN’S POLITICAL FUTURE
BY: TOM HUSSAIN (AL-JAZEERA) ............................................................................... 42
ANCIENT PLAGUES BY: IRFAN HUSSAIN (DAWN) ................................................... 44
AFGHANISTAN NEEDS A GOVERNMENT OF NATIONAL RECONCILIATION BY:
TABISH FAROUGH (AL-JAZEERA) ............................................................................... 46
FORCED CONVERSIONS BY: SULEMA JAHANGIR (DAWN) ..................................... 47
SECURING ALL IMPORTANT FRONTS (DAILY TIMES EDITORIAL) ....................... 49
WHERE ARE THE EXPERTS BY: ANJUM ALTAF (DAWN) ......................................... 50
HOW TO SAVE GLOBAL CAPITALISM FROM ITSELF (FOREIGN POLICY) ............ 51
THE DEATH OF SECULAR INDIA BY: SAAD RASOOL (THE NATION) .................... 60
ROBBER BARONS, OLIGARCHY AND OPPRESSED BY: DR. IKRAM UL HAQ (DAILY
TIMES)............................................................................................................................... 62
WHY POLITICIANS IGNORE DISASTER PREDICTIONS ............................................. 64

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THE GLOBAL CORONAVIRUS CRISIS IS POISED TO GET MUCH, MUCH WORSE

(THE NEW YORK TIMES) ............................................................................................... 66

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THE ECONOMIC STORM
BREWING IN SOUTH ASIA
BY: MICHAEL KUGLEMAN (ARAB
NEWS)
A
s it takes stock of the anticipated
effects of the coronavirus pandemic,
the World Bank has published an
economic outlook with strikingly gloomy
predictions for South Asia.
The bank’s analysts warn that the region
might record its worst economic
performance in 40 years, and at least half of
it could experience a “serious recession.”
Regional growth is expected to plummet to
between 1.8 and 2.8 percent in 2020, a major
drop from the 6.3 percent forecast six months
ago.
In the Maldives, GDP might decline by up to
13 percent. Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sri
Lanka could find GDP growth “in negative
territory.” In the worst-case scenario, the
entire region might experience contraction of
GDP.
The bank bases this assessment on the
confluence of many problematic factors: A
decline in tourism, disruption of supply
chains, reduced demand for garments, the
withdrawal of international capital, and
decreases in remittance inflows.
Keep in mind that these gloomy forecasts are
for a region that was already experiencing
economic distress long before the pandemic.
India, for example, has suffered through one
of its worst slowdowns in years, with
problems in all key sectors, including
manufacturing and telecommunications.
Unemployment is also higher than it has been
for quite some time. Pakistan, meanwhile,
was enduring a prolonged debt crisis that its
government had eased but not eliminated.
Furthermore, South Asia suffers from
structural constraints that hobble economic
growth even in the best of times. Thanks in
no small part to poor infrastructure, including
substandard roads and poorly functioning
electricity grids, the region is badly
integrated and lacks connectivity.
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Unsurprisingly, intraregional trade volume is
far below that of most other regions.
Additionally, South Asia’s main mechanism
for regional cooperation, the South Asian
Association for Regional Cooperation
(SAARC), is ineffective — in large part
because of the toxic relationship between key
members India and Pakistan.
The specter of these shattered economies in
South Asia should not be taken lightly. To
put it simply, South Asia matters. According
to a recent International Monetary Fund
study, the region is home to more than one-
fifth of the world’s population and, under
ordinary circumstances, contributes more
than 15 percent of global economic growth.
It occupies a central and strategically
important geographic location, linking the
Middle East to East Asia and sitting astride
the Indian Ocean region. It is a major
epicenter for Chinese investment and
influence, mainly through Beijing’s Belt and
Road Initiative.
It is also a highly volatile region; it is
vulnerable to threats ranging from terrorism
to climate change, it is the scene of a long-
running war, and it is home to to two bitter
rivals who happen to be nuclear-armed
neighbors.
Accordingly, what happens to the economies
of South Asia — and, to be sure, the ultimate
trajectory of the region’s economic
performance for the foreseeable future will
be tied to the severity of the pandemic and
the nature and quality of government
responses — will have repercussions not
only for the region, but for the entire world.
India, which is a leading world economy and
— thanks in great part to its large, young
population and its middle class — an
attractive global market, will struggle
mightily to kick start its sputtering economy.
Bangladesh, one of the region’s major
economic success stories in recent years, will
confront the reality of a severely weakened
garment industry that has been one of the
most dynamic not only in Asia, but the world.
Core growth sectors in many South Asian
countries — such as textiles in Pakistan and
Bangladesh, and tourism in Sri Lanka and the
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Maldives — are likely to suffer severe

coronavirus-induced shocks, thereby
exacerbating the vulnerabilities of nations
with no other immediate options to which
they might turn to generate growth.

Economic distress will strengthen the forces

of hard-line nationalism, which were already
strong in the region — and the world — prior
to the pandemic. In India, for example, the
government is likely to double down on its
Hindu nationalist agenda in an attempt to
appease and distract a support base worried
about the worsening economic stress. A more
aggressive pursuit of this agenda, taking an
increasingly hard-line position on Pakistan,
would suggest India-Pakistan tensions are
unlikely to ease. HEC: SEIZE THE CORONA
On the whole, the region — again, like the
wider world — will increasingly look
MOMENT
inward, focusing on economic recovery. At BY: DR. PERVEZ HOODBHOY
least initially, it will accord less policy space (DAWN)
to foreign policy.
If there is one possible development with
encouraging implications for regional
economic recovery, it is the potential for a
resuscitation of SAARC. Several weeks ago,
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi
T HIS essay concerns those Pakistani
colleges and universities currently
operating under the regimen of online
learning. I suggest that professors and vice
chancellors not read it else the hard truths
convened a video conference during which
might enrage some. My goal is to open a
association members discussed regional
discussion with those who actually care
responses to the coronavirus crisis. This
about the future of this country and its higher
resulted in the creation of an emergency fund
education system. This particularly includes
and commitments to share supplies.
the rare professor who actually deserves
Greater regional cooperation such as this
being professor.
strengthens the prospects for regional
growth. However, enduring tensions
The world — and Pakistan — is in lockdown
between India and Pakistan will preclude any
mode with all education institutions
lasting forward movement on this front.
shuttered down. What happens when they
We hear so much about the deleterious
reopen? Shall it be life as usual? Most likely,
economic effects of the pandemic on the US,
yes. But from the heap of social disruption
China, Europe and the Middle East; it is
and economic ruination one can hope for
important that we include South Asia in this
some betterment. For this we shall need
sobering conversation as well.
ruthless self-examination.

Fact one: The global marketplace assesses

degree holders from Pakistani universities as
possessing distinctly inferior problem-
solving skills and knowledge. Whether in
Europe or the US, few Pakistanis work in

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high-tech fields such as engineering,
computer science, machine learning,
biotechnology, genetic research, etc.
Western academia — both in liberal arts as
well as sciences — has many Indians but few
Pakistanis. While Pakistani doctors in the US
and UK form a large wealthy group, they
simply practise medicine and only rarely
innovate.
Fact two: College and university graduates,
as well as professors, seriously lack the
ability to reason and analyse. Few can
express themselves in either grammatically
correct Urdu or English without suddenly
and arbitrarily switching languages. Book
reading is close to extinction.
This is a deeply dismal situation. Forget for
now some five to six high end private, high-
priced universities. All else is a dull grey sea
of mediocrity where the level of academic
incompetence is mind-boggling. For
example, just walk through education
marketplaces in Karachi, Lahore and
Islamabad. Here, coaching centres for ‘O’-
and ‘A’-level schools abound. Middle-rich,
rich and super-rich parents desperately
search out tutors who reputedly produce top
exam grades, needed for sending off their
progeny to some overseas university. They
pay whatever the market demands.
The highest prices are fetched by well-
reputed teachers of science subjects — math,
physics, chemistry and computer science.
Some rake in Rs10 lakh monthly; one that I
met in early January this year said he made
four times that. Some ‘super coaches’ accept
only dollar payments, demanding that these
be wads of crisp new $100 notes.
With such astronomical earnings, you might
expect coaching centres to be largely staffed
by university professors. They not only hold
science PhD degrees but also have their
names on dozens of so-called ‘research
papers’ that supposedly make them masters
of their respective subjects. So why are
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tuition centres nearly empty of moonlighting
university professors?
The answer: although ‘O’- and ‘A’- level
questions are straightforward tests of subject
comprehension, they still demand some
critical reasoning. But their PhDs
notwithstanding, many of those weaned upon
blind memorisation never learned to study
otherwise. Hence science exams meant for
British high schools are too tricky for them.
With this in the backdrop, enter Mr Corona.
After he walked on stage, online learning
became the sole option. Their incomes
endangered, private universities jumped
quickly into the act. Some contacted a
majority of their students and declared
success. Elsewhere little has happened.
Based upon the spotty information sent by
colleagues and my former students across
Pakistan — just a fraction of some 250-plus
universities (and a still smaller number of
2,000-plus colleges) have gone online. Other
universities are preparing; yet others are
clueless.
Limited internet access is a valid reason for
slowness, but this is readily fixable. Imagine
cutting the defence budget by one per cent.
The $90 million thus released could quickly
cover every part of Pakistan with fast 4G
internet — and even leave some spare change
to start the development of 5G.
But the truly Herculean challenge is to ensure
that Pakistan’s online teaching standards —
both pedagogy and assessment — match
international ones. Glancing through
materials sent confidentially by colleagues
and students from five different institutions I
see just how difficult this will be. Here’s the
evidence — still fragmentary — gleaned
over six weeks:
Roughly 15pc to 20pc of materials received
range from good to fair with some professors
taking extraordinary pains to create coherent,
self-contained video lectures supplemented
with free online resources such as those of
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the well-reputed Khan Academy. The
remaining 80pc from local professors
deserves the rubbish bin. Some have simply
used smartphones to photograph their barely
legible and yellowed student-day lecture
notes. Others have posted trivial quiz
questions whose answers are just a mouse-
click away.
The solution to better teaching quality
doesn’t lie in creating more rules or making
some centralised monitoring bureaucratic
apparatus whether at the level of government
or of individual universities. While some
small benefits might accrue, the very purpose
of a university — creative ways of teaching,
academic freedom and encouragement of
critical reasoning — could be endangered.
In Pakistan’s peculiar circumstances, the best
that can be presently done is to require
complete and total transparency. With 21st-
century technology, this is perfectly possible.
So let there be a freely accessible central
repository where every professor is required
to deposit all his/her recorded lectures,
videos, notes, research papers and seminars.
Transparency is admittedly not a panacea but
it will have the salutary effect of contrasting
good teaching practices with bad ones and
setting a realistic scale for assessing teacher
performance. Still more importantly, one will
be able to see how well or badly students
respond to particular modes of instruction.
This is exactly where the Higher Education
Commission needs to step in. Apart from
forcing every university to archive its
teaching materials and make them freely
accessible, it should also monitor that this
policy is adhered to. The professor
community is sure to resist this tooth and
nail. Can the HEC risk provoking their ire? If
it can, then our future can be brighter.
Seven decades later, those who sharpened
Pakistan’s education into an ideological
weapon need to be shrugged off. This has
brought us nothing but ruination and
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disgrace. To become a part of the modern
world, a complete reorientation is needed.
Online education, if done right, offers a way
out.
MOVING TOWARDS COUNTER-
URBANIZATION
BY: BUSHRA ZEHRA ASKARI
(DAILY TIMES)
F or centuries, man has been trying to
reach the skies. From Stone Age to the
modern era, man struggled and he is
still struggling to make his life better. Man is
in a constant flux. He wants to move on. It
seems he will never look back. What he
leaves behind is never bothered about. He
constantly battles with Mother Nature. He
broke the laws of nature because he is
believes himself the supreme in the universe.
But in his never-ending journey, he forgets
that there must be some limitations and there
are rules which he bounds to follow.
With time, we all are becoming victims of
urban sprawl. Vast areas of lands in major
cities are grabbed illegally. We all witness
the emergence of unplanned high-rise in the
centre of cities. Water shortage, sewage
problems, traffic rush, and illegal electricity
connections are all the gift of urbanization.
More and more vehicles can be seen
increasing in numbers, on the road. This is
the main factor leading to air pollution. It
seems there is no check and balance.
We all are facing challenges due to
coronavirus. Major part of the world is under
lockdown. We are witnessing the best part of
the world environment. The world is now
pollution free. As there is no traffic on the
road, trees are much greener, wind is
smoother and fresh flowers are blooming.
The mighty sun is shining very bright. It
seems the mother earth is rejuvenating, itself.
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Sky is much clearer and birds are chirping
merrily, every day.
Coronavirus challenge has, no doubt,
impacted the mankind in numerous ways.
Man is bound to think that he is not the only
one who is habitat of this earth. Recently,
CNN aired that in America wild animals can
be seen roaming on roads freely because
there are no human species around. Now we
are all in lockdown and now it is the turn of
species other than human to walk freely. So
where do we stand now as human being? It is
time to contemplate what we did to the
Mother Nature.
There were times when people were
spending life in villages amidst beautiful and
serene surroundings. Small house made of
mud or clay with surrounded by huge
courtyards would have chorpais orderly
placed. It seems that man is now yearning
again for his lost tradition.
Due to urbanization, man is contemplating
what he has lost in the pursuit of
modernization. Cities and even towns have
become jungle of concrete. For the
successful and speedy life, he left his
ancestral place. It seems now the modern
man is missing the poise and serenity of rural
life. Yes, man has earned all the privileges of
modern life, but he has lost his independence
and peace of mind. Due to fast paced life, he
has no time for his family. Even he does not
have time to see his own children for days. Is
this a real prosperity? When his family needs
him the most, he is not around.
After so many years, the mankind has got a
chance to sit home and contemplate. This is
blessing in disguise for today’s modern man.
We are all locked in our homes. The
environment outside of our home is now
clean and pollution free. The animal
kingdom, excluding us, is astonished to see
the changes on the planet earth. Ironically,
the coronavirus pandemic has cleaned the
earth’s atmosphere. Now, this is the real
change. We need to introspect, before the
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lockdown ends. Are we moving in the right
direction? So do we need all these luxuries?
I recently saw a post which said “world
economy has fallen, and is constantly falling
down because we are buying the only
necessities”.
What we need is a simple way of living. No
junk food, no gyms, no branded clothes, no
latest gadgets. What we need is good
relationships, healthy and pollution free
environment, fewer clothing, nutritious food
and clean water. After decades man is
understood that we need minimum items for
survival and not the so called luxuries. In the
pursuit of luxuries, man lost his sanity, his
own peace of mind.
Inner peace is a blessing. When we are at
peace with ourselves, we are happy with our
environment and surroundings too. Man
earns for his physical needs but deep down
he needs spiritual satisfaction. This
tranquility can come through simplicity and
serendipity. The time has come that we start
focusing on our lost dynamics. We built huge
empire in cities but it seems that we now
want to go back in the golden era where our
forefathers spent their lives with best of
health and vigour.
Modern man is yearning to go back to the
golden era of traditional values. He wants to
go back to his roots again. Because
urbanization has stolen his true self. He
wants again to listen to melodies of chirping
birds, sound of falling brooks and to taste its
sweet water. This is the ultimate truth of real
rural life. So are we on the brink of counter
urbanization? This is the question we need to
ask ourselves in this hour of self-quarantine
isolation and contemplation.
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initiatives. If rallies are sustained the

market’s bullish sentiments will reflect
public and industry optimism. And, of
course, the market will tank without missing
a heartbeat if this phase does not go as hoped.

Needless to say, of course, that this is going

to be a very crucial phase. If all goes well
more controls can be lifted and yet more
people can be allowed to resume their jobs.
But there is also a pretty good chance, as
always, of problems along the way. The
worst case scenario is no doubt the virus
spreading at a faster rate as more people
move about. That is the point when the
market foretells gloom very quickly;
indicating much pain and trauma ahead. So
MR. MARKET’S VERDICT far, though, the market agrees with the
(DAILY TIMES EDITORIAL) government’s tactic of a slow-opening. This
is definitely a chance worth taking; even
more so because there really is no other

T he fight against the coronavirus has

entered a very important phase in a
number of countries including
Pakistan. Unable to afford the lockdown any
longer, an attempt is underway to slowly
option. It shouldn’t be forgotten that since the
market reflects the collective will of a very
large number of human participants, who
express human behaviour, it reacts as much
to fact as sentiment. And the sentiments over
open up economies to generate income and
the last few days of the previous week did
employment and, most importantly, keep the
much to lift the market; not just in Pakistan.
lowest income groups from literally starving
And in this way important capital is also
to death. Asian markets, PSX (Pakistan Stock
generated that keeps the market solvent.
Exchange) specially, took the news rather
While we struggle to manage the fact, it is
well and ended the week with a stellar rally
important to keep in control of sentiment.
on Friday after the government extended the
lockdown but allowed a number of industries
to reopen. There will be much activity
beginning with the new week today, and a
near-paralysed economy will begin to inch its POST CRISIS GLOBAL
way forward once again. REALITIES
Yet not all international financial market BY: MALEEHA LODHI (DAWN)
activity was indicative of an easy ride going
forward. Stock markets rallied yet the
traditional safe havens in currency and
commodity markets continued to attract
inflows and ended the week net positive. The
T HE future holds much uncertainty
with an unfolding health crisis
convulsing the world. But the reality
that will continue to shape the post-pandemic
world is this. While unprecedented global
optimism, therefore, comes with a lot of
caution. All eyes will, quite understandably, cooperation and a collective response will be
be on financial markets as the new week needed to negotiate multiple challenges —
takes off. It is Mr Market, after all, that threats to public health, economic recovery,
delivers the final verdict on all sorts of food security, looming recession and

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unemployment — many countries will tend
to turn inwards and act on their own. This
paradox did not emerge during the pandemic.
It has been evident in recent years but thrown
into sharper relief by the Covid-19 crisis.
The world is in fact passing through one of
history’s most unsettled periods with a
number of trends reconfiguring the
international landscape: retreat from
multilateralism at a time of multipolarity,
anti-globalisation sentiment, erosion of a
rules-based international order, trade and
technology wars between big powers and the
rise of populist leaders who reject
internationalism, pursue ultra-nationalist
policies and act unilaterally.
This backdrop hardly prepared the world for
what was to come when the deadly virus
defied national boundaries and crossed
continents in its remorseless spread. The
ongoing crisis showed how interconnected
and interdependent the world is and that no
country can deal with the challenge on its
own. But it also exposed the deep divisions
between and within countries as they
struggled to confront the havoc wrought by
an unforgiving enemy.
Logic and pragmatism dictated international
cooperation. As UN Secretary General
António Guterres put it: “To prevail against
the pandemic today, we will need heightened
solidarity.” But is this what we are
witnessing? The short answer is, not really,
because more disharmony than ‘solidarity’
has been on display.
Obviously, countries had, first and foremost,
to focus on their own health emergency. But
their efforts to contain Covid-19 would have
benefited from collaboration on travel and
trade restrictions, border closures and sharing
of virus data and information.
It was the unseemly row that broke out
during the pandemic between the two global
powers, the US and China — who have the
world’s most consequential relationship —
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that served to underline how geopolitics, not
solidarity, remained the overarching reality.
The latest tussle came against the backdrop
of intense trade and political tensions
between the two countries. The trigger was
President Donald Trump’s persistent
description of the coronavirus as the
‘Chinese virus’, alluding to where the
outbreak started, and criticism of China’s
management of the outbreak. China’s retort
was to cast such comments as racist and issue
stern warnings while ‘unofficial’ Chinese
sources purveyed conspiracy theories about
who planted the virus. It took a phone call
from Chinese President Xi Jinping to Trump,
calling for cooperation, to calm down the
situation.
Despite China’s call for unity, this episode
underlined the volatile relationship between
the two economically interdependent but
strategic competitors, who will nonetheless
need each other’s cooperation to restart their
economies and steer global recovery in the
post-pandemic world. Unfortunately,
though, China-bashing by American leaders
has continued.
This, of course, isn’t the only development
during the pandemic to illustrate the limits to
‘solidarity’ and how the world presents a
spectacle where it is mostly every country for
itself.
Expectations that the G20 video summit in
late March would produce a meaningful
global response did not materialise. As
several commentators have pointed out, this
was very different from the decisive G20
action taken in response to the 2008 global
financial crisis.
Europe too hardly exhibited unity. The
European Commission President, Ursula von
der Leyen, acknowledged: “When Europe
really needed an all-for-one spirit, too many
initially gave an only-for-me response.” A
former Danish prime minister put it starkly:
The EU has “not passed the test of
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solidarity”. French President Emmanuel
Macron warned of the EU’s collapse if it
didn’t evolve a common response to stricken
European economies.
By far, the most extraordinary development
at the height of the pandemic was President
Trump’s stinging attack on the World Health
Organisation, the multilateral agency dealing
with the coronavirus crisis, and his decision
to suspend funding for it. He accused the
agency of mismanaging the outbreak and
being “China-centric”. Trump’s earlier
criticism prompted the head of the global
health body, Tedros Adhanom, to warn
against politicising the virus to score political
points.
The UN agency was arguably slow in
declaring the Covid-19 outbreak a global
health emergency and may not have moved
as swiftly as the escalating crisis warranted.
But such gratuitous action by Trump at a
critical moment was only the latest example
of his contempt for multinational
organisations, which have constantly been
assailed by him.
Despite these entreaties before and during the
pandemic, international cooperation has
remained in short supply. Indeed, weakened
commitment to multilateralism continues to
be an unedifying feature of the global
environment today. From the resurgence of
geopolitical competition between the big
powers, declining respect for global rules and
go-it-alone strategies of populist leaders,
who fan xenophobia for political gain, the
picture that emerges is of an increasingly
atomised international system.
This is not likely to change in the post-
pandemic world. It is far from certain what
kind of international order will evolve from
the present Hobbesian-like melee. The US
presidential election later this year will be
critical for its global impact. Its outcome may
not overturn the trends already in play but it
could have a major influence on the future of
a fraying multilateralism system. For now,
the outlook is not promising even at a
watershed moment when global cooperation
is most needed for the imposing challenges
that lie ahead.

The challenge to multilateralism and its

institutions in recent years has not just come
from Trump’s America but other nations and
regional powers too, who have acted
unilaterally in defiance of established
international norms. Therefore, the wrangle
between Trump and the WHO only shone
another light on how multilateral institutions
are under profound stress in the
contemporary international milieu.

A frustrated UN secretary general has had to

frequently remind a fractured international
community about the value of multilateral
cooperation for the common good. In
response to President Trump’s move against
the WHO he again called for unity,
describing Covid-19 as “one of the most
dangerous challenges the world has faced in
our lifetime”.

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THE PANDEMIC WON’T MAKE
CHINA THE WORLD’S LEADER
(FOREIGN AFFAIRS)
E arly this year, as the novel
coronavirus began to spread in China,
the predictions were immediate and
stark: the outbreak was China’s “Chernobyl
moment,” perhaps even “the beginning of the
end” for the Chinese Communist Party, with
geopolitical consequences that, at a time of
growing U.S.-Chinese tension, would play to
Washington’s considerable advantage. But
then, almost as quickly, the predictions went
into reverse. As China appeared to contain
the spread of the coronavirus while the
United States and Western Europe suffered
large outbreaks of their own, the pandemic
and the resulting global recession were said
to mark a geopolitical reordering that would
leave China as the victor. Beijing certainly
saw such an opportunity, launching an
international campaign stressing the failures
of democratic governance and casting itself
as the leader of the global pandemic
response.
But it is doubtful that Beijing’s gambit will
succeed in turning a pandemic that likely
started in a Chinese city into a major step in
China’s rise. There are real limits to China’s
capacity to take advantage of the current
crisis—whether through disingenuous
propaganda or ineffective global action. And
just as the potential for China to benefit from
the coronavirus is too easily overstated, the
ability of the United States to show global
leadership even after its initial missteps is too
easily discounted. As deeply flawed as
Washington’s response to the pandemic has
been so far, the United States’ power—
distinct from any particular president—rests
on an enduring combination of material
capabilities and political legitimacy, and
there are few signs that the pandemic is
causing power to shift rapidly and
permanently to China’s side of the ledger.
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May 2020
China’s initial propaganda offensive was
stunningly aggressive, but it now appears
clumsy and unlikely to work. The Chinese
Communist Party’s narrative is limited by the
simple fact that too many people know about
the outbreak’s origins in Wuhan and
Beijing’s bungled initial response—in
particular, its efforts to suppress information
and silence many of the doctors who first
warned of the emergence of a dangerous new
virus. In the face of calls for greater
transparency, Beijing ejected American
journalists working for The New York Times,
The Washington Post, and The Wall Street
Journal. On Twitter, a spokesperson for
China’s foreign ministry accused the U.S.
military of bringing the coronavirus to
Wuhan. Although Beijing has backed away
from this reprehensible claim in recent
weeks, its approach has a whiff of
desperation, which hints at Beijing’s own
insecurity about the mishandling of the
outbreak.
In-depth analysis delivered weekly
Global skepticism extends, with good reason,
to China’s coronavirus statistics. Indeed,
while China’s official tally of new COVID-
19 cases indicates effective containment (by
March 19, the number of new local infections
had fallen to near zero), some in China fear
that the central government has simply
stopped reporting all the test results in order
to keep its official count low and to maintain
the narrative that it has won the war against
the virus; it wouldn’t be the first time Beijing
has suppressed unfavorable data.
Some leaders, of course, are embracing
Beijing’s narrative and applauding its
methods in combating the outbreak—
including officials in Cambodia, Iran,
Pakistan, and Serbia. But few of these
governments have been newly persuaded by
recent Chinese messaging; they have a long
record of accepting Chinese political
narratives and economic assistance, often at
the service of their own power at home.
Indeed, some early recipients in Europe of
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Chinese-made testing kits and protective
equipment rejected them as substandard. Just
this week, Finland’s prime minister fired the
head of the country's emergency supply
agency for spending millions of euros on
defective Chinese facemasks.
Amid calls for greater transparency, Beijing
silenced doctors and ejected American
journalists.
Meanwhile, other leaders are already pushing
back against China’s attempt to rewrite the
global narrative about its COVID-19
response. European Union High
Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep
Borrell openly criticized Chinese efforts as
“a struggle for influence through spinning
and the ‘politics of generosity.’” Leaders in
Brazil and India, who are facing challenges
at home, have quickly turned to criticizing
China and eschewing its aid. In Africa,
public attention has been riveted by stories of
widespread racism against African expats in
southern China. And even before the
pandemic started, Beijing faced a large trust
deficit among its Asian neighbors. A survey
of public opinion in six Asian countries,
conducted by the Pew Research Center
between May and October 2019, and
published in late February, found
significantly higher percentages of people
held favorable views of the United States
when compared with China.
In pushing its narrative of triumph against the
coronavirus, Beijing’s approach will be
compared not only to that of the United
States but also to the impressive actions of
many Asian countries, including several
democracies. Beijing failed badly at first—
due to a striking and predictable lack of
transparency—and Washington is failing
now. But democratic South Korea and
Taiwan have performed better than both.
South Korea’s impressive testing and
contact-tracing regime and Taiwan’s early
detection and containment efforts reflect
both their governance choices and their
ability to learn from past experience with
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May 2020
pandemics. Citizens and governments
looking for models are more likely to choose
those democratic successes than China’s
vaunted authoritarian alternative and
draconian containment efforts—the real
costs of which remain unknown.
Moreover, China’s economy can’t ride to the
rescue as it did during the global financial
crisis. Although there is a partial uptick on
the supply side as Chinese factories reopen,
the demand side drivers for China’s growth
are in real trouble. China’s economy is too
dependent on external demand from the
United States and Europe to become the sole
savior of the global economy. The 12
countries hardest hit by the virus today
account for about 40 percent of China’s
exports. Many of these countries are also
China’s top suppliers of intermediate goods.
China’s economy will not be able to return to
its prior growth trajectory of some five to six
percent annually until the economies of the
United States and the European Union
recover, as well. Chinese policymakers will
have to hold back some of their domestic
stimulus efforts until that happens, knowing
such stimulus will have a limited impact if
global demand is down. Funding another
credit-fueled stimulus as the Chinese did in
2008–9 is off the table due to China’s high
overall debt levels and the real risk of
triggering a collapse of its financial system.
In this crisis, the American and Chinese
economies must sink or swim together.
In the middle of a global crisis, the pressures
to forecast the long-term, strategic
implications of the emergency are legion.
The problem with drawing early conclusions
is that they are often wrong: analysts focus
on the immediate consequences of recent
events and discount the structural features of
global order.
To be sure, there has been a catastrophic
failure of U.S. political and diplomatic
leadership in the current crisis that could cost
the United States dearly in lives and
international influence over the coming
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months. But to argue that this may portend a
“Suez moment” for the United States, as Kurt
M. Campbell and Rush Doshi recently did in
Foreign Affairs, goes too far. It is worth
examining the Suez analogy more closely.
The British intervention in the Suez in 1956
was the last gasp of an empire that had long
since lost the power and legitimacy to impose
its will on its former colonial states. The
United States had surpassed the United
Kingdom on every diplomatic, economic,
and military metric a generation before the
Suez crisis. China’s rising military and
technological power today is impressive, but
China’s currency does not approach the
hegemony that the dollar enjoyed in 1956 or
that it enjoys today. Indeed, the United
Kingdom’s share of global GDP at that time
was only a fraction of the United States’
today. As the Chinese Leninists would say,
the international correlation of forces in 1956
were decidedly not in the United Kingdom’s
favor.
That is not the case today for the United
States. Even as the United States stumbles in
the current crisis, Beijing faces internal and
external challenges that stem from its choices
about economic and political governance at
home and global governance abroad. There is
scant evidence that China’s authoritarian
model today has more attraction than the
democratic norms embraced by many of
China’s neighbors. The twenty-first century
is hardly certain to be “the Chinese century,”
no matter what the United States does.
Rather, it is more likely to be an Asian one
given the effective and efficient governance
demonstrated in recent weeks, in addition to
the region’s substantial and growing
contributions to global innovation,
productivity, and growth.
Although China’s position of global
leadership is hardly assured, the United
States should not be complacent—far from it.
There may not be a shift of power to China,
but there is an ongoing crisis of American
leadership, as Campbell and Doshi rightly
note in their piece in Foreign Affairs. It is
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May 2020
essential that the United States reestablish
competent leadership on this pandemic at all
levels. The world clearly needs a global
system of surveillance, detection testing, and
pharmacological response. So far, China’s
rhetoric and diplomacy have generated
limited gains, but the United States and its
allies must remain vigilant lest Beijing
further expand its role in global governance
and institutional design at a time when
Washington is stepping back.
Previous global and regional crises dating
back to the 1950s offer important lessons for
restoring U.S. leadership. Indeed, many
enduring patterns of cooperation and
institutional development have grown out of
moments of great duress: the United States’
security treaties with Australia, Japan, and
others were signed at the height of the
Korean War; the Quad framework with
Australia, India, and Japan was organized in
less than 72 hours in response to the 2004
tsunami; the G-20 leaders gathered for the
first time in November 2008, in the midst of
the 2008 financial crisis. Even after the
1997–98 financial crisis, when the United
States and the International Monetary Fund
demanded tough conditions that alienated
much of Asia as Beijing won points for not
devaluing its currency, the long-term result
was more resilient and market-based
economies in the region, not a shift to
Chinese-style state capitalism.
If the United States is in strategic
competition with China, then effective U.S.
leadership should be at the service of
building something positive out of the crisis
rather than trying to use it to isolate and
alienate Beijing. The failure of the G-7
foreign ministers to reach agreement on a
joint statement (because the U.S. delegation
insisted on calling the novel coronavirus the
“Wuhan virus,” going against the guidelines
of the World Health Organization and the
positions of Washington’s closest allies)
hardly constitutes an example of effective
leadership. For decades, the United States
has maintained power, credibility, and
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influence not only by virtue of its size and
capabilities but also by attracting other
nations to its vision for security and
prosperity. A United States that is churlish
and defensive about China right now is not a
United States that will earn respect among its
friends and allies. A United States that learns
from the experiences of Germany, South
Korea, Taiwan and others in pandemic
management; that embraces practical and
meaningful cooperation with China; and that
engages with global organizations, such as
the WHO, to help them reform is a United
States that can use the pandemic as an
opportunity to remind the world of what
American leadership looks like.
GENDER CRISIS AMID COVID-
19
BY: ZILE HUMA (DAILY TIMES)
A
ny natural disasters or emergency
situation leaves the women and girls
the most vulnerable, impacting them
indiscriminately. The global health
emergency of COVID-19 is also hitting
women and girls badly. According United
Nations Population Fund, “Pandemics make
existing gender inequalities for women and
girls worse, and can impact how they receive
treatment and care.”
There are number of areas where the risks for
women and girls have increased due to this
global epidemic of coronavirus. The female
population makes 48%of population of
Pakistan, according to census held in 2017.
The countries like Pakistan which are a
patriarchal society, women are considered
responsible for the most of the house chores.
The lockdown, social distancing and
quarantine situation have increased burden of
women with workload at homes. The
educational institutions have been closed,
ensuring kids and young people stay at home.
This is an additional responsibility on parents
especially mothers, who are traditionally
considered to shoulder the responsibility of
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May 2020
their children whole day. Similarly, men
consider themselves responsible for bread
and butter of the family. While staying at
home, they do not consider sharing
responsibility with females in domestic
work. The lockdown has boosted cases of
domestic violence and abuse, negatively
impacting women all around the world. The
daily wagers have lost their jobs, creating
financial problems for the families which are
leading towards a cruel atmosphere for
women. Such issues are fueling
psychological problems like stress and
tensions for women, disturbing overall
family environment.
Coronavirus is also affecting women
disproportionately in health sector. The
accelerating burden of house chores and
domestic issues are impacting physical
health of women gravely. Furthermore, all
national governments are diverting their
health resources to fight coronavirus. The
hospitals and budgetary means are diverted
to fight this global emergency. The hospitals
have been converted into isolation wards and
normal patients are being refused to be
admitted. This situation is affecting severely
the health of pregnant women in case of any
emergency. According to World Economic
Forum, “women comprise the majority of
health and social care workers, and are on the
front lines of the fight against COVID-19”.
This is also a big danger for health of female
population all around the world.
Moreover, women used to earn through some
employment opportunities at home like
stitching, embroidery, carpet weaving etc.
The lockdown has closed markets and
reduced demand of such products which is
impacting adversely the financial means of
women. Women also contribute as labour in
agriculture and industrial sector but social
distancing and curfew have snatched these
opportunities from them. All these issues are
unseen and needs to be addressed in a serious
manner.
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Pakistani female population is also
vulnerable to such issues. Ministry of Human
Rights, Government of Pakistan has taken an
initiative to provide a helpline 1099 and
WhatsApp number 03339085709 where
women and children facing any domestic
violence or abuse during the lockdown or
quarantine, can report there. Such complaints
will be addressed and provided legal support.
Ministry of Human Rights with the support
of United Nations Women has prepared a
policy brief exploring the gendered impacts
of Corona with some useful
recommendations. National Disaster
Management Authority of Pakistan also has
a dedicated “Gender and Child Cell” to
support the most vulnerable faction of
population during emergency situations. All
national governments should take into
account gender parity while fighting against
Coronavirus. There should be mental and
legal support for women, provided by
government. The law enforcing agencies
should be more vigilant to respond to any
indiscriminately behaviour against women
during such emergency situations. They
should also initiate public awareness
campaigns to sensitize public on gender
issues during such crisis situation and
availability of any possible support in form
of legal and mental health.
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May 2020
WHAT IS MISSING FROM
AFGHAN PEACE TALKS
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
A
fter four decades of conflict,
Afghanistan seems poised to
embrace superficial peace. The
negotiations between the United States and
the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, culminated in a
peace agreement between the two sides. The
agreement paved the way for a national peace
dialogue between the Taliban and a
conglomerate of Afghan political factions
and figures led by the government of
Afghanistan.
The people of Afghanistan, who have
suffered for decades, are investing great
hopes in these talks to settle the differences
between the warring sides and achieve a
permanent peace acceptable to all.
The most salient question begging for
attention during the talks — expected to start
soon — is understanding and resolving the
key structural obstacles to the establishment
of a lasting peace and just political order in
postwar Afghanistan. Informal reports from
Doha suggest that the Taliban, who are yet to
show good faith in negotiations, have already
declared their support for a highly centralized
state system.
For a lasting peace and just political order to
be established in Afghanistan, significant
structural changes need to be made to our
highly centralized political and
administrative system that concentrates
power and financial resources in the office of
the president with little accountability.
The lack of an institutional power-sharing
arrangement between Kabul and the
provinces, and the winner-takes-all system in
the central government drive a zealous
competition for the presidency.
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The current political structures were
established by the Constitution of
Afghanistan adopted in 2004, which is a
revised version of the Constitution adopted in
1964 when the country was ruled by a
monarchy. The 2004 Constitution may have
assuaged the former monarchy’s
beneficiaries, but it completely ignored the
fundamental political transformation of the
country through the upheavals of the past
four decades. It has largely remained
irrelevant to practical politics in Afghanistan.
The 2004 Constitution confers on the
president the right to appoint and dismiss
governors of the country’s 34 provinces,
mayors, police chiefs, district governors,
senators and other officials across the
political system. The people they rule over
have no democratic means of holding local
authorities accountable, and this has created
an environment of pervasive corruption.
Further, the centralized control over finances
lies to an absurd extent with the presidency.
For example, if a school in a remote village
needs renovation, local and provincial
leaders have to negotiate a maze of red tape
and cumbersome procedures through the
Kabul bureaucracy to obtain the president’s
approval for budgetary allocation and
rebuilding.
More dangerously, in a multiethnic society,
the centralized unitary-presidential system
has fanned the flames of internal conflict.
The problem is exacerbated when a particular
person or group holding the presidency
resorts to divisive and ethnocentric policies
in a country that is made of ethnic minorities.
Such policies by the Afghan state has
sharpened ethnic identity and nationalism
among all ethnic groups.
The patronage of a particular group by the
head of state has created a major cleavage in
our society and nourished a sense of
disenfranchisement among all ethnic groups,
constituting a major source of conflict in the
country for decades.
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May 2020
My father, Ahmad Shah Massoud, the
national hero of Afghanistan, was one of the
few leaders in our history who was able to
unite the ethnic groups under one banner. He
brought together important Pashtun, Tajik,
Uzbek and Hazara leaders.
Two days before the Sept. 11 attacks, two Al
Qaeda suicide bombers posing as journalists
assassinated my father. The two events were
intertwined and forever changed the fate of
both Afghans and Americans. In the 19 years
since his killing, Afghanistan has lost that
sense of solidarity among its ethnic groups
that he was able to forge.
Last year, after realizing that Afghanistan is
on the verge of disintegration again and
might experience a brutal internal war, I
decided to enter politics to continue my
father’s path of bringing genuine peace to
this country and to revive the unity and
solidarity that he achieved.
Commander Massoud had proposed
decentralization of political power and
wealth based on the Swiss model, which
would have saved political competition from
being a zero-sum game. He believed that
through devolution of power and resources to
the provinces, social justice, equality and
national unity can be established and the
conflicts over power can be ended. He saw
that as a building block to national unity in
this war-torn country.
Afghanistan’s national unity government
from 2014 to 2020 had an opportunity to
make progress on better power-sharing and
accountability. The agreement that
underpinned the formation of the unity
government bound President Ashraf Ghani
and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah to
amend the Constitution to create a new
system where many of the powers of the
president are reduced and transferred to an
empowered prime minister. It was to be
followed up by devolving power at the local
governance level.
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But the political leadership invested in
maintaining the status quo thwarted any
meaningful reform. As a result, Kabul is
experiencing a political crisis yet again; after
the presidential election held in September
both Mr. Ghani and Mr. Abdullah claimed to
have won the presidency and have been
unwilling to compromise. If they had brought
about constitutional reform and taken steps
toward decentralization, this crisis would
have been avoided.
Afghanistan needs to empower its people by
allowing them to elect provincial and local
authorities and minimize undue reliance on
the central government. Locally elected
authorities enjoy a higher degree of public
trust and more efficiency because they have
a better understanding of problems and
complexities.
Kabul has failed to spend its development
budget over the past 18 years. The provinces
need to be allowed to keep a percentage of
their revenues and play a direct role in
economic development and the welfare of
their inhabitants.
Decentralization will assuage the
communities that believe their wealth has
been diverted by Kabul to its favored regions.
It can diffuse tensions among ethnic groups,
which can lead to a partition of the country
and help to solve our identity crisis.
Commander Massoud pointed us toward a
lasting peace and a just political order that
emphasized decentralization and an
equitable distribution of resources among the
people of Afghanistan. I hope to work to
fulfill his dream.
As Afghans are about to gather soon for the
talks, it is imperative that all sections of
Afghan society are represented, that the
question of decentralization is debated and
that a consensus for subsequently amending
the Constitution is built. We owe the people
of Afghanistan a just and lasting peace.
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May 2020
ARUNDHATI ROY: THE
PANDEMIC IS A PORTAL
ho can use the term “gone viral”
W now without shuddering a little?
Who can look at anything any
more — a door handle, a cardboard carton, a
bag of vegetables — without imagining it
swarming with those unseeable, undead,
unliving blobs dotted with suction pads
waiting to fasten themselves on to our lungs?
Who can think of kissing a stranger, jumping
on to a bus or sending their child to school
without feeling real fear? Who can think of
ordinary pleasure and not assess its risk?
Who among us is not a quack epidemiologist,
virologist, statistician and prophet? Which
scientist or doctor is not secretly praying for
a miracle? Which priest is not — secretly, at
least — submitting to science?
And even while the virus proliferates, who
could not be thrilled by the swell of birdsong
in cities, peacocks dancing at traffic
crossings and the silence in the skies?
The number of cases worldwide this week
crept over a million. More than 50,000
people have died already. Projections
suggest that number will swell to hundreds of
thousands, perhaps more. The virus has
moved freely along the pathways of trade and
international capital, and the terrible illness it
has brought in its wake has locked humans
down in their countries, their cities and their
homes.
But unlike the flow of capital, this virus seeks
proliferation, not profit, and has, therefore,
inadvertently, to some extent, reversed the
direction of the flow. It has mocked
immigration controls, biometrics, digital
surveillance and every other kind of data
analytics, and struck hardest — thus far — in
the richest, most powerful nations of the
world, bringing the engine of capitalism to a
juddering halt. Temporarily perhaps, but at
least long enough for us to examine its parts,
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make an assessment and decide whether we
want to help fix it, or look for a better engine.
The mandarins who are managing this
pandemic are fond of speaking of war. They
don’t even use war as a metaphor, they use it
literally. But if it really were a war, then who
would be better prepared than the US? If it
were not masks and gloves that its frontline
soldiers needed, but guns, smart bombs,
bunker busters, submarines, fighter jets and
nuclear bombs, would there be a shortage?
Night after night, from halfway across the
world, some of us watch the New York
governor’s press briefings with a fascination
that is hard to explain. We follow the
statistics, and hear the stories of
overwhelmed hospitals in the US, of
underpaid, overworked nurses having to
make masks out of garbage bin liners and old
raincoats, risking everything to bring succour
to the sick. About states being forced to bid
against each other for ventilators, about
doctors’ dilemmas over which patient should
get one and which left to die. And we think
to ourselves, “My God! This is America!”
The tragedy is immediate, real, epic and
unfolding before our eyes. But it isn’t new. It
is the wreckage of a train that has been
careening down the track for years. Who
doesn’t remember the videos of “patient
dumping” — sick people, still in their
hospital gowns, butt naked, being
surreptitiously dumped on street corners?
Hospital doors have too often been closed to
the less fortunate citizens of the US. It hasn’t
mattered how sick they’ve been, or how
much they’ve suffered.
At least not until now — because now, in the
era of the virus, a poor person’s sickness can
affect a wealthy society’s health. And yet,
even now, Bernie Sanders, the senator who
has relentlessly campaigned for healthcare
for all, is considered an outlier in his bid for
the White House, even by his own party.
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May 2020
And what of my country, my poor-rich
country, India, suspended somewhere
between feudalism and religious
fundamentalism, caste and capitalism, ruled
by far-right Hindu nationalists?
In December, while China was fighting the
outbreak of the virus in Wuhan, the
government of India was dealing with a mass
uprising by hundreds of thousands of its
citizens protesting against the brazenly
discriminatory anti-Muslim citizenship law
it had just passed in parliament.
The first case of Covid-19 was reported in
India on January 30, only days after the
honourable chief guest of our Republic Day
Parade, Amazon forest-eater and Covid-
denier Jair Bolsonaro, had left Delhi. But
there was too much to do in February for the
virus to be accommodated in the ruling
party’s timetable. There was the official visit
of President Donald Trump scheduled for the
last week of the month. He had been lured by
the promise of an audience of 1m people in a
sports stadium in the state of Gujarat. All that
took money, and a great deal of time.
Then there were the Delhi Assembly
elections that the Bharatiya Janata Party was
slated to lose unless it upped its game, which
it did, unleashing a vicious, no-holds-barred
Hindu nationalist campaign, replete with
threats of physical violence and the shooting
of “traitors”.
It lost anyway. So then there was punishment
to be meted out to Delhi’s Muslims, who
were blamed for the humiliation. Armed
mobs of Hindu vigilantes, backed by the
police, attacked Muslims in the working-
class neighbourhoods of north-east Delhi.
Houses, shops, mosques and schools were
burnt. Muslims who had been expecting the
attack fought back. More than 50 people,
Muslims and some Hindus, were killed.
Thousands moved into refugee camps in
local graveyards. Mutilated bodies were still
being pulled out of the network of filthy,
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stinking drains when government officials
had their first meeting about Covid-19 and
most Indians first began to hear about the
existence of something called hand sanitiser.
Women bang pots and pans to show their
support for the emergency services dealing
with the coronavirus outbreak © Atul
Loke/Panos Pictures
March was busy too. The first two weeks
were devoted to toppling the Congress
government in the central Indian state of
Madhya Pradesh and installing a BJP
government in its place. On March 11 the
World Health Organization declared that
Covid-19 was a pandemic. Two days later,
on March 13, the health ministry said that
corona “is not a health emergency”.
Finally, on March 19, the Indian prime
minister addressed the nation. He hadn’t
done much homework. He borrowed the
playbook from France and Italy. He told us
of the need for “social distancing” (easy to
understand for a society so steeped in the
practice of caste) and called for a day of
“people’s curfew” on March 22. He said
nothing about what his government was
going to do in the crisis, but he asked people
to come out on their balconies, and ring bells
and bang their pots and pans to salute health
workers.
He didn’t mention that, until that very
moment, India had been exporting protective
gear and respiratory equipment, instead of
keeping it for Indian health workers and
hospitals.
Not surprisingly, Narendra Modi’s request
was met with great enthusiasm. There were
pot-banging marches, community dances and
processions. Not much social distancing. In
the days that followed, men jumped into
barrels of sacred cow dung, and BJP
supporters threw cow-urine drinking parties.
Not to be outdone, many Muslim
organisations declared that the Almighty was
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May 2020
the answer to the virus and called for the
faithful to gather in mosques in numbers.
On March 24, at 8pm, Modi appeared on
TV again to announce that, from midnight
onwards, all of India would be
under lockdown. Markets would be closed.
All transport, public as well as private, would
be disallowed.
He said he was taking this decision not just
as a prime minister, but as our family elder.
Who else can decide, without consulting the
state governments that would have to deal
with the fallout of this decision, that a nation
of 1.38bn people should be locked down with
zero preparation and with four hours’ notice?
His methods definitely give the impression
that India’s prime minister thinks of citizens
as a hostile force that needs to be ambushed,
taken by surprise, but never trusted.
Locked down we were. Many health
professionals and epidemiologists have
applauded this move. Perhaps they are right
in theory. But surely none of them can
support the calamitous lack of planning or
preparedness that turned the world’s biggest,
most punitive lockdown into the exact
opposite of what it was meant to achieve.
The man who loves spectacles created the
mother of all spectacles.
As an appalled world watched, India
revealed herself in all her shame — her
brutal, structural, social and economic
inequality, her callous indifference to
suffering.
The lockdown worked like a chemical
experiment that suddenly illuminated hidden
things. As shops, restaurants, factories and
the construction industry shut down, as the
wealthy and the middle classes enclosed
themselves in gated colonies, our towns and
megacities began to extrude their working-
class citizens — their migrant workers —
like so much unwanted accrual.
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Many driven out by their employers and
landlords, millions of impoverished, hungry,
thirsty people, young and old, men, women,
children, sick people, blind people, disabled
people, with nowhere else to go, with no
public transport in sight, began a long march
home to their villages. They walked for days,
towards Badaun, Agra, Azamgarh, Aligarh,
Lucknow, Gorakhpur — hundreds of
kilometres away. Some died on the way.
They knew they were going home potentially
to slow starvation. Perhaps they even knew
they could be carrying the virus with them,
and would infect their families, their parents
and grandparents back home, but they
desperately needed a shred of familiarity,
shelter and dignity, as well as food, if not
love.
As they walked, some were beaten brutally
and humiliated by the police, who were
charged with strictly enforcing the curfew.
Young men were made to crouch and frog
jump down the highway. Outside the town of
Bareilly, one group was herded together and
hosed down with chemical spray.
A few days later, worried that the fleeing
population would spread the virus to villages,
the government sealed state borders even for
walkers. People who had been walking for
days were stopped and forced to return to
camps in the cities they had just been forced
to leave.
Among older people it evoked memories of
the population transfer of 1947, when India
was divided and Pakistan was born. Except
that this current exodus was driven by class
divisions, not religion. Even still, these were
not India’s poorest people. These were
people who had (at least until now) work in
the city and homes to return to. The jobless,
the homeless and the despairing remained
where they were, in the cities as well as the
countryside, where deep distress was
growing long before this tragedy occurred.
All through these horrible days, the home
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affairs minister Amit Shah remained absent
from public view.
When the walking began in Delhi, I used a
press pass from a magazine I frequently write
for to drive to Ghazipur, on the border
between Delhi and Uttar Pradesh.
The scene was biblical. Or perhaps not. The
Bible could not have known numbers such as
these. The lockdown to enforce physical
distancing had resulted in the opposite —
physical compression on an unthinkable
scale. This is true even within India’s towns
and cities. The main roads might be empty,
but the poor are sealed into cramped quarters
in slums and shanties.
Every one of the walking people I spoke to
was worried about the virus. But it was less
real, less present in their lives than looming
unemployment, starvation and the violence
of the police. Of all the people I spoke to that
day, including a group of Muslim tailors who
had only weeks ago survived the anti-Muslim
attacks, one man’s words especially troubled
me. He was a carpenter called Ramjeet, who
planned to walk all the way to Gorakhpur
near the Nepal border.
“Maybe when Modiji decided to do this,
nobody told him about us. Maybe he doesn’t
know about us”, he said.
“Us” means approximately 460m people.
State governments in India (as in the US)
have showed more heart and understanding
in the crisis. Trade unions, private citizens
and other collectives are distributing food
and emergency rations. The central
government has been slow to respond to their
desperate appeals for funds. It turns out that
the prime minister’s National Relief Fund
has no ready cash available. Instead, money
from well-wishers is pouring into the
somewhat mysterious new PM-CARES
fund. Pre-packaged meals with Modi’s face
on them have begun to appear.
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In addition to this, the prime minister has
shared his yoga nidra videos, in which a
morphed, animated Modi with a dream body
demonstrates yoga asanas to help people deal
with the stress of self-isolation.
The narcissism is deeply troubling. Perhaps
one of the asanas could be a request-asana in
which Modi requests the French prime
minister to allow us to renege on the very
troublesome Rafale fighter jet deal and use
that €7.8bn for desperately needed
emergency measures to support a few million
hungry people. Surely the French will
understand.
As the lockdown enters its second
week, supply chains have broken, medicines
and essential supplies are running low.
Thousands of truck drivers are still marooned
on the highways, with little food and water.
Standing crops, ready to be harvested, are
slowly rotting.
The economic crisis is here. The political
crisis is ongoing. The mainstream media has
incorporated the Covid story into its 24/7
toxic anti-Muslim campaign. An
organisation called the Tablighi Jamaat,
which held a meeting in Delhi before the
lockdown was announced, has turned out to
be a “super spreader”. That is being used to
stigmatise and demonise Muslims. The
overall tone suggests that Muslims invented
the virus and have deliberately spread it as a
form of jihad.
The Covid crisis is still to come. Or not. We
don’t know. If and when it does, we can be
sure it will be dealt with, with all the
prevailing prejudices of religion, caste and
class completely in place.
Today (April 2) in India, there are almost
2,000 confirmed cases and 58 deaths. These
are surely unreliable numbers, based on
woefully few tests. Expert opinion varies
wildly. Some predict millions of cases.
Others think the toll will be far less. We may
never know the real contours of the crisis,
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even when it hits us. All we know is that the
run on hospitals has not yet begun.
India’s public hospitals and clinics — which
are unable to cope with the almost 1m
children who die of diarrhoea, malnutrition
and other health issues every year, with the
hundreds of thousands of tuberculosis
patients (a quarter of the world’s cases), with
a vast anaemic and malnourished population
vulnerable to any number of minor illnesses
that prove fatal for them — will not be able
to cope with a crisis that is like what Europe
and the US are dealing with now.
All healthcare is more or less on hold as
hospitals have been turned over to the service
of the virus. The trauma centre of the
legendary All India Institute of Medical
Sciences in Delhi is closed, the hundreds of
cancer patients known as cancer refugees
who live on the roads outside that huge
hospital driven away like cattle.
People will fall sick and die at home. We may
never know their stories. They may not even
become statistics. We can only hope that the
studies that say the virus likes cold weather
are correct (though other researchers have
cast doubt on this). Never have a people
longed so irrationally and so much for a
burning, punishing Indian summer.
What is this thing that has happened to us?
It’s a virus, yes. In and of itself it holds no
moral brief. But it is definitely more than a
virus. Some believe it’s God’s way of
bringing us to our senses. Others that it’s a
Chinese conspiracy to take over the world.
Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the
mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt
like nothing else could. Our minds are still
racing back and forth, longing for a return to
“normality”, trying to stitch our future to our
past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture.
But the rupture exists. And in the midst of
this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to
rethink the doomsday machine we have built
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for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a
return to normality.
Historically, pandemics have forced humans
to break with the past and imagine their
world anew. This one is no different. It is a
portal, a gateway between one world and the
next.
We can choose to walk through it, dragging
the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our
avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our
dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we
can walk through lightly, with little luggage,
ready to imagine another world. And ready to
fight for it.
DISMANTLING ‘SWEET’
CARTELS
BY: HUZAIMA BUKHARI AND
DR. IKRAM UL HAQ (THE
NEWS)
“
It is unprecedented in the country’s
history for preliminary reports into
sudden price hike of these commodities
to be released without an alteration. Action
will be taken against those responsible for
sugar and wheat price hike after receiving
detailed forensic reports on April 25, 2020”
—Prime Minister, Imran Khan
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May 2020
Matthew Parker, in his book The Sugar
Barons: Family, Corruption, Empire, and
War in the West Indies, used the rise and fall
of the sugar dynasties of the West Indies as a
framework for the intertwined histories of
sugar, slavery, industrial revolution, and
Britain’s American colonies.
The story narrated by him portrays a
horrifying situation and the period of worst
exploitation during the colonial period.
Unfortunately, glimpses of similar conduct
can still be seen in post-colonial era in many
countries, including Pakistan. The only
difference is that colonial masters have now
been replaced by sugar barons, many of
whom, in our case, are famous politicians.
For businessmen-turned politicians and
landed aristocracy spending millions to win
elections has been a rewarding investment —
as conceded by Imran Khan in 2018: “We
need electables to come into power”. This
class knows everything about protecting and
expanding their business interests once they
capture the state apparatus. This conflict of
interests is an ugly facet of our politics —
holding public office to make policies for
promoting personal business empires.
According to a report titled PM, DG FIA
Being Threatened By Sugar Mafia, (The
News, March 5, 2020), “the sugar mafia has
threatened Prime Minister Imran Khan as
well as FIA Director General and Chairman
of the Inquiry Commission Wajid Zia to
immediately stop the probe into the sugar
scam. Otherwise, the country will see a
severe shortage of the commodity and its
price may hit Rs 110 a kilogram”.
This report highlights a laudable effort by the
prime minister as under: “In a rare but bold
move, Prime Minister Imran Khan…. made
the report on wheat and sugar scandals
public. There are strong indications that
some major administrative actions may
follow in the coming days. Informed sources
said that not only will heads will from within
the bureaucracy but Prime Minister Imran
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Khan is also considering removing some of
his key ministers from the cabinet besides
expelling Jehangir Tareen from the PTI.”
It is not for the first time that abuse of power
and market manipulation by producers of
‘white gold’ have surfaced. The phenomenon
has been highlighted in many judicial
decisions in recent years, most notably in the
Lahore High Court judgment of in the JDW
Sugar Mills Ltd etc versus Province of
Punjab etc (2017 PLD Lahore 68). [Details
can be seen in our article, White gold’ wars,
TNS, Political Economy, October 23, 2016.]
It may be recalled that after a sudden raise in
the prices of sugar and wheat flour, the prime
minister had constituted two high-powered
committees headed by the FIA DG. An
officer each was also included from the
Intelligence Bureau and the Directorate
General of the Anti-Corruption
Establishment, Punjab.
In its 32-page report, the committee on sugar
price-hike has described the decision of the
PTI government to allow export of sugar as
the main cause for a 30 percent increase in its
price. In the light of recommendations of the
committee, a Sugar Inquiry Commission has
been established under Commission of
Inquiry Act of 2017 to file a report by April
25, for appropriate action against the culprits.
The Commission has already started
checking the ledgers, bank reports, export
details, markets sales etc of the sugar mills.
The News report also says that the number
one beneficiary of export subsidy and price
hike was “JDW Group (mainly owned by
Jahangir Khan Tareen) by availing 22
percent of total subsidy (Rs 561 million). The
second beneficiary was RYK Group run by
Makhdoom Omer Sheheryar Khan (brother
of Khusro Bakhtiar, (including ownership by
Chaudhry Munir and Moonis Elahi) availing
18 percent of subsidy (Rs452 million) and
the third highest beneficiary was Shamim
Ahmed Khan (Al Moiz Group) availing 16
percent (Rs 406 million).
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May 2020
The Commission has also indicated “overall
collusion of sugar mills and wholesale
dealers behind this scam”. Total subsidy
given to sugar mills over the last five years
came to Rs 25 billion. Out of this R s 3 billion
was given in 2019. According to
consolidated data, “RYK group is the single
largest beneficiary with total subsidy of Rs 4
billion, JDW over Rs 3 billion, Hunza Group
at Rs 2.8 billion, Fatima Group at Rs 2.3
billion, Sharif Group at Rs 1.4 billion and
Omni at Rs 901 million”.
The inquiry report says that despite clear
calculations of the stock position after
deducting the strategic reserves, Sugar
Advisory Board in its meeting of June 2019
did not ban the export of sugar and hinted at
clear signs of “cartelisation” and
“manipulation” as “the ex-mill sugar price
determination formula was also unfair”. A
forensic audit recommended in the report is
currently under way.
One aspect not highlighted in the media is the
finding that the sugar mills allegedly
purchased sugarcane off the books. Thus
sugar production was also kept off the books
to evade sales tax. The committee observed
that it was the responsibility of the Cane
Commissioner to record full sugarcane
production and the Federal Board of Revenue
(FBR) was responsible for monitoring sugar
production.
When a few months back, businessmen
asked the prime minister that the FBR, and
not the NAB, should probe their tax affairs,
he accepted their demand. So now it is the
FBR which should take action for tax
evasion/fraud, retrieval of tax evaded along
with default surcharge and penalty as well as
register FIRs and prosecute the tax cheats
through a special judge as required under the
law. They need not wait for the approval of
the PM or for April 25. The auditors’
subservience to sugar barons is well-
established as a leading audit firm, whose
chief also became an FBR Chairman, was the
auditor for the JWD.
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The nation has now been asked to wait until
April 25. This goes against the PM’s own
complaint that those in power get the chance
to influence inquiries.
In the case of public officeholders, the NAB
should proceed under its own law. It did
against citizens like Mir Shakil even in the
absence of concrete evidence (for which it
has been repeatedly reprimanded by superior
courts). When big names in power corridors
are involved, why should the NAB wait for a
forensic report? The premier keeps on
reiterating, “I believe in the rule of law!” It is
a great test for him now to let the relevant
institutions proceed as per law.
It is a matter of record that sugar barons have
been pocketing unprecedented profits, both
through domestic and international markets.
Way back in 2010, according to a report, the
Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP)
in an order levied a penalty of Rs 75 million
or 10 percent of the annual turnover,
“whichever is higher”, after holding that the
members of Pakistan Sugar Mills
Association (PSMA) had made a three-tier
cartel in the industry. However, the CCP
could not make its order public as the PSMA
obtained a stay order from the Sindh High
Court.
In March 2016, they managed to secure an
extension in the deadline for exporting
500,000 tonnes of sugar and received a
subsidy at the cost of taxpayers to the tune of
Rs 13 per kg. The Economic Coordination
Committee on March 29, 2016, granted
permission till March 31, 2016, for which
there was no justification as the prices were
escalating in the international market.
Besides punishing the culprit in accordance
with due process of law, we need free, fair
and well-regulated open-markets, and end to
protectionism. Let the consumers benefit
from lower prices in local or international
markets. We can dismantle
monopolies/cartels and get rid of political
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May 2020
clouts of businessmen in power through
fundamental reform.
At the time of writing these lines, the price of
sugar in international market is just Rs 47 per
kg whereas the poorest of the poor hit by
Covid-19 pandemic lockout are buying it for
Rs 70 per kg at Utility Stores, where
available, and at Rs 80-90 in the open market.
Despite the setting of a support price,
growers of sugarcane are being exploited by
the mill owners who do not pay in time and
routinely under-weigh their sugarcane.
Tragically, the shift to growing more
sugarcane has led to excess production
giving an excuse to mill owners to export and
receive more subsidy. On the other hand,
reduction in cotton production forced the
textile industry, our major exporter, to import
six million bales this year.
Successive governments have never thought
of giving even a tenth of the subsidy given to
sugar barons to farmers as incentive to
produce high quality cotton.
LEADING IN A PANDEMIC
CRISIS
BY: MALEEHA LODHI (DAWN)
N O government in the world had a
primer to deal with
unprecedented pandemic which
the
plunged countries into unmapped territory.
However, several months into the global
health emergency, lessons have emerged
from across the world to show what worked
to mitigate and contain Covid-19 — and
what did not. It is never too late for a
government to change course even in the
midst of an uncharted and evolving crisis,
especially as more evidence emerges about
how best to tackle it.
By now, the most obvious and instructive
lesson is that it is “rapid, decisive and
collective action that can prevent the spread”
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— as an influential report from London’s
Imperial College put it.
And this advice from the World Health
Organisation remains imperative to fight the
virus: “Countries must continue to find, test,
isolate and treat every case and trace every
contact”. And “If countries rush to lift
restrictions too quickly, the virus could
resurge and the economic impact could be
even more severe and prolonged”.
Informed by this perspective, the prime
minister might consider taking the following
five steps: 1) send clear, coherent and
consistent messages to the public; 2) act
decisively; 3) lead a unified, multilayered,
national effort with close coordination with
all provinces; 4) stay a firm course on social
distancing; and above all 5) be guided by the
evolving medical science on the pandemic by
giving a lead role to medical specialists who
understand this, not generalist bureaucrats.
Why urge these steps? To answer this,
consider what has happened so far. First, on
messaging, the early weeks saw mixed
signals, which did not convey the urgency or
severity of the unfolding threat. Public
communication veered between saying this
was little more than a flu virus that would
afflict the elderly to asserting that the virus
had not hit the country as hard as other
nations. If the aim was to calm and not panic
the public, the (unintended) result was to
underplay the threat when people needed to
be persuaded to stay home to prevent the
virus from spreading.
As the number of cases rose, the prime
minister’s tone changed. But procrastination
over measures aimed at social distancing
continued to send conflicting messages.
Getting mired in a prolonged public
argument about lockdown vs no lockdown
conveyed an impression of indecisiveness.
That brings up the second step — act
decisively. If, as government leaders claim,
they first “reviewed” the looming threat in
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May 2020
mid-January, how did they act on this? How
was an under-resourced healthcare system
enabled to deal with the remorseless onset of
cases? Did “rapid, decisive action” follow
after the first infection was confirmed on Feb
26?
Missteps exacerbated the situation. Much has
already been said about how zaireen
(pilgrims) returning from Iran through the
border crossing at Taftan were managed and
cluster allowed into the mainland, which
accelerated the spread of the virus.
According to the latest official figures, over
30 per cent of current Covid-19 cases in
Pakistan came via this route.
The centre’s unwillingness to move early to
suspend air travel and restrict religious
congregations had a similar deleterious
effect, with scores of tableeghi members
spreading the virus across Punjab and
beyond. Official figures show almost 20pc of
confirmed cases in the country today can be
traced to the latter. Another 24pc have been
tracked to people travelling back from
countries other than Iran.
The federal government also did not take the
lead on a lockdown, with officials debating
its economic fallout rather than act. True,
governments across the world struggled to
find a balance between restrictive measures
and economic activity. But as many
international experts have pointed out, this is
a false choice, because saving lives is
necessary to save livelihoods. While the
government’s economic packages and
enhanced Ehsaas handouts are welcome
steps to mitigate the economic fallout, the
perpetual focus on this has fed the perception
that the crisis is not being viewed through the
prism of a public health emergency, but its
economic repercussions.
While the federal government vacillated, the
Sindh government led the way and
implemented a lockdown, obliging Punjab to
follow suit. Its effective communication
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campaign also offered a contrast to the media Like other countries, Pakistan has to navigate
strategy pursued by Islamabad. a crisis that will test its leadership. The prime
minister has used the metaphor of war to
The third step is centre-province describe the challenge of fighting Covid-19.
coordination. This was found wanting weeks He has a chance to emerge as an effective
into the crisis. The prime minister’s ‘wartime’ chief executive. Now is the time
reluctance to reach out and consult provincial for him to live up to that challenge.
leaderships, especially of Sindh, prevented a
unified policy from emerging. Provinces
went their own way until a National
Coordination Committee and a Command
and Operations Centre were established in
mid-March and early April respectively. But
provincial approaches — for example, on a
lockdown — are still not harmonised. This
prompted a Supreme Court judge to urge the
centre during a recent hearing to improve
coordination with provincial governments.

Four, as the federal government mulls

relaxing restrictions on economic activity, it
remains important to meet clearly articulated
health milestones, especially enhanced
testing capability, before easing the
lockdown. According to the government’s
own projections, infections may reach
70,000 by end-April, as reportedly revealed
to a cabinet meeting last week. If this
projection is based on an assumption about a
degree of compliance with social distancing,
then that estimate can change if restrictions
are relaxed early.
Last but not least, the determination of when
to ease restrictions should be made on the
advice of health professionals. Their counsel
should guide the overall policy response to
Covid-19. They should be represented in the
top policy bodies established to address the
crisis, not just subsidiary committees.
Membership of these bodies should be
dictated by the nature of the crisis, not
ministerial status. Expertise is needed to
interpret the evolving response of the global
medical community. This critical gap should
be filled as the NDMA is designed to deal
with natural disasters and other aspects of the
ongoing crisis, not a health emergency.
ISLAMOPHOBIA TAINTS
INDIA’S RESPONSE TO THE
CORONAVIRUS
BY: RANA AYYUB (THE
WASHINGTON POST)
t didn’t take long before India’s response
I
has
to the coronavirus was tainted by the kind
of discrimination and Islamophobia that
characterized the nationalist
administration of Prime Minister Narendra
Modi. The hashtags #CoronaJihad and
#BioJihad have inundated Twitter recently. It
all stems from cases of covid-19 reported at
a Muslim event.
On Sunday, the Indian government linked
more than a thousand cases to the Tablighi
Jamaat, a Muslim missionary group that held
its annual meeting in a community center in
Nizamuddin from March 8-10, days before
India declared a health emergency and called
for a national lockdown. While most people,

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including Muslims, agree that holding the
annual meeting was irresponsible and
endangered many lives, the event has faced a
disproportional amount of criticism while
generating a cascade of vitriol.
Virtually overnight, Muslims became the
sole culprits responsible for the spread of the
coronavirus in India.
Never mind that various religious groups
held temple gatherings across India during
the same period of time, putting many lives
at risk. In the northern state of Madhya
Pradesh, more than 25,000 people have been
placed in quarantine after a man who traveled
from Dubai performed Hindu rituals with
1,200 people on March 20.
According to Time magazine, tweets with the
hashtag #CoronaJihad appeared nearly
300,000 times and were potentially seen by
165 million people. Other hashtags included
#BioJihad.
Then the hate found official support when
Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, the union minority
affairs minister in Modi’s cabinet, called the
gathering by the Tablighi Jamaat a “Talibani
crime.”
Sign up for our Coronavirus Updates
newsletter to track the outbreak. All stories
linked in the newsletter are free to access.
The attack line was enough fodder for many
news channels. Fake stories started
circulating of Muslims spitting on people to
spread the virus. Muslims were said to be
flashing their naked bodies at the female staff
in hospitals. By the time the stories were
debunked, they were already shared by
millions of people.
In my own building, a neighbor wrote on the
community WhatsApp group that Muslims
objecting to Modi’s call to bang and applaud
from balconies to mark the end of the day-
long curfew must know that the Hindu
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May 2020
majority had been tolerating the prayer call
from the mosques for a lot longer.
India’s leading news channel, India Today,
published a graphic that showed a skull cap
and a face mask with a bold red virus over it,
claiming Muslims contributed to a majority
of coronavirus cases in India. Madhu Trehan,
a leading editor in India who headed a
prominent website called Newslaundry, also
falsely said the Muslim congregation was
responsible for 60 percent of cases in the
country and mocked Muslims, saying “you
can have your virgins.”
The toxic display of Islamophobia soon
found its way into court orders. The high
court of the western state of Gujarat on April
3 cited the Muslim congregation as the
reason for the exponential growth of the
pandemic in the country.
The hate peddled on our news channels and
our social media has real consequences. A
newborn child delivered in an ambulance
reportedly died after a hospital refused to
admit the family for being Muslim. The
husband, Irfan Khan, told a newspaper, “My
pregnant wife had to deliver a child. She was
referred from Sikri to the Janana Hospital in
the district headquarter but the doctors here
mentioned that we should go to Jaipur
because we are Muslim.”
On April 3, a Muslim man committed suicide
after members of his village socially
boycotted him for allegedly being in touch
with members of the Muslim congregation in
Delhi who had tested positive.
Of course, Islamophobia isn’t new. Just in
February, New Delhi exploded in anti-
Muslim riots that left more than 50 people
dead. While our neighbor China battled the
epidemic, India was in international
headlines for the carnage flamed in part by
hate speech given by leaders of Modi’s ruling
party. Not a single culprit has been arrested.
But it took just one day for the Indian police
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to slap the draconian National Security Act
on members of the Muslim congregation.
On March 15, I wrote on my Twitter: “What
is left for a virus to kill in a morally corrupt
nation.” I was expressing despair and
frustration at the hatred being peddled by
members of the ruling party who had
instigated the Delhi pogrom, at the culture of
impunity that was all pervasive. The
immediate provocation for the anger was
miscarriage of justice against a human rights
activist. The anger was directed at those in
positions of power, those who had a public
voice but chose to remain silent in the face of
injustice. Liberals and right-wingers alike
hauled me over the coals for calling the Delhi
riots an anti-Muslim pogrom. A television
anchor taunted me: “For once behave like an
Indian and not a Muslim.”
I fear for all my fellow citizens, but I know
many don’t feel the same way about me and
my community.
In the past 10 days I have been reporting from
the slums of India, where social distancing is
a privilege many cannot afford. The threat of
starvation, agony, the structural
discrimination against the poor in the face of
the pandemic is the need of the hour, a story
that India and the world needs to hear and act
on.
But now almost two weeks into a lockdown
that threatens the life of every Indian,
irrespective of faith, class, gender, I am being
forced to write on prejudice and
majoritarianism yet again, a subject I have
raised consistently in this column.
It is unfortunate that during this global crisis,
when we should be putting all hate aside, my
country and its leaders force me to focus on
prejudice yet again, revealing an acute and
disturbing crisis of morality.
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May 2020
WHY SOFT POWER IS PIVOTAL
BY: MALEEHA LODHI (DAWN)
W
HY write about soft power at a
time of the Covid-19 crisis?
Because the global health emergency helps to
illustrate its significance and impact. It also
makes sense to evaluate the importance of
soft power for Pakistan’s diplomacy in the
post-pandemic world.
If soft power is understood as a country’s
attributes or behaviour that appeals to others
and creates positive perceptions, then
consider the case of China in the midst of the
ongoing coronavirus crisis. China’s
remarkably successful fight to contain the
virus and then extend help to over 80
countries set an example admired the world
over, notwithstanding the stigmatising
rhetoric from its detractors.
What does that mean?
It means that by its example and subsequent
actions for the collective good, China created
a soft power effect. In other words, by
earning respect from its conduct, China
managed to elevate its global position. This
underlines how soft power can be
instrumental in enhancing a country’s
influence and international standing.
Turning now to consideration of the utility of
soft power, the evidence is overwhelming.
When soft power is deployed as a pivotal part
of a country’s diplomatic strategy it pays rich
dividends, enabling that country to build trust
and influence and thus more effectively
promote its foreign policy goals.
We have long known that perceptions are
consequential to a country’s standing in
global affairs. Soft power can be an
indispensable, cost-effective tool to shape
perceptions that can encourage cooperation
from the international community.
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As others have also pointed out, the
international standing of a country today
depends as much on perceptions of it and its
reputation as its military and economic
power. The growing shift in recent decades
from hard power to the importance of soft
power means that being ‘liked’ helps nations
to increase their clout in international affairs.
The term soft power is used rather
imprecisely in Pakistan. It is conceived in a
limited way by policymakers and often
misinterpreted in popular discourse.
The term and notion are owed of course to
the American scholar Joseph Nye, who in a
seminal work in 1990 described soft power
as the ability to shape the preferences of
others and secure outcomes through
“attraction rather than coercion or
payments”. He counterposed soft power, “the
power of persuasion and co-option”, to the
“power of coercion” represented by the hard
power of military and economic strength.
And he identified culture, political values
and foreign policy as the principal sources of
soft power. Subsequent literature expanded
on the concept. A prolific debate ensued on
the diverse sources, dimensions and
measures by which to assess soft power.
Much of this remained West-centric, but
there were lessons for the ‘rest’ to draw on.
A Soft Power Summit, organised recently by
Brand Finance in London, where I was also
invited to speak, attracted participants from
100 countries, reflecting the wide interest the
subject attracts. The keynote from former
UN secretary general Ban-Ki Moon set the
tone: “Soft power is an essential ingredient in
international diplomacy now more important
than ever.”
Speakers generated a rich debate especially
around the Global Soft Power Index 2020
report launched by Brand Finance. This
identifies seven Soft Power Pillars and ranks
60 countries according to measures that
include performance on these pillars,
reputation, awareness, familiarity and overall
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May 2020
influence. It is based on responses to these of
over 55,000 people from around 100
countries. The seven pillars are business and
trade, governance, international relations,
culture and heritage, media and
communication, education and science,
people and values.
Western countries are among the top five in
the ranking index, with Japan and China at
four and five. Pakistan figures among the
bottom 10, at 53 out of 60. India at 27 is
described as underperforming. Singapore is
the top Southeast Asian nation at 20, drawing
soft power from its perception as a leader in
education and science. One can debate the
measures used and question the methodology
of such surveys, but there is much to learn
from them.
I experienced firsthand the critical role soft
power can play in achieving a specific
diplomatic goal when I served as Pakistan’s
envoy at the UN in New York. With 193
countries represented at the UN, it is an ideal
global platform to execute soft power
strategies. Many countries do that on a
sustained basis.
In Pakistan’s case, we had to win election to
a key UN body two years ago. Competition
was tough. So was the challenge, as the
electorate was the 193-member General
Assembly. In Africa and Latin America, we
have few diplomatic missions and little or no
representation in the 38 Small Island Deve-
loping States (SIDS). All have a vote and
every vote counts.
What did we do in addition to traditional
lobbying and making reciprocal
arrangements? We deployed soft power
resources in two ways. We undertook intense
cultural diplomacy by hosting events that
showcased our rich heritage and we projected
Pakistan’s international role as a force for
good by our contribution to UN
Peacekeeping (critical for Africa). Cultural
diplomacy involved a packed concert in the
prestigious General Assembly hall, a
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Pakistani ‘street food’ event, and a colourful
(first-ever) celebration of Eid at the UN. Our
peacekeeping role was showcased in
different ways including a photo exhibition
at the UN. All this aimed to appeal to ‘voters’
by projection of the soft power of our culture
and our policies that contribute to global
peace and security. Pakistan won the
election, polling 151 votes — much more
than were needed. Soft power efforts had
played a key role in this outcome.
Looking ahead, Pakistan needs to step up its
diplomatic game and act strategically. There
seems to be a reluctance to change how we
conduct our diplomacy when a government has had to spin together a
hyperconnected and multipolar world offers
unprecedented opportunities to influence
multiple actors across the globe. Today,
‘nation branding’ is essential. Policymakers
should identify and imaginatively
incorporate our soft power resources into our
foreign policy, engaging more vigorously in
public diplomacy to shape the narrative
abroad. There is no reason why Pakistan
should remain at the bottom of the Global
Soft Power League.
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May 2020
PAKISTAN’S GDP GROWTH
EXPECTATIONS
(DAILY TIMES EDITORIAL)
t’s no surprise that practically all
I countries are revising their annual GDP
growth rates downwards in light of the
heavy economic and financial impact of the
coronavirus. And Pakistan is no exception of
course. In fact, our economy was so brittle
even before the outbreak that a $6 billion
IMF bailout program barely enabled it to
avoid what would surely have been a default,
or a default-like at best, scenario. Now the
roughly $8 billion relief package just to keep
the entire economic structure from collapsing
as the pandemic brings all economic activity
to a near-halt.
Quite rightly, then, our growth rate is also
being compromised. Moody’s, which had
just last fortnight downgraded Pakistan’s
growth expectation from 2.9 percent to 2.5
percent, has now brought it lower still to
around just two percent. While some analysts
are even more conservative in their
estimates, it is clear that these strange times
will leave a big mark on our economy. The
state bank’s policy easing has been
appreciated, but primarily because it will
help protect credit profiles of the country’s
top five banks. The time when a liberal
interest rate regime could have sparked
production, consumption and, most
importantly, export went just as the virus
came. Now, with international trade reduced
to a trickle, there’s no telling when old times
will return. Besides, why did SBP need to
slash the rate twice? Surely it communicated
a degree of hesitation to the market, not the
mention the feeling that it was somehow
pushed by somebody to do a little more after
the initial, disappointing cut.
Pakistan still has it much better than much of
the world, where health and economic
systems are collapsing. Perhaps it’s too soon
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to tell just yet, but there does seem to be a
limited impact of the virus in these parts; at
least in terms of the number of dead. So,
while the economy is clearly taking a
battering, the health system has so far been
spared the worst case scenario. That is why
timely action is very important. And while
there’s little the government can do about
GDP growth right now, it can at least make
sure that everybody — provincial
governments and the centre — is completely
on the same page. That way the virus can be
contained and the damage kept to the
minimum possible degree.
ONLINE LEARNING
BY: FAISAL BARI (DAWN)
U
NIVERSITIES, which were in the
middle of the spring semester when
the orders for closure were
announced, have been told to remain shut
until May 31. It has raised significant
questions for universities to consider.
If universities can continue the semester
online, should they? The Higher Education
Commission initially asked all universities to
go online. But, a few weeks later, realising
that a lot of universities do not have the
infrastructure necessary to make the
transition quickly, the HEC seems to be
saying that those universities that can should
move online, while others can take time
(until the end of May) to develop and
implement the necessary infrastructure,
materials and trainings.
There has been a fair bit of pushback from
students on the issue of online classes. The
main points made, to the best of my
knowledge, are about access to the internet,
bandwidth and internet stability issues. There
are areas in Pakistan that do not have good
internet connectivity, and students who, for
one reason or another, do not have access to
a stable, high-speed internet connection.
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May 2020
The point is well taken. Internet access needs
to be ensured for all students. As the HEC has
standards for onsite teaching, they will also
have to develop online teaching standards to
ensure a certain level of access to the internet
and other technologies before online
teaching can become the default mode. But
these will take some time.
Due to the lockdown and distancing rules, the
burden on the internet in Pakistan and across
the world is also increasing rapidly. Internet
speeds are starting to slow down. We will
also have to keep an eye on this.
Infrastructure will need to be upgraded to
take into account the additional expected and
unexpected traffic.
But this does not mean universities should
not start experiments in online teaching. It
means we have to start looking for,
developing and deploying solutions. It will
take some time for all universities to get there
and for all students to have access of a
sufficient quality, but the work has to start
now. And universities, given their situations,
will traverse this distance at varying speeds.
The HEC should be ready to invest in
infrastructure, material development and
trainings. It has already announced some
committees on these issues, but it remains to
be seen what resources are invested in this
pursuit and what the results are.
Access, the issue being agitated on right now
is, in fact, the most straightforward of issues
to address. There are several other, more
complex problems to contend with. Online
teaching does not simply mean putting
reading materials online and expecting
students to read, understand and/or
regurgitate them. It does not mean that if you
change onsite examinations to open-book
online examinations, there is nothing more
that needs to be adapted for online teaching.
Learning and teaching objectives of every
course will have to be rethought. Teachers
have to carefully consider each instrument
they use for getting material across to
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students once again. Are synchronous and
live classes needed? If so, since students are
not sitting together in one room, how are
these to be conducted? Do online platforms
like Zoom or Microsoft Teams offer the same
environment that a classroom does and how?
How do you structure class participation in
synchronous classes? Or could all teaching
be done online without synchronous
teaching? The teacher posts readings and
questions. The students can submit their
questions, if they have any, through email or
in chat groups. Teachers and peers can
respond to each other that way. Will learning
this way be even better than in face-to-face
classes?
Technology could offer distinct advantages
as well. We can do a lot of small group and/or
individual teaching too. If lectures could be
recorded and made available to students to
view whenever it suits them individually, and
teachers then schedule small group or even
one-on-one interactions (tutorials), learning
in some subjects that require a lot of
discussion (such as philosophy) could
become even better than running large face-
to-face classes.
Do bear in mind these things are important as
it might not be just for a semester that we
have to move online. Nobody knows how
long the situation with distancing and partial
lockdowns is going to continue. Even when
the first wave of infections is through, it
might still not be possible to go back to the
way things were and have crowded
dormitories, classes and/or cafeterias. Some
universities in other countries have started to
plan for the next 18-odd months in totally
online mode or in hybrid mode at the very
least.
Clearly, a lot of research and
experimentation is needed here. The HEC’s
insistence to do this quickly will have issues.
Internet access might come quickly, but the
larger and deeper issues need a lot more
work. This is a difficult time to organise new
things as a lot of people are worried, and
rightly so, about their and their families’
well-being. Rather than worry too much
about this semester, the HEC should really
set up incentives for the medium term so that
we can get closer to long-term answers for
the deeper questions.

A lot of thought needs to go into designing

assessments. When faculty cannot conduct
in-class quizzes, tests and examinations, and
are potentially restricted to open-book and
not necessarily strictly time-bound
assessments, what sort of instruments can be
created? For example, live multiple-choice
tests will not be easy if students do not have
sufficient bandwidth and internet stability.
What could be a substitute for these? How do
we ensure new instruments get to the right
level, how do we validate them, and when do
we move towards standardisation?

And it is not just teaching that needs to go

online. A lot of administrative work of
universities also needs to shift to online
platforms. Some of them, for some
universities, will take a lot of time.

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IMAGINING A JUSTICE BASED
HEALTH SYSTEM
BY: ISAAC CHOTINER (THE
NEW YORKER MAGAZINE)
J
ennifer Prah Ruger, the director of the
Health Equity and Policy Lab at the
University of Pennsylvania, studies
national and international public-health
policies through a moral lens, examining the
ways in which world leaders can insure more
just health outcomes for their fellow-citizens,
as well as for citizens of other nations—and
how those two things necessarily intersect.
Prah Ruger’s work is influenced by her
former teacher Amartya Sen, whose
“capabilities approach” to economics—
developed with the philosopher Martha
Nussbaum—envisions a broad definition of
human flourishing, one that transcends
indicators like G.D.P.
Prah Ruger’s most recent book, “Global
Health Justice and Governance,” published
in 2018, examines international crisis
responses to past epidemics, such as the
Ebola outbreak of 2014. “Public health and
health care systems capacity and governance
vary considerably across the globe,” Prah
Ruger writes. “Like rapidly spreading
contagions and global inequalities, this
arbitrary patchwork of health systems is
morally troubling.” That work is especially
relevant today, with the coronavirus
pandemic straining health systems around
the world, from China to Italy and the United
States. In the U.S.—a country that is
infamous for the unequal outcomes of its
health system—hospitals find themselves
overwhelmed with patients and short on
medical equipment.
The New Yorker’s coronavirus news
coverage and analysis are free for all readers.
www.nearpeer.org
May 2020
I recently spoke with Prah Ruger by phone.
During our conversation, which has been
edited for length and clarity, we discussed
how different types of health systems have
responded to the current crisis, the area
where the U.S. shines in keeping its
population safe and healthy, and whether
health care should be understood as a
universal human right.
What have you been thinking about for
the last couple of weeks, as this thing has
spread, and how does the coronavirus fit
into what you study and write about?
The first thing I’ve been thinking about is the
underlying principles of justice and equity
that we’ve been working on in our approach
and in our lab. In the recent book that we just
published, the underlying philosophy of
human flourishing and the attempt to create
the global and domestic conditions for people
to have the ability to flourish is very relevant
for the current situation. Flourishing is about
enabling people to do and be what they want
to do and be, and health is an instrumental
and an essential part of that. So global public
health that protects people’s ability to
flourish is an essential part of a just society—
a global society and a domestic society.
And so what I’ve been looking for and trying
to understand better, as you look globally but
also domestically and in our own country, is
how are we going about effectuating that or
not. So I’ve been advancing a particular
approach to that called provincial globalism,
in which we look at the intersection or the
commonalities between provincial or state or
nation or local-based norms and values about
equity in public health, and global foci on
health and equity. Are those intersecting? Do
we have a sense that, globally, we’re really
trying to work together, coöperate on the
common good to insure people all over the
world are able to be healthy, and protecting
them and working collaboratively in
coöperating? Or are we advancing the status
quo in terms of a rational-actor model of
global health governance, which has
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different nations and different countries and
different interests advancing their own
interests, rather than working together
toward the common good of equity and
health.
You’re talking about flourishing, and one
of the things related to that is something
called the “health capability paradigm.”
What is that, and how does it fit into the
broader idea of a “capabilities approach”
to economics?
Well, the health-capability paradigm is a
theoretical framework for justice and health,
and that is at the domestic level. So, if you
think about it in terms of an alternative to a
free market, the free market is focussed on
allocating goods and services in the economy
at the domestic level based on people’s
preferences, or their desires for things. So,
whether we’re buying computers or phones
or chairs or picture frames or whatever it is,
we’re advancing our interests in terms of our
preferences for those goods and services
through the free market. And we’re
regulating the market, to a certain extent, to
protect consumers.
Alternatives to the free market are looking at
a role for other institutions in promoting
different goods that we have reason to value
in society. The health-capability paradigm
puts forward a framework that what we have
reason to value—and what we have an
interest in, societally and collectively—is
people’s ability to flourish and their ability to
be healthy. So are the conditions in place?
Are there public-health systems and
structures that are in place that enable that?
Is there a health-care system in place that
enables that? Do we have the social
conditions, and do people have enough
income, and is that income distributed in an
equitable way so that people have this
opportunity? Are people educated, and do
they have jobs?
All of these conditions are necessary for
people to be able to be healthy. And what are
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May 2020
the principles of justice that apply to the
health sector and health-care sector? And so
we advanced an approach that looks at
advancing a public-goods or common-goods
approach to the health sector and health
policy, as opposed to a private-goods or
private-sector, market-based approach to
health and health policy.
We have seen a lot of countries already
ravaged by this pandemic. Some have
health care that is at least relatively
equitable—at least compared to most
countries on earth—such as Italy, and
others, like the United States, do not. Are
there things that you’re noticing from this
pandemic about why it’s so important to
build as much equity into the system as
possible?
Yes, I am noticing some real differences.
What we have here is we have a set of natural
experiments unfolding before us, right? You
have a very good display of different kinds of
approaches to public health domestically.
And it’s within the context of a global public-
health system, or lack of a system. So, for
example, we have the contrast between what
we would call two typologies. The first is a
more centralized public-health policy that
has more of a focus on equity and health, and
looking across the population, as opposed to
a more decentralized public-health policy.
There are real differences between the two,
generally speaking. Centralized public-
health policy is more planned. It’s more
deliberate. It’s more intentional. There are
several steps along the way. Centralized
governance and authority tends to be
federally located in terms of decisional
latitude and authoritative standards with
national guidelines and triggers. The
decentralized public-health policy tends to be
very ad hoc, more patchwork, unscripted. It
tends to be spontaneous and reactive, and
there tends to be a lot of voluntary actors in
the mix. And we’re seeing in general a
difference in, for example, the United States
approach, which tends to be very
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decentralized, and countries like Taiwan or
Singapore, which tend to be more
centralized. Other differences are that under
a centralized public-health policy you tend to
have more uniform standards and uniformity
in policies and practices.
So we had this huge variation in the
decentralized standards with respect to
testing, for example. In a decentralized
approach, we have a lot of variations,
considerable disorder, more disarray. It’s a
little bit messier. And so these are very
different approaches to the way we look at
public-health policies at the domestic level.
How have these approaches played out
during different epidemics?
A good example of that is what we see on the
part of a more centralized public-health
policy, which is the case of Taiwan. The
Taiwanese learned their lessons from SARS,
from the prior major outbreak that we had,
and, as a result of learning from that, their
approach tends to be much quicker. They’re
much more alert, and they’ve been much
more proactive to this current threat. In fact,
they introduced a series of measures right
away when they learned early about the
severity of the respiratory illness that was
coming out of the situation in China, and they
started immediately inspecting passengers.
They started some quarantine measures.
They sent a team of experts, with permission
from the Chinese, to fact-find and understand
what was going on a little bit better. There
was much more of a command, and a
controlled set of actions that were
introduced, and things were done very, very
quickly. They also used technology, using
mobile phones to assess people’s locations,
and tracking people, and also to report travel
history.
On the other side, you see the United States,
and some advantages to what we would call
regulatory approach. So we are now learning
that some of the origins of the coronavirus
came from wet markets in China. And that’s
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May 2020
the current state of knowledge that we have.
And we have in the United States highly
regulated guidelines for the sale of different
meat products in our food supply. And so we
have an experience in the United States, over
time, where we learned that the regulatory
process is very effective. And it has been.
We’ve had some outbreaks in the U.S. We’ve
had E. coli, and we’ve had some salmonella
and things like that. But for the most part we
have been able to regulate our food supply in
ways that have been effective for the public
health.
So you’re saying that we don’t have the
egalitarianism of care, or whatever the
phrase might be, but we do have a certain
amount of regulatory structure. Are there
some countries that have both?
Sure. We are finding that in the European
countries we haven’t seen the major
outbreaks that are stemming from this lack of
regulation, in markets or other kinds of
supply chains. But we also have a more
egalitarian set of health systems and public-
health policies there, as well. Of course,
different European countries are different,
but, more or less, in the European Union, you
do find countries that have a steep basis of
solidarity and reciprocity and, some would
even say, rights with regard to health care
and health insurance in those countries. And
they do have a greater effectuation of equity
and equity principles in the health sector and
health policy.
Your book also talks about places that are
not as rich, specifically the Ebola epidemic
in Liberia. What did Ebola teach you
about these issues that you’re writing
about, and specifically about health
disparities?
We’ve learned a number of lessons from the
Ebola epidemic. One that I think is very
important is the recognition of the
importance of public health and health-care
systems. We know that, for example, in the
United States, we actually did have cases of
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Ebola, but we didn’t have the extent of the
cases, and we also were able to treat the cases
effectively. We do have high-quality health
care in the United States when you have the
ability to purchase it, or if you have a very
expensive health-insurance plan through
your employer, or other kinds of
mechanisms, but mostly employer-related
health insurance.
And so having high-quality care is good, and
we want that, but we want that for everybody
on an equity-based or justice-based system,
so we’re able to get people diagnosed and
information is shared in a transparent and
factual way.
We’ve learned that there are a lot of
misinformation campaigns there. Certainly,
there was misinformation being spread in the
Ebola epidemic, about the way it was spread,
and what would happen, and who people
could and couldn’t be around, and things like
that.
Another set of lessons is in terms of
development assistance for health. We know
that there has been a rapid increase over
decades in the investments in health
worldwide. There has been a lot of money
going into global health, and going from
donor countries, either multilaterally or
bilaterally, to countries that have weaker
health systems. The question is: How
effective is that investment? Where is it
going? And is it locally owned? Are
countries able to develop their health systems
and a horizontal capacity? Not just disease-
specific, so not just for tuberculosis, or AIDS,
or malaria. Are they able to develop their
health systems and their health policy in a
horizontal capacity, so that they can adjust
the resources that they have for any particular
epidemic that confronts them? That is a very
important part of what we’re learning and
understanding, and certainly what the book
addresses.
The last part is the importance of the security
piece of it. That’s why we see now a greater
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May 2020
emphasis in the sustainable-development
goals on universal health coverage and
universal health insurance. Again, that’s
across the entire health system. It’s not just
for a particular disease.
What is your ultimate vision? It seems like
it would be some global health system or
set of rights, along the lines of the way a lot
of people talk about universal human
rights, which would be enforced with some
sort of international legal system. What
would be that vision, and what have you
seen so far? Because, obviously, we do
have the World Health Organization.
The World Health Organization is an
important institution. It’s our main United
Nations-based organization focussed on
health. It is a state-based organization, so it
gets its authority from the states around the
world. It’s an international organization, and
so states provide their interests and support
through the World Health Assembly and that
kind of a governance structure.
Unfortunately, the World Health
Organization, however, is funded through
internal support that is based on particular
donors and interests, and seventy-five per
cent or so is not based on the multilateral
pooling system. So, in other words, the
ability to make decisions collectively and to
put resources toward those decisions
collectively is about twenty-five per cent of
what the World Health Organization is able
to do. That severely compromises the
institution. And what we see is other vested
interests and other groups having a lot of
power and influence through the
organization in a way that is inconsistent
with global health equity. So an alternative
approach is looking at global health equity
from the perspective of all individuals on the
planet, over the whole entire seven billion
people on the planet, and trying to figure out
what kind of a structure, privileges, and
conditions that individuals live in, regardless
of where they are.
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And we advanced two different
infrastructures for that. We advanced the
Global Health Constitution, which is a moral
constitution, which is a set of principles of
justice and health that sits above the World
Health Organization. It’s a coördinating
mechanism. It sets global standards and
moral standards for the world, and it puts the
World Health Organization in the context of
all the other different organizations, N.G.O.s,
nation-states, individuals themselves, in this
collective exercise toward global health. The
second institution that we advanced is a
Global Institute of Health and Medicine. This
institution is an independent organization
that is scientifically based, and the reason
that we need an institution like that is exactly
relevant for the current situation: we need a
global master plan of public health. We need
to figure out what the major public-health
threats are. And, by the way, emerging and
zoonotic diseases are some of the most recent
public-health threats.
What have you made specifically of the
W.H.O. response to the coronavirus?
I think that what we’ve seen is that there’s
been a significant underinvestment globally
in what we have seen from the latest
emerging threats. They’re coming from
animals. And we know that. We’ve got
SARS, coronavirus, Ebola. And yet we’re
underinvesting in the science toward
understanding what diseases are prevalent in
animals, the scientific basis for the
development of treatments and vaccines, and
the coördination across different countries
toward those endeavors. We do have some
investment in it. We have some investment
globally. We have some investments, for
example, in the United States. We have a
whole unit on that at the C.D.C. But we need
to recognize, now more than ever, given this
latest pandemic, that this is a major area for
investment going forward.
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May 2020
COVID, CLIMATE & PAKISTAN
BY: ASHRAF JEHANGIR QAZI
(DAWN)
T HE Covid-19 pandemic is much more
than a passing horror. Official
statistics, especially in developing
countries, are largely meaningless. The
pandemic will potentially kill millions
around the world through waves of
succeeding pandemics and the secondary
effects on body and mind over years to come.
Global warming, the greatest existential
threat, indirectly influences the emergence of
pandemics and renders “once in a century”
natural disasters much more frequent.
Vijay Kolinjivadi, of the University of
Antwerp, says both Covid-19 and climate
emergencies “have their roots in the world’s
current economic model — that of the pursuit
of infinite economic growth at the expense of
the environment”. According to him: “the
insatiable greed of corporate capitalism for
natural resources has forced humans to
encroach on various natural habitats and
expose themselves to yet unknown
pathogens”. The biologist, Rob Wallace, in
his book, Big Farms Make Big Flu, says:
“this created the perfect environment for the
mutation and emergence of new diseases”.
Covid-19 and its succeeding pandemics are
likely to occur with shorter and shorter
intervals between them. This will fatally
distract and disable states and societies from
addressing the existential challenge of global
warming. Likewise, irreversible global
warming, which is on course to set in around
2030 — unless a global revolution of peace
and cooperation intervenes — will similarly
render states and societies incapable of
addressing any serious challenge, including
further waves of Covid-19 or other global
pandemics.
Covid-19 and climate change may appear to
have contrary impacts on the environment.
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The pandemic could lead to economic and
industrial collapse, thereby drastically
reducing carbon emissions, which would
temporarily allow the global environment to
slowly recover from its current trend towards
irreversible disaster. Climate change, on the
contrary, if not quickly and significantly
checked, will compel humankind to cope
with ever-increasing global warming and its
several lethal consequences. Ordered human
society will not survive much beyond the
current century.
So, Covid-19 and ensuing pandemics on the
one hand, and climate change and its direct
and indirect lethal derivatives on the other,
are actually working in tandem to soon
destroy human civilisation. Unless, of
course, we assume the current pandemic will
be effectively contained over the next year or
so; it will not be followed by secondary
morbidity effects and succeeding waves of
pandemics; the fortuitously improved
environment caused by industrial collapse
and dramatically decreased carbon emissions
will be sustained during the economic
recovery after Covid-19; and a global
political epiphany will guide the world
towards a comprehensive ‘green new deal’
which would transform national policies,
including foreign policies. India-Pakistan
relations, including a Kashmir settlement,
will need to fit the paradigm. Possible?
These are ‘heroic assumptions’ for which one
may pray and hope. But for the time being,
there is insufficient factual basis to make
them realistic expectations. This is because
of (a) the nature of the overt and covert
corporate/military dominance over
governance in much of the world and (b) the
corporate capitalist economic model that
prioritises the interests of not even 0.01 per
cent of the world’s population. In Pakistan,
ruthless and unending high-level corruption
is on daily display, including the current
sugar and wheat scandal. This is a classic
instance of elite governance through class
warfare. In such circumstances, merely
honest and well-intentioned leaders may at
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May 2020
best bring about piecemeal improvements,
but never the systemic structural change
required for survival.
Since the departure of Pakistan’s founding
father, no government — whether
constitutional or unconstitutional, civilian or
military, elected or unelected, predominantly
religious or secular, rhetorically progressive
or conservative, headed by competent or
incompetent leadership — has been an
exception to the elitist class warfare structure
of Pakistani governance. The powers that be
are prisoners of their own class interests.
They are also morally challenged. They have
neither the time or interest nor the courage of
their stated convictions in order to listen,
engage, learn and improve.
Noam Chomsky rightly observes that
Corporate America supports both socialism
and the welfare state, but only for itself, not
for the people. The US government’s
massive coronavirus relief package for the
more vulnerable victims of the pandemic is
in fact a multi-trillion dollar bailout for
Corporate America. American working
classes who comprise most of the victims of
the pandemic are expected to be “rugged
individualists” who need little or no help
from the government. Corporate America
and its minions around the world have
systematically sought to dismantle, disable
or limit public healthcare systems. Biden’s
victory over Sanders is emblematic of the
near impossibility of economic and political
reform in the US.
Dependent elites in most countries, including
Pakistan, follow similar paths, even when
their leaders proclaim themselves socialists
or supporters of the welfare state and
champions of the poor. Bhutto’s cover was
Islamic socialism. Today we refer to Medina.
The pattern of budgetary allocations remains
unchanged.
Accordingly, the underclass will die in
proportionately larger numbers than the
middle and upper classes from Covid-19.
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The people of Pakistan are not in this
pandemic together. They are in it as
unequally as they were before, and as they
will be afterwards. Climate catastrophe,
being far more insidious and overwhelming,
will be more egalitarian in its human
devastation. The only way out of this fatal
morass is a comprehensive transformation of
state and society.
This cannot come about within the structures
that have governed Pakistan. Saving Pakistan
will require the dismantling of such
structures, which can only happen if there is
a family of people-based movements both
inside and beyond Pakistan. Otherwise, the
world will end, in the words of T.S. Eliot,
“not with a bang but a whimper”.
Antonio Gramsci stressed the need for civil
society to be intellectually pessimistic, but
with a will that is optimistic. Otherwise, as
Thucydides would say: “the strong will
continue to do what they can, and the weak
shall continue to suffer what they must”.
Until, at last, the curtain finally drops.
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May 2020
THE CORONAVIRUS
OUTBREAK MAY HURT IMRAN
KHAN’S POLITICAL FUTURE
BY: TOM HUSSAIN (AL-
JAZEERA)
P opulous Pakistan has not yet made the
grim headlines spawned by the global
coronavirus pandemic, despite reporting its
first infections on February 26.
Sadly, in the weeks to come, it will. The
number of infections is projected to spiral
into the millions. And as the death toll
mounts, the blame for the government's
failure to learn from the mass outbreaks in
neighbouring China and Iran will fall
squarely on the government and Prime
Minister Imran Khan, whose reluctance to
act decisively may cost him dearly.
Initially, its response to the brewing crisis
was lackadaisical. Responding to criticism in
his first televised speech on March 17, Khan
said his government had been monitoring the
pandemic since January, but did not begin
emergency consultations until the first
cluster of infections was identified on March
12.
Notably, this discovery by the opposition-
controlled Sindh provincial government
exposed the failure of the federal authorities
to properly screen and quarantine thousands
of pilgrims returning from Iran.
Had Sindh's Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah
not taken the initiative to start testing
returnees upon learning of the first infections
in the provincial capital Karachi, the
metropolis of 18 million souls would have
become another Wuhan, and health
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authorities in other provinces would not have
been alerted to the infectiousness of the
pilgrims.
However, when Khan addressed the subject,
he was absurdly fatalistic. The spread of the
coronavirus was inevitable, he said, but there
was no need to panic because for the
majority, the disease would feel like mild flu.
He ruled out a nationwide shutdown to
contain the virus, saying Pakistan's poor were
dependent on daily incomes and would
starve.
This deprived the country of a clear sense of
direction. The federal government and
provincial authorities - even those ruled by
Khan's PTI party - each reacted differently.
Sindh moved steadily towards a shutdown,
while others enacted piecemeal measures
like school closures and shortened shopping
hours. There was no nationwide effort to
urgently equip hospitals and front-line
healthcare providers. There was not even a
clear, mass messaging campaign launched by
the authorities.
Pakistan's powerful military was left with no
option but to make its presence publicly felt.
On March 23, Pakistan's national day, chief
spokesman Major General Babar Iftikhar
announced troops would be deployed across
the country in response to calls for assistance
from the provincial authorities.
This was a clear signal that the establishment
was losing patience with Khan's refusal to
provide responsible leadership when the
country most needed it. At a press conference
on March 24, several TV anchors humiliated
the prime minister.
Instead of accepting the counsel of the
military, which helped usher his government
into power in August 2018, Khan responded
to criticism with obstinacy.
Addressing a video conference of
parliamentary party leaders called by the
opposition on March 25, Khan opposed
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May 2020
moves by the Sindh government to enforce a
province-wide shutdown, thereby stymying
any matching measures in the other
provinces, where his Pakistan Tehreek-e-
Insaf party and their allies hold power.
The resultant leadership vacuum was
exploited by populist clerics, whose refusal
to cancel congregational prayers last Friday
and other religious gatherings planted viral
time bombs which began to detonate across
the country, setting Pakistan on the path to a
massive outbreak.
Again, Khan took to the airwaves on March
31, amid expectations that he would finally
grab the bull by the horns. Instead, the prime
minister insisted that Pakistan's youthful
demographic would save it from the fate of
other infected countries, and questioned the
effectiveness of a lockdown.
The military had had enough. Another video
conference of federal and provincial leaders
was held on April 1 with army chief of staff
General Qamar Javed Bajwa attending in
combat fatigues, rather than usual dress
uniform. In the official video of the event, he
silently frowned at the federal cabinet.
Afterwards, Planning Minister Asad Umar,
rather than Khan, announced that the varying
restrictions on public movement introduced
by the federal and provincial authorities in
the second half of March would be extended
until April 14, and the military announced
that Lieutenant General Hamood Khan will
be in charge of its command and control
apparatus would oversee the state's response
to the pandemic.
The ramifications of the all-powerful
military's intervention could be dire for
Khan's administration, once Pakistan has
overcome the pandemic. Tired of the
government's poor governance, in particular
its mishandling of the economy, the military
reportedly reached out to opposition party
leaders last autumn. An increasingly public
conversation among opposition politicians
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on how to go about removing Khan has
ensued, fuelled by the subsequent release
from jail of ailing former Prime Minister
Nawaz Sharif on medical grounds.
Since then, the Pakistani news media has
been rife with speculation about the
longevity of Khan's administration. Until the
coronavirus spread from Iran, eminent
analysts generally felt that Bajwa was
prepared to give Khan time to improve his
government's performance.
That view has shifted markedly since the
military was forced by Khan's ineptitude to
take control of Pakistan's emergency
response to the pandemic. Veteran Urdu
language columnist Suhail Warraich, one of
a handful of analysts renowned for accurately
predicting the demise of governments, on
Monday wrote that Khan has until June to get
his administration's act together and mend
fences with the opposition, failing which,
violent political change may follow.
That "message" should be viewed as a
warning that the military is in no mood to
shoulder the blame for Khan's shortcomings.
With Pakistan's very future at stake, the
trajectory of the pandemic and his political
career may well prove inseparable..
ANCIENT PLAGUES
BY: IRFAN HUSSAIN (DAWN)
A
S we endure the coronavirus, with all
its suffering, discomfort and death,
we would do well to reflect on other
times, other plagues.
In other words, there have been far worse
pandemics over the centuries. Some of them
devastated civilisations, and brought cities,
tribes and nations to their knees.
Just as Covid-19 recognises no social
boundaries, so, too, did ancient plagues cross
physical and political borders with ease.
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May 2020
Then, as now, globalisation was the main
driver behind the spread of such pandemics.
In the third century AD, a terrible plague
went through the Roman Empire, like a hot
knife through butter. According to
contemporary accounts, the plague, akin to
Ebola, caused the bowels to melt; blood to
ooze from the eyes; and feet to rot away.
Among this frightful carnage, the Roman
Empire collapsed into anarchy.
Article continues after ad
Once it had recovered and moved its capital
to Constantinople, it fell once more to
another epidemic that began its westward
journey from China. In many iterations of the
bubonic plague, bacteria would hitch a ride
with lice that rode on rats travelling on board
ships sailing to the West.
Corpses would rot in the streets.
In Alexandria, they would be filled with
grain imported by Constantinople. Here, the
cargo would be sold across Europe where the
bacteria would cause epidemics of plague
that killed hundreds of thousands. Corpses
would rot in the streets, and aristocrats and
peasants alike would be struck down.
Millions suffered grievously from the
Justinian plague that visited Byzantium in the
sixth and seventh centuries. Historians
speculate that the mass deaths that occurred
in East Europe and the Middle East in that era
tilted the balance of power towards North
Europe when Slavic invasions into the
Balkans and Greece, the Lombardic
incursions into Italy, and the Berber
invasions of Byzantium weakened the
existing world order.
In Arab lands, some 25,000 Muslim soldiers
died in the plague of ’Amwas. In a familiar
refrain, the suffering of the Muslims was
ascribed to moral laxity. According to the
clergy, the plague struck because people
there drank alcohol. Since before that period,
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man-made and natural disasters have been
blamed on similar human failings. To this
day, our clerics blame all kinds of
misfortunes on our deviation from holy laws.
And lest we think Covid-19 is the nastiest
epidemic mankind has encountered, consider
the Black Death that wreaked havoc across
Europe in the mid-14th century. Started by
12 ships that docked in Sicily in 1347, it was
ultimately responsible for claiming 75m to
125m lives in Europe and North Africa. This
represented 30 per cent to 60pc of the
population of 475m. It took 200 years to
recover these numbers.
So when we speak of some thousands of lives
lost, the truth is that this number is peanuts
when compared with the major plagues
mankind has lived through in the past. In the
19th century, a plague swept out of Yunnan
in China (again!) that may have caused over
10m deaths. A million of these took place in
India, hitting the port cities of Mumbai,
Kolkata and Karachi.
In those days, vaccines had just made a
tentative appearance. Crowded shanty towns
encouraged the rapid spread of the disease,
while the lack of sewage and basic hygiene
made large communities highly vulnerable.
And nor was ‘social distancing’ considered
feasible in densely packed neighbourhoods.
addition to the long list of diseases that keeps
doctors and researchers busy.
It is our response to Covid-19 that sets it
apart from other pandemics. The self-
isolation and social distancing put into place
means that most people are cut off from jobs,
businesses and personal relationships. This is
playing havoc with the economy and our
society. In England, there are already
rumblings of rebellion.
There is also the larger question of how to put
society and the economy together again after
the pandemic is over. Modes of production
and communication have already undergone
profound changes, and we do not yet know if
they can be restored to their pre-coronavirus
shape again.
As usual, it is the poor who are suffering the
most, especially in the Third World. Without
clean water to wash their hands, they are
more prone to catch the virus, and less likely
to get proper treatment. Covid-19 thus
exposes the deep fractures in society.

Today, despite the huge advances we have

made in medical science, we continue to get
hit by pandemics time and again (MERS,
Ebola, etc). In fact, influenza is a type of
virus-borne disease not unlike Covid-19. The
latter is more lethal, of course, but the former
takes over 2m lives a year. Both can lead to
pneumonia and death.

When AIDS first appeared on the scene in the

1980s, the godly decided that it was a disease
that usually struck gay men, and was thus
divine punishment aimed at homosexuals.
Now, after years of experimentation, a cure
has been found, and AIDS is just another

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AFGHANISTAN NEEDS A
GOVERNMENT OF NATIONAL
RECONCILIATION
BY: TABISH FAROUGH (AL-
JAZEERA)
S
everal weeks after the historic United
States-Taliban agreement in Doha, the
situation in Afghanistan seems more
intractable than at any time in the last 19
years. Contrary to the promises, the war
continues while the hope for peace is
slimming.
Disappointed in the Afghan leadership, US
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo slashed
$1bn in aid to the country after he failed to
broker a power-sharing deal between
political rivals incumbent President Ashraf
Ghani and Chief Executive Officer Abdullah
Abdullah. Both declared themselves
president after presidential election results
were announced and simultaneously held
inauguration ceremonies on March 9.
In Washington, the opportunity to finally end
the US's longest war outweighs any criticism
about the confusing parameters of the deal.
In Kabul, some significant players, including
Ghani, are only reluctantly cooperating with
Zalmay Khalilzad, the US peace envoy, who
is pushing to convene the intra-Afghan
dialogue as soon as possible, now that the
agreement's March 10 deadline has passed.
The initial political resistance to the Doha
accords, including Ghani's decision not to
release 5,000 Taliban prisoners or to name a
negotiating team, indicates that reconciling
the conflicting interests of the Afghan
players will not be easy. Optimistic
policymakers hoped that Afghanistan's
September 2019 presidential election would
deliver a legitimate president who could
unify the nation around peace, ease the US
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May 2020
military withdrawal, and lead the intra-
Afghan dialogue with the Taliban.
That did not happen. Ghani's reelection
remains clouded in controversy, surrounded
by doubts at the impartiality of the electoral
commissions. The election conundrum
continues to undermine the peace process.
So what is the solution?
The way to bring these two processes
together is to create a Government of
National Reconciliation (GNR) with, ideally,
Ghani responsible for governance and
Abdullah for the peace and reconciliation
efforts. The GNR would be fundamentally
different from the National Unity
Government (NUG) which has run
Afghanistan for the past five years.
Unlike the NUG, which had a reform agenda,
the mandate of the GNR would be to focus
on negotiations with the Taliban to reach
a political settlement on the modalities of the
Taliban's participation in power and the type
of future Afghan state. Its executive and
administrative scope would be
circumscribed, lessening the opportunities
for the president to abuse or centralise power.
This could be done by introducing an
executive prime minister whose defined and
meaningful set of authorities could provide
checks on the unrestrained king-style
authorities of the office of president.
The GNR's goal would essentially be to
negotiate itself out of existence, not serve
five years. The current parliament could
continue to sit and debate, and this could
even be helpful if its members took their
representation role more seriously, but they
would have little practical impact on the
work of the GNR beyond confirming
ministers. This is not so different from their
current weak role.
The Afghan political class would likely resist
this reduction of their prerogatives, but in the
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end, the government is almost entirely
dependent on the international community,
which funds two-thirds of the budget. A
coordinated donor effort to only fund
essential functions of the government while
negotiations proceed would reduce the
possibilities of corruption and force Afghan
government officials to focus on the peace
process.
The defence and interior ministries and the
security agencies, still backed by Operation
Resolute Support, as well as the finance
ministry, would need to continue, but if there
is a ceasefire even their role would become
less important.
The GNR would have as its priority naming
a representative team, which would ideally
be comprised of younger, more politically
astute Afghans who have a stake in the
political future of the country, to negotiate
with the Taliban's existing team. It could also
name an authoritative national reconciliation
council to set the broad parameters of the
government's position. The president could
be part of this council or even chair it, but his
role should be to shape consensus, not dictate
to it.
Within this broad structural conception,
many details would have to be worked out.
The record of Afghan elites in finding
consensus or even thinking of the long term
is hardly positive. But this proposal would
structure incentives in a way that is more
conducive to consensus than the questionable
election of a weak president who has divided
the political elite. Things have moved far
beyond the realm of ideal outcomes. Too
many opportunities have been squandered
and we are now in the realm of last chances.
The growing desire of the international
community to remove troops from
Afghanistan should focus minds.
Diminishing the importance and rent value of
ministries and other executive positions
should reduce infighting. The expected short
life of the government itself should sharpen
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May 2020
focus on a future Afghanistan that involves
the reconcilable Taliban, but is not
dominated by them. As intra-Afghan
negotiations begin, the Taliban may even
consider joining the GNR.
International impatience is driven by fatigue
but also by a sense of frustration that its
resources have been squandered on
subsidising the squabbles of Afghan elites.
Their past corruption has paradoxically given
them a great deal to lose. The international
community should not give them further
opportunities for self-enrichment without
responsibility.
They must make way for the next generation
to negotiate a long-lasting political
settlement with the Taliban. The
international community should use its
power of incentives to ensure that this is the
only way forward.
FORCED CONVERSIONS
BY: SULEMA JAHANGIR
(DAWN)
O
VER the years, the laws applicable to
the rights of religious minorities in
Pakistan have shifted from being
neutral to blatantly discriminatory — from
electoral laws, family laws, law on evidence,
Hudood laws, redistribution of income
through Zakat and Ushr, trust and evacuee
property laws, domicile and nationality, to
offences against religion.
The discrimination against women belonging
to religious minority groups is worse; they
become victims of rape, abduction, forced
marriage and forced conversion. That it is
largely underage girls who are ‘converting’
to Islam speaks volumes of the vulnerability
of the converts, and the motivation of those
behind the conversion.
Twice the Sindh government attempted to
outlaw forced conversions and marriages,
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including laying guidelines for the court
process in the Protection of Minorities Bill,
placing an age limit of 18 years upon
conversions and enabling better due process.
In 2016, the bill was unanimously passed by
the Sindh Assembly, but religious parties
objected to an age limit for conversions, and
threatened to besiege the assembly if the bill
received approval of the governor, who then
refused to sign the bill into law.
In 2019, a revised version was introduced,
but religious parties protested once again. A
sit-in was organised by Pir Mian Abdul
Khaliq (Mian Mithu), a political and
religious leader and a central character in
many cases of forced conversions of
underage Hindu girls in Sindh. He and his
group claim the girls are not forced, but fall
in love with Muslim men and convert
willingly. In March 2019, nearly 2,000
Hindus staged a sit-in to demand justice for
two sisters, Reena and Raveena, who they
claimed were forcibly converted and
married. The Islamabad High Court ruled the
girls had willingly converted and married the
men. Herein lies the contention. While there
are a large number of cases of forced
conversions and marriages, there are also
cases where vulnerable young women are
preyed upon by influential men who entice
them to convert and marry. To what extent
can the law differentiate coercion from
peaceful persuasion, and could enticement
without the threat of violence become
punishable?
Pakistan is a signatory to the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights which states
that the right to freedom of religion includes
the right to change one’s religion and that no
one shall be subject to coercion to change
their religion. The European Court of Human
Rights has given some guidance regarding
the distinction between permissible religious
persuasion, on the one hand, and coercion on
the other.
According to case law, exploiting a position
of power to entice vulnerable people or
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May 2020
subordinates to convert amounts to coercion,
which should be outlawed. The fact that the
default legal system in Pakistan is
discriminatory, particularly towards women
from religious minorities, coupled with the
clout and resources of those preying upon
them, implies coercion and urgently requires
positive legislation to safeguard vulnerable
citizens.
Further, once the women convert, there is no
going back, as apostasy would mean a death
sentence. In many cases, women are also told
that their families are ‘kafirs’ and they cannot
meet them. This impedes their access to
justice as they remain in the clutches of
powerful men. No one hears from these
women directly after they ‘elope’. Reena and
Raveena’s parents are right to question why
they suddenly decided to marry men who
already had wives and children.
The Peoples Commission for Minorities’
Rights and the Centre for Social Justice
compiled the data of 156 incidents of forced
conversions which took place between 2013
and 2019. A vast majority of the girls are
minors, with numerous cases of girls as
young as 12 years old. Religious groups
oppose a minimum age for conversion or
marriage on the basis that this is not
sanctioned by Islam. Since Sindh has
outlawed the marriage of girls under 18,
underage girls are taken to Punjab in some
cases, where they are married.
Sexual intercourse with a girl below the age
of 16 is statutory rape and carries a death
sentence, or a minimum sentence of 10 years’
imprisonment. There is no defence. Yet in
some cases, the production of a conversion
certificate and a nikahnama influences law
enforcement to pardon the abductors.
Pakistan has failed to comply with its
international obligations to protect non-
Muslim women and girls from exploitation
by powerful groups and criminal elements.
Even worse is the psychological impact on
families of minorities who worry when their
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daughters venture out, and the culture of
intolerance that is promoted when leaders
like Mian Mithu celebrate another
‘conversion’ and marriage as a victory for the
Muslim faith in the local community. It sends
a chilling message to our most vulnerable
people — that their girls are not safe.
SECURING ALL IMPORTANT
FRONTS
(DAILY TIMES EDITORIAL)
A
s countries struggle to limit the
spread of the coronavirus physically,
they are facing an even harder time
one securing the economic and financial
frontiers of the world. International financial
markets have been falling since the virus
erupted a few months ago. And while the
market can ultimately deal even with the
worst bits of news, it struggles to price in
uncertainty and panic, therefore it quickly
heads south in times just like the present.
Little surprise, then, that tens of trillions of
dollars have virtually disappeared from
trading floors and platforms across the world.
There’s also the added problem that there’s
no way of predicting an end to the pandemic.
And the longer it lasts, the more uncertainty
will grip the global economy, and the more
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May 2020
people’s investments will become collateral
damage.
Pakistan’s story is no different. Already a
very shaky equity market was running more
on political news than market fundamentals
when the coronavirus broke out. Now it’s
proving near impossible to slow the slide, so
to speak. And the uncertainty and necessity
of reducing rates have combined to kick a lot
of hot money out of the system as well;
making the reserves situation that much more
vulnerable just as the money was needed
more than ever. It doesn’t help at all that our
economy has now almost completely tanked
and will only stay afloat if we keep getting
exogenous injections of money for a long
time to come.
It is important to note that as long as
fundamentals remain strained, there’s even
more need to play up sentiment. Perhaps the
media can play a bigger role and try and at
least make sure that uncertainty and panic do
not spread as fast and far as the virus itself.
There is precious little news, all over the
world, about efforts to develop vaccines and
just what sort of progress has been made. If,
according to international bodies, a number
of vaccines are now being studied very
seriously, there could well be some hope in
the near future. Such change in sentiment is
just what is needed to lift the mood of the
market as well. Economies will have to
function smoothly if the war against the
coronavirus is to be won. Unless there is
enough liquidity for economies to survive
these extended lockdowns, the entire
international system can come down like a
house of cards. And the virus would still be
spreading. All important fronts must be
safeguarded; the economy being very high up
the priority list.
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WHERE ARE THE EXPERTS
BY: ANJUM ALTAF
(DAWN)
H OW one wishes there was a team of
competent modellers in Pakistan
who could present the worst-case
(do-nothing) scenario, the most likely
response given the existing state of affairs,
and the best-case outcome if appropriate
measures were put in place.
I say this after the model run by London’s
Imperial College became decisive in
drastically changing public policy in the UK.
Unfortunately, it is not the case, one to which
we are addicted, that a foreign model can be
imported and run here to determine our
choice of public policies. Too many
parameters are different and would need to
be normalised to our circumstances.
Take the most obvious one first. The degree
of compliance with directives is much lower
here than in the UK — I walked past a
padlocked park where the ground staff were
huddled together under one canopy sharing a
cigarette. Citizens do not trust the
government for any number of reasons. If
asked to be tested, their first tendency is to
run as far away as possible for fear of what
might be done to them. This trust deficit now
runs so deep in our society that no one takes
anything at face value. Add to that the many
who consider themselves answerable to an
authority higher than that of the state and
wish to pray together at any cost.
The age pyramids of the two populations are
entirely dissimilar, making a huge difference
in expected mortality risks. Then there is the
specificity of the labour force. There are
virtually no footloose workers in London;
there were many migrants in Wuhan, but they
were adequately housed and in no need to
flee home — in any case, they would not dare
disobey state directives. Here, millions work
in cities, while their families are in villages.
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Many literally sleep on the streets. How they
would respond is apparent from what
happened in India, something policymakers
were either oblivious to or not bothered
about.
Given all such unique conditions, what does
a lockdown, which can be leaky, yield? What
does social distancing mean when two-thirds
of the urban population lives in houses with
six to eight persons per room? How does
personal hygiene work when there are people
who cannot afford soap and do not have
access to more than two cans of clean water?
The modellers would have to cater to all
these peculiarities before they could give us
any sense of what to expect in Pakistan.
In addition, it is just not enough to run a
model once. It needs continuous recalibration
based on cumulative data. Is April really
going to be the cruellest month — Italy with
a lag — or is something actually going on
that is different, with infections, however
flawed their measurement, growing
exponentially, while deaths, much harder to
hide, showing a flatter trend?
Right now, we are not even clear about the
primary objective of our policy. Is it to
minimise the number of deaths at any cost —
in which case, a model made by
epidemiologists, virologists and behavioral
scientists might be enough? Or is it to
minimise the number of deaths at least cost,
in which case, public health models need to
be complemented by ones that match each
scenario with estimates of the accompanying
socioeconomic impact?
This trade-off is not as simple as it seems
because of complex interrelationships —
saving the old from infection can mean
sacrificing the young to starvation. We have
heard from the government that 25 per cent
of households cannot afford two full meals a
day. There are certainly just as many who can
barely achieve that luxury, which
immediately raises the question: how long
can a lockdown be sustained in these
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circumstances before more people die from together — not just for this emergency, but
lack of food than from an infection? Already, for the continuous surveillance of all
there are reports of societal fracture with infectious diseases. And there are many that
people pushed to begging and stealing. still plague this country.

Once again, this suggests that a Wuhan-type The huge number of preventable deaths in
lockdown, no matter how desirable, might Pakistan at which no one bats an eyelid is a
not be the affordable choice for Lahore or damning disgrace for which our governments
Delhi, and better adapted solutions might be are accountable. The ongoing tragedy should
called for. Given that, unlike the flu, corona sensitise us that we cannot sustain much-
infections are concentrated in clusters, the needed lockdowns because of the conditions
experts might suggest selective lockdowns of in which the majority is condemned to live.
hotspots like Raiwind and Bara Kahu. The at- The injustice cannot be tolerated any longer.
risk elderly might, on request, be protected in
empty hostels, instead of crippling mobility
across entire cities. To mitigate the
incremental risk, the experts might stress
universal use, through free distribution, of
masks whose production can generate
employment while being decentralised.

In any case, a lockdown is not a solution

because the virus does not disappear. It only
buys time in which other necessary measures
need to be put in place. If they are not, the
virus would spread again once the lockdown
is relaxed and probably wreak worse havoc
on a desperately stressed and famished
population with depleted resistance. These
other measures include extensive free testing,
identifying hotspots, rigorous tracking,
isolation, and quarantine. Experts in GPS
techniques and information retrieval could
help in guiding these tasks. HOW TO SAVE GLOBAL
CAPITALISM FROM ITSELF
This is a truly unique situation in which no
one really has all the answers. The last thing (FOREIGN POLICY)
we need is for everyone to turn into an expert

and start doing what appeals to their guts.
Like gynaecology or oncology — in which
no one would allow laypersons to interfere
— public health and systems analysis also
have their own specialists. We owe it to the
people to get the best scientific advice
possible and tackle this crisis in a way that
makes sense in our country.
There is no reason that local institutions with
relevant expertise, like AKUH, Lums, ITU
and Nust, cannot put a team of experts
A
s new technologies integrate markets
across the world, making them more
competitive and more demanding,
small manufacturing towns in industrial
countries are bearing the brunt of the
resulting economic disruption. They have
been devastated as big employers move
factories overseas or automate operations
and reduce workforces. While this trend
started decades ago, the volume and speed of
expansion of Chinese manufacturing and

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exports in the past 20 years have significantly
accelerated the process.
Historically, markets have created new jobs
as they destroyed old ones. Unfortunately,
the new jobs today are typically emerging in
the service sectors of flourishing megacities
like London and New York, not in the small
single-employer-dominated manufacturing
towns where job losses have been most acute.
And even among these jobs, the ones paying
good salaries require higher education or
cutting-edge skills. Naturally, those who
have slipped from comfortable middle-class
employment into the ranks of the precariat
are angry, focusing their ire on an economic
system they think has pummeled them
unfairly.
In response, politicians across the political
spectrum have proposed barriers to
immigration, trade, and even doing business
with certain foreign companies. A clamor for
deglobalization seems to have begun. And as
a result, the world is becoming less open. Yet
none of these responses will help against the
inexorable march of automation.
Indeed, technologies already exist to replace
even the low-skill service jobs that have
emerged in urban areas, such as driving for
Uber or putting together packages for
Amazon with an earpiece telling you which
shelf to go to next. Border walls do little
when they are being undermined from the
inside.
Moreover, aging industrial countries will
need immigrants to supplement the shrinking
workforce and to help pay for retiree
entitlements. At present, there are three
workers in Germany for every person over
the age of 65. By 2035, the ratio will be 1-to-
1, according to a 2018 study by the
Bertelsmann Foundation. Without reforms,
spending on older people will push the
country’s public debt to over 200 percent of
GDP by 2060. The foundation also found in
a separate study in 2019 that Germany will
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need 260,000 new immigrants per year to
meet its labor needs.
Aging countries will also need to export
goods and services to younger populations
elsewhere as their domestic demand shrinks.
Allowing trade relationships to deteriorate,
as some politicians advocate, is a form of
self-harm whose effects will be even more
pronounced in the future. And imposing bans
on foreign corporations will lead to the
dismantling of global supply chains, making
products costlier everywhere.
Locals typically know far more about what
needs to be fixed—and they must be
empowered to help their communities pull
themselves up.
Even as countries turn inward, the ongoing
coronavirus pandemic and the very visible
signs that climate change has arrived suggest
the world will require global cooperation to a
degree it has never seen before. The further
closing of the world would make this kind of
cooperation virtually impossible.
Fortunately, there are ways to restore faith in
the liberal open market system that has
brought the world so much prosperity—and
many of the answers lie in reviving the very
communities that have suffered under
modern globalization.
Left-behind communities face a Catch-22.
New jobs do not come to these areas because
people do not have the required skills—and
there is widespread poverty, substance abuse,
and sometimes crime. Continuing economic
devastation means these areas lack good
local schools and training institutions that
could help people get skills. These
communities therefore need to work on a
variety of fronts to revive themselves. Top-
down solutions devised in remote capitals do
little, however, to tackle the impediments to
economic and social recovery. Locals
typically know far more about what needs to
be fixed—and they must be empowered to
help their communities pull themselves up.
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Technological change is disruptive, not just
because it has destroyed old jobs but because
it alters significantly the capabilities needed
for new ones. A high school diploma is no
longer enough for a good job. Advanced
training in science, technology, engineering,
math, or highly developed interpersonal
skills have become necessary to succeed in
today’s world.
In her book Janesville: An American Story,
Amy Goldstein describes how some of the
workers laid off when the General Motors
plant in Janesville, Wisconsin, closed in 2009
did not even know how to use computers.
These workers clearly needed an enormous
amount of retraining to get similarly
compensated jobs elsewhere. Older
unemployed workers, held back by their
more dated knowledge and tied down by
family obligations, have always found it
difficult to retool. Even younger workers find
it difficult to upskill when the entire basis of
economic activity disappears from their
communities. Local institutions that can
impart these skills are also dragged down as
a community experiences job losses:
Unemployment is just the beginning of a
vicious cycle of decline.
In a 2017 study of areas in the United States
that suffered large trade-related
unemployment, primarily in states in the
Midwest and Southeast, the economists
David Autor, David Dorn, and Gordon
Hanson found that as economic opportunity
declines, social disintegration increases.
Unemployed workers are unattractive long-
term partners; consequently, there are fewer
marriages, more divorces, and more single-
parent families. Broken families,
hopelessness, loneliness, and the associated
despair often lead to alcoholism and drugs
and sometimes crime. The opioid crisis was
not caused solely by greedy doctors eager to
overprescribe; economic decline contributed,
too.
As institutions deteriorate in quality, they
cannot help unemployed workers retool—a
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necessity if new jobs are to be attracted to the
community or if the workers are to find jobs
elsewhere.
A declining community is unable to support
local institutions like schools and community
colleges. This is not just because of a
shrinking tax base but because parents in
stressed families cannot provide their
children with a good learning environment at
home, let alone help out in school activities,
while the few distressed firms left in the
community have little ability to provide
mentorship, financial support, or
apprenticeships to students attending
community colleges.
As institutions deteriorate in quality, they
cannot help unemployed workers retool—a
necessity if new jobs are to be attracted to the
community or if the workers are to find jobs
elsewhere. Worse, without good schools,
children have bleak prospects in a world
where education has become so important.
People who have the means to go leave for
thriving areas elsewhere, taking their
children with them. This secession of the
successful leaves the rest further mired in
poverty and unemployment.
A similar exodus has occurred in northern
England, eastern Germany, and parts of
Spain—places that once had an industrial
base centered on small towns.
Workers in stressed communities could, in
theory,
move to richer cities to retrain and get good
jobs. The reason many do not is because
those places are expensive to live in and
congestion is making them costlier (and
environmentally less viable). Going back to
school is challenging in the best of
environments. In addition, if a worker has to
move for a few years to an expensive city to
get that schooling, earning no income while
supporting a family, it becomes more
daunting still. So, many workers seem to
cling on to nearby and progressively less
well-paid manufacturing jobs as long as they
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can. And when there are no jobs available,
they drop out of the labor force entirely.
In the past, the United States was famous for
easy mobility. “Go west, young man,” the
New-York Tribune editor Horace Greeley
supposedly exhorted when the West was still
unsettled. Later, the Great Migration of
African Americans out of the South between
the 1910s and 1960s, and its more moderate
reversal after the civil rights movement,
attested to the continuing importance of
mobility in improving the lives of
Americans. Most recently, mobility has been
in decline. Census data suggests that even as
late as 2000, 1 in 10 Americans made a
significant move (out of their county) over
the previous five years. By 2010, only 1 in 15
were doing so.
Ambitious progressive solutions—for
example, free college education for all—are
expensive and largely ineffective in helping
people in these left-behind places. How do
you get into college when you are competing
with middle-class kids who went to good
public schools in prosperous cities? And
even if you are accepted, how do you benefit
from college when your schooling has been
grossly inadequate? Even today, far too
many students drop out of college, not just
because of the high fees but because they are
unprepared for it.
In a world with limited mobility, policies
ought to be directed at reversing these
vicious cycles, resurrecting communities
wherever possible so that there are more jobs
there and capability-
creating institutions like schools and
community colleges thrive again.
Fortunately, technological change, which
created the imbalances in the first place, can
be instrumental in the resurrection, helping to
build a more sustainable capitalism.
Location-based policies such as the U.S.
government’s “opportunity zone” tax
incentives for job-creating investment
attempt to address the problem of stressed
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communities more directly. However, such
centrally determined proposals can flounder
on the hard-to-map shoals of local
conditions.
Amazon’s decision to build a second
headquarters across the river from midtown
Manhattan in Long Island City, Queens,
promising 25,000 jobs paying an annual
average salary of at least $150,000, seemed
the ideal outcome of such tax incentives. Yet
local politicians rejected it. Too few in the
community may have had the skills to get the
jobs, and the influx of skilled outsiders could
have raised rents and property taxes, pushing
out longtime residents. Clearly, a proposal
better tailored to the community’s needs
could have persuaded it, but because the
decision was negotiated by high-ranking
company and city officials without really
taking the community into confidence, these
alternatives were left unexplored.
Community leaders could only protest
against the decision, not shape it.
At one level, this is not surprising. As
markets have integrated, first spanning
regions, then countries, and then the world,
the power to make decisions has also moved
steadily away from local political entities and
toward national and international structures.
Take, for instance, support for the
unemployed. In many industrial countries in
the 19th century, this used to be provided by
the local parish. Community solidarity,
coupled with local knowledge and
information, made it work—the community
helped families that had fallen on hard times.
However, as markets became more
integrated and recessions became deeper and
more long-lasting, communities were
overwhelmed. Only regional or national
governments had the resources to provide
support. Naturally, if they were called on to
provide support periodically, they wanted the
power to set the rules and even take over the
entire function. Today, across the industrial
world, unemployment insurance is typically
provided by the central or regional
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government, with local community-based
support, including from churches and
charities, kicking in only when official
support is exhausted.
Similarly, as interregional trade increased
within a country, firms pressed for seamless
regional borders and common national
regulation and taxation—after all, a financial
firm will find it harder to manage if each
locality it operates in regulates
compensation, liquidity, and minimum
capital differently, while an automaker
would want common nationwide emission
requirements.
Through much of the 20th century, the
governments of industrial countries
centralized power. Emerging markets are
now doing so too, with India recently
enacting a national goods and services tax
that eliminates the discretion of
municipalities and regional governments in
setting indirect taxes.
In turn, as globalization has accelerated in
recent decades, national governments across
the world have given up some of their powers
to international bodies and treaties. For
example, the European Commission limits
the regulatory discretion of individual
member states so that firms face similar
harmonized regulatory environments across
the union.
While some harmonization is beneficial,
centralization—indeed globalization—of
governance has obtained a momentum of its
own.
While some harmonization is beneficial,
centralization—indeed globalization—of
governance has obtained a momentum of its
own. National and international
administrators, egged on by powerful large
firms that want seamless borders, find
restraint difficult. Bank regulators meet in
Basel, Switzerland, to set capital
requirements and other regulations for the
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entire globe, arguing that there would
otherwise be a regulatory race to the bottom.
The recently negotiated United States-
Mexico-Canada Agreement (the successor to
the North American Free Trade Agreement)
mandates that Mexico ensure internet
companies are not liable for content their
users post even though this is still being
democratically debated in the United States.
Top-down imposition is even more common
within countries. If a regional or national
government supplements a community’s
resources, its administrators want to impose
standards so that their support is not wasted.
Yet these often leave little agency for
community members and are insensitive to
community views or needs. The desire to
constrain localities is especially strong in
countries where administrators believe that
left to their own devices, communities will
invariably become corrupt, sectarian, or
reactionary.
The net effect has been a steady
disempowerment of local, and even national,
government. And with local governments
disempowered, it is hardly surprising that
voters have directed their anger at distant
authorities and embraced populists closer to
home. The Brexit slogan that resonated in the
small devastated towns of northern England
was “Take back control!”—not just from
Brussels but also from London. It was a clear
indication that people wanted more
democratic control over their futures as they
reacted to the market forces pummeling
them.
The desire to constrain localities is especially
strong in countries where administrators
believe that left to their own devices,
communities will invariably become corrupt,
sectarian, or reactionary.
If governments want to preserve the global
integration of markets, they may have to give
up the hyperintegration of governance. They
must be much more
careful about new international agreements
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that bind countries unnecessarily, especially
if they go way beyond low tariffs. The goal
should be to bring more powers back to the
country level, provided global markets
remain open.
Yet the devolution of power cannot stop at
the national level. Capitals must devolve
power and funding further to the local level
so that communities can reinstill a sense of
engagement and identity in their members.
This is, of course, not to say that global
climate change should be tackled only at the
community level (though communities can
do their bit) or that countries should pass on
building national infrastructure.
Delegation should be guided by the principle
of subsidiarity, which requires decisions to
be taken by the lowest level capable of taking
them effectively. So, for instance,
communities will clearly not decide their
own auto emission standards. That should be
a national decision. But what businesses will
be licensed to operate locally and choices
over minimum wages, qualifications,
operating hours, and benefits (obviously all
above the national minimums) should be a
community decision.
Switzerland is a small country with extreme
population diversity. (It has four national
languages, and 25 percent of the population
is foreign.) However, it functions efficiently
precisely because so many decisions are
decentralized to its 26 cantons and further to
the thousands of municipalities. Subsidiarity
guides education decisions; the federal
government is responsible for institutes of
technology, the cantons for high schools, and
the municipalities for primary schools and
kindergarten.
Devolution of powers will not be easy,
especially since strong interests—
international bureaucracies, administrators
and politicians in the national capital, and top
management in large firms—prefer
centralization. However, sensible devolution
on issues such as education, business
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regulation, local infrastructure, and funding
is critical to community revival.
If smaller towns and semiurban areas depend
only on local demand, there won’t be many
new jobs. However, if the menu includes
national or global demand, there are plenty of
possibilities. Technology helps connect the
local to national and international markets;
online platforms allow small enterprises to
advertise niche products across the world, as
Adam Davidson points out in his book The
Passion Economy: The New Rules for
Thriving in the Twenty-First Century,
enabling specialized potential buyers to find
them. For instance, the Wengerds, an Amish
family in Ohio, have built a flourishing
business selling high-tech horse-drawn farm
equipment—a niche market if ever there was
one. The buyers? Other Amish farms across
the United States, of course.
Such enterprises need continued easy access
to national or global networks. Online
platforms like Amazon and Alibaba provide
such access today but are also gaining in
market power. Clearly, small entrepreneurs
can share some of their profits with the
platform, but when platforms quickly
replicate a successful seller’s products and
sell them under their own brand, while
charging high fees off of others, they make it
much less attractive for such enterprises to
start up. To make the platform space more
competitive and friendly to small
entrepreneurs, antitrust authorities should be
vigilant. Instead of using old-style remedies
like breaking up platforms, which will reduce
access to global markets, they should instead
preserve these networks but make access
easier, both for clients and for competitors.
For instance, mandating interoperability
across networks—in the same way as a
phone on a T-Mobile network can reach a
customer on the AT&T network—will allow
small networks to challenge large ones,
keeping them competitive. Faced with
breakup or interoperability, giants like
Amazon might well choose the latter.
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Allowing clients to own their data and to
share them with other platforms—as the
European Union is in the process of doing in
financial services—will also keep clients
from getting tied to a provider.
Successful small enterprises can help lift a
sinking community, not just by providing
jobs and an example but because they belong
fully within the community and can help
support its activities. In the past, large
corporations also provided such help. They
found it hard to manage far-flung outposts,
so local management was given substantial
autonomy, and they worked with community
leadership on issues of mutual interest.
However, as improvements in
communications technology have allowed
headquarters today to respond quickly to
local developments, more staff resources
have moved to the headquarters in the big
cities, where they can service corporate units
all across the country more efficiently. Each
local unit is left with far less autonomy.
Even a firm like Walmart, often accused of
eroding a community’s economic basis, is
starting to push local engagement.
Rather than using antitrust law to keep firms
small, which could be a disservice to
consumers given the significant scale of
production today, it would be better if large
corporations decentralized their corporate
social responsibility activities. These should
be more focused in left-behind communities
where they have a significant presence and
can aid community revival. Even a firm like
Walmart, often accused of eroding a
community’s economic basis, is starting to
push local engagement through (still small)
initiatives like Walmart Rise, which gives
each Walmart store a small amount to spend
on community engagement.
Community revival, of course, requires more
than decentralization of the relevant
government and corporate activities. Left-
behind communities in industrial countries
face similar challenges to those historically
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found in underdeveloped countries, but they
have an important advantage. They are
located in rich countries, which already have
thriving economies and strong legal,
regulatory, and business institutions. The
easiest way to generate economic activity is
to restore community links to the thriving
national and global economies so they can
piggyback on broader growth. While there is
no magic formula, four elements that appear
repeatedly in successful revival efforts are
leadership, engagement, infrastructure, and
funding.
Finding effective leaders is difficult because
existing leadership is often paralyzed and
many capable people have left. Indeed, one
of the main arguments against devolving
power is that the available local decision-
makers are incompetent and corrupt.
Yet, even in seemingly hopeless situations,
local leadership can emerge. Chicago’s
Pilsen neighborhood was a war zone in the
late 1980s; 21 different gangs fought each
other on a 2-mile stretch of the main
thoroughfare, with horrific death rates. Pilsen
needed to bring crime down to have any hope
of revival. In Pilsen, new leadership emerged
from desperation. When a young man was
shot across the street from a local church and
the pastor asked his congregation how long
they could see it as someone else’s problem,
a group of young community members
stepped up. They chose one of their own,
Raul Raymundo, to lead the suitably named
Resurrection Project, and three decades later,
he is still there, having attracted hundreds of
millions of dollars of investment from
government, business, and philanthropic
interests into his community.
Such communities need creative ways to
draw able people back and increase the talent
pool from which such leaders can emerge.
Taxes could be reduced for those who live in
stressed communities; the college loans of
those who return to stressed communities for
a number of years could be partly forgiven so
that college becomes a route to training
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locals, not just a means of escape for the
talented; and capable immigrants could be
given residence visas if they agree to stay in
communities that need them.
Pilsen’s leaders engaged the community to
lobby the city licensing authorities to close
down seedy bars where criminals
congregated. They involved local businesses
in creating training opportunities for youth as
an alternative to crime. They encouraged
locals to report criminal incidents to the
police collectively so that gangs could not
target individual informants and to come out
on the streets after criminal incidents. As
Pilsen crowded out crime, businesses started
crowding in. While Pilsen is far from rich
today, many residents have decent
livelihoods, the community is much safer, its
schools are better, and its children have a
future.
Leaders can draw communities into focal
projects, such as reducing crime in Pilsen.
They can create focal meeting points. A
vacant plot of land can become a communal
garden, a volleyball court, or in Tulsa,
Oklahoma, a public park such as the
Gathering Place, which has done much to
enliven the local community and attract
tourist interest with landscapes of fantasy and
play.
An engaged community can use information
technology to monitor its officials, thus
curtailing corruption and laziness.
New technologies like social media help hold
leaders accountable. An engaged community
can use information technology to monitor its
officials, thus curtailing corruption and
laziness. For instance, the SeeClickFix app
allows residents in Chicago to photograph
and upload the location of a pothole, graffiti,
or an abandoned car to the municipality
website. It stays there until an official fixes
the problem.
Infrastructure is also important. New
physical infrastructure, such as a refurbished
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downtown, an accessible waterfront, or
inviting new trails, can make a community
attractive to businesses and young skilled
workers. Physical connectivity to economic
hot spots helps. The Conservative
government in the United Kingdom plans to
spend billions of dollars to link hollowed-out
towns through road and rail with flourishing
regional centers like Manchester. This shows
that not every decision needs to be local but
that taking local needs into account when
reconfiguring infrastructure is vital and can
be economically transformative.
For instance, a 2018 study by the Federal
Reserve Bank of Philadelphia found that in
northeastern Pennsylvania, 88 percent of
low-income worker commutes took over an
hour, even though 73 percent of suitable jobs
were within a 15-minute walk of a bus stop.
Why? Because most regional transit systems
first take you to a central hub and then back
to where you need to go. More appropriate
bus routes linking job-heavy locations
directly with worker-heavy residential areas
would help low-income workers get to work
quickly, which is key to their dealing with
recurring personal emergencies and retaining
jobs.
Local financial infrastructure is also crucial.
For instance, in 2013 Pilsen’s main
community bank was at risk of failing. At the
time, nearly 30 percent of the bank’s
mortgages were delinquent, and many local
borrowers would have faced eviction if the
bank had closed down or been sold.
Vacancies would have pushed house prices
down and brought crime back. Together with
philanthropic support, the community
rescued the bank. Its delinquencies are now
down to 4 percent of its mortgage portfolio
because it worked with its borrowers and
nursed bad loans back to health.
Digital infrastructure is critical for economic
inclusion. Many areas in wealthy countries
like Germany and the United States still do
not have access to digital broadband.
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Finally, digital infrastructure is critical for
economic inclusion. Many areas in wealthy
countries like Germany and the United States
still do not have access to digital broadband.
This has to be remedied if economic activity
is going to be better distributed
geographically than it is today. Better virtual
connectivity will also be environmentally
friendlier because not everyone will need to
move to megacities.
Funding is also important. Communities in
economic decline may not have much ability
to raise new taxes. The problem is that much
financial support from the regional or
national government, or from bodies like the
EU or the World Bank, comes with
significant strings attached on how it must be
used. To facilitate local input into spending
decisions, it is better that money come in the
form of government grants without strings
attached—also known as block grants—or
from private philanthropies free from
spending constraints.
The community can still be held to
performance standards—again, technology
can be used to monitor performance—but it
should have operational freedom to decide
what to spend on. The current U.S.
administration’s proposal for tax-
incentivized investments into “opportunity
zones” could work if investments are
designed in cooperation with community
leadership to address actual needs. Without
any community involvement, however, they
may just be an ineffective tax windfall to the
wealthy.
A far-sighted community will take
ownership of local assets at the outset when
they are cheap so it can then obtain greater
funding resources as the community revives
and local assets become more valuable. In the
1990s, Copenhagen’s city government sold
land to private developers and used the
proceeds to build out a metro system. This
increased the value of the land the municipal
government still owned near the new metro
line, which was then sold to expand the metro
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further. The value obtained from such
community-owned assets can also be used to
help community residents who do not own
property but are in danger of being pushed
out by the rise in local rents.
Many of these policies can also help
residents of historically disadvantaged
communities, usually minorities, in urban
areas. Healthy local communities are not just
necessary to help individuals get good jobs;
they can also help mitigate conflict as people
from different cultures come together in
increasingly ethnically mixed industrialized
countries. Populist nationalists inflame
majority groups with fears that their culture
will be diluted. They want the majority
culture to be imposed throughout the nation,
even while immigration is restricted severely
so that their culture is not diluted.
There is an alternative embraced by countries
like Canada: to celebrate culture within
community rather than attempting an
impossible national homogeneity. Some
communities will choose monoculture, while
others will choose multicultural lifestyles.
Any choice should be respected so long as
everyone is united by shared national values
and no one is deliberately excluded. The
national government can help, preventing
rejuvenated communities from becoming
segregated by enforcing laws against
discrimination.
Ideally, the community should have
boundaries, giving its people a sense of
empowerment and belonging, but keep them
porous enough that goods, services, and
people can flow freely across them. An
inclusive localism may, somewhat
paradoxically, be the best answer to the
challenges from technological change and
globalization.
Sustainable capitalism is not just about
competitive markets. It is also about the
societal underpinnings that allow most
people to benefit from them and give the
markets their democratic support. Rather
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than closing borders and abandoning
capitalism, the leaders of the industrialized
world must fix capitalism—by starting with
the communities it has left behind.
THE DEATH OF SECULAR
INDIA
BY: SAAD RASOOL (THE
NATION)
T he coronavirus epidemic, and its
continuing spread across the globe,
has exposed the brittle fabric of our
modern society. As health systems and
governance structures collapse throughout
the most powerful countries, the hubris of the
Western World is having trouble grappling
with the magnitude of this new reality. With
almost 90,000 deaths (till date) across
Europe and the United States, leaders of the
‘free world’ are unable to find an enemy to
pin the blame. Who should the United States
bomb this time? Can’t blame the spread of
this virus on some obscure dictator in the
Middle East. What about Al-Qaida, or
Hizbullah, or the Palestinians, or ‘radical
Islamic terrorism’? No (darn it!). For a
moment, the United States tried blaming
China by dubbing COVID-19 as the ‘Wuhan
Virus’. But no one was willing to buy that for
too long.
In the absence of a tangible enemy, Western
societies have turned on themselves. Italy,
the worst affected of all the European
nations, has threatened to end their inclusion
in the European Union. And why not? What
good is the EU if it will merely close its
borders to the Italians in their darkest hour.
The Americans, didn’t have an EU to blame.
As a result, they have turned on institutions
of global governance: The World Health
Organisation (WHO) and the United
Nations. Why do we even need the WHO and
the UN? Why did the WHO not predict the
spread of this epidemic sooner? Why has the
WHO refused to call it the ‘Wuhan Virus’?
They must be conspiring with the Chinese, to
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bring down the Western World. Let’s stop
their funding. Something, anything, to
placate the bruised American ego.
But nowhere has the national fabric of a
nation crumbled more, during the
coronavirus epidemic, than it has in India.
Modi’s Hindutva government, which was
already at war with almost half of its
(moderate and minority) population, has
made this virus a communal issue, and
completely slipped into a downwards spiral
of intolerance and self-immolation. A spiral
that is all too identifiable for Pakistanis, who
have only broken its yoke after three decades
of pain and violence.
But truth be told, India’s existential suicide
didn’t start with blaming the Muslims for
coronavirus. It has merely matured to this
point through concerted efforts of Hindutva
racism over the course of the past several
years.
Let’s pause to examine this claim.
At the turn of the century, a tolerant and
burgeoning Indian society was poised to
become the next big thing in Asia. We
watched, enviously from across the border,
as India’s facade of an inclusive democracy
won allies across the world. Just as Pakistan
was getting swallowed by the menace of
intolerance, extremism, and in-fighting
amidst different sections of the society, India
was accosting the world to its many
opportunities. Kashmir had been all but
forgotten. Even the Muslims of mainland
India had turned a blind eye to the atrocities
in the Valley, choosing instead to participate
in the Indian dream. The policy of projecting
Pakistan as a haven for terrorism and
intolerance was working. And the new
America-India strategic partnership was
bearing geopolitical fruits.
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In walks Modi. Once known as the butcher
of Gujrat, Modi had rebranded himself as a
mascot for ‘Incredible India’. But, in reality
it was just that: branding. Simmering under
the carefully constructed veneer of
democratic ideology, Modi’s Hindutva
ideology was waiting for an appropriate
moment to strike. And then, during his re-
election campaign, the moment presented
itself. Under the false flag pretext of
Pulwama attack, Modi decided to attack
Pakistan in February of 2019. It was just the
‘first drop of the ocean’ he would say later.
Nothing short of ‘Akhund Bharat’ was the
aim. His energised right-wing Hindu base
loved the idea, giving him overwhelming
majority in the May 2019 elections.
This victory gave the Hindutva goons to take
even bolder steps to entrench their ideology
of hate. Next came the long-promised goal of
revoking Kashmir’s autonomous status, in
August of 2019. And with it, the wheels
started to come off Modi’s Hindutva wagon.
India’s right-wing fascist ideology was at
display for the entire world to see. Even
within India, the saner voices started to
question Modi publicly. Muslims, Christians,
even lesser caste Hindus, started to view their
own State as enemy of the people.
But the fascist Modi did not stop here.
Next came the even more controversial
Citizenship Amendment Act – a law that
revokes citizenship of Muslim immigrants of
India. As millions of people gathered on the
streets to protest this move, across India,
Modi doubled-down on his bet. He allowed
his right-wing party goons to terrorise and
torture Muslims. Saner people within India,
and across the world, started to recognise that
Kashmir was not a one-off thing. Modi was
racist, anti-Muslim, and anti-minorities. The
resulting clashes across India, especially in
and around Delhi, displaced hundreds of
thousands of minority individuals (mostly
Muslims) from their homes, which had been
burnt to the ground by Hindutva goons.
Overnight, these minorities became the
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largest group of internally displaced people
in Asia. India’s sham secularism stood
exposed in all its shame.
Modi had not yet recovered from this, when
coronavirus arrived to the shores of India.
And suddenly, India’s soft underbelly in
terms of poverty, displacement,
unemployment and a weak social security
structure was visible for everyone to see. And
making matters worse, a large chunk of
India’s population (some 500 million
minority people) saw Modi’s government
has their enemy.
Amidst this chaos, Modi’s government made
its next big mistake: of shutting down India
with a mere 4-hour notice. What followed
was a mass exodus of the working class.
Millions of families, left without food or
shelter, who decided to walk (literally)
hundreds of miles across the span of India.
Videos from this exodus show a cesspool, in
which coronavirus would spread like
wildfire. The world watched aghast, in
horror, as Modi ensured that coronavirus is
carried throughout the poor segments of
India’s diaspora.
Facing the inevitable spread of coronavirus
across India, Modi’s racist regime turned to
the tactics it knows best: blaming the
Muslims for their problem. Singling out one
gathering of (foolish) Muslims in Delhi, the
Tablighi Jamaat, where several participants
tested positive for coronavirus, Modi’s
Hindutva government decided to turn the
epidemic into a purely communal issue.
Phrases such as ‘Corona Jihad’ and ‘Tablighi
Jamaat Virus’, were used by Modi’s
ministers. The abominable right-wing Indian
media was all too happy to jump on this
bandwagon. And overnight, in India,
coronavirus became another weapon at the
hands of Modi’s fascist regime, to turn
peaceful Indians against one another.
The news and narrative coming out of India
over the past few months, is scarcely
believable. When Modi was elected to power
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for the second term, everyone had expected
that he will implement right-wing policies;
however, no one could expect that he would
bring India to the edge of intolerant fascism,
and then jump off the cliff.
The project of undoing Indian secularism,
which was formally kicked-off through
revocation of Article 370 of the Indian
Constitution in August of 2019, seems to
have reached its fruition. Modi’s fascism has
dispensed with all notions of democracy,
constitutionalism and equality. In the words
of India’s BJP Senator Subramanian Swamy,
during his interview to an international news
organisation “all people are not equal”.
Minorities are not equal citizens of India.
“There are no such thing as equal rights.
[Minorities] are not in an equal category.”
And they would “do well to stay away from
India”.
And that, for all intents and purposes, is the
demise of a secular shining India.
However, no one could expect that he would
bring India to the edge of intolerant fascism,
and then jump off the cliff.
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May 2020
ROBBER BARONS, OLIGARCHY
AND OPPRESSED
BY: DR. IKRAM UL HAQ (DAILY
TIMES)
T he economic misery of millions of
Pakistanis in the wake of Covid-19
pandemic, monopoly of State
oligarchy on resources and abuse of robber
barons of their position in power to fleece the
masses and get extraordinary benefits have
once again exposed the cruel elitist structure
of a land claimed to be secured in the name
of Islam. The reality is that Pakistan is a
classic example of a State where successive
governments have been protecting and
strengthening the exploitative system but
even bothered to provide basic necessities,
what to speak of a comprehensive social
security system, for the weaker segments of
the society.
Since State is controlled by elites-military-
judicial-civil complex, businessmen-turned-
politicians and landed aristocrats-its
economic system is pro-rich. Even in the
present difficult times when millions are
becoming jobless due to closure of
businesses, the ultra-rich are behaving as
usual. The government, failed in providing
the citizens basic amenities like safe drinking
water, health, education, transport and
housing, is now demanding kudos for giving
Rs. 15,000 per family to a certain segment of
society. Authorities are scrutinizing millions
of claims-they never bothered to
collect/update the data to reach out
immediately to them without their asking. In
the midst of this sorry state of affairs, making
public of two inquiry reports on sugar and
wheat shortages, diverted debates about
legality or otherwise of subsidy given to
sugar mills. They appeared in media and
claimed nothing was wrong, subsidy, selling
wheat flour, ghee, sugar and other eatables at
exorbitant prices, due to demand-supply
conditions. This, according to them, is
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permissible in tijarat (trade), per fatwas
(edicts) of muftis & fuqaha (religious jurists).
Politicians posing as champions of the cause
of the poor during election campaigns make
tall claims to improve their conditions, but as
soon as they capture power, totally alienate
themselves from masses. The usual
scapegoats for this loathsome behaviour are
bureaucrats! This is recently alleged by
Jahangir Khan Tareen, once considered
Imran Khan’s right-hand man. Many allege
that with money power, he hijacked Pakistan
Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI). Resultantly, many
visionary, old-guards of PTI working with
dedication, were either ousted or pushed
back.
In a TV interview, Mr. Tareen said: “I
developed differences with PM’s Principal
Secretary Azam Khan nearly six months
ago”. He claimed that his advice to the
Premier “to establish a “strategic resource
unit” to “transform the country”, with the
bureaucracy’s role must be reduced to
“execution of policies” was opposed by
Azam Khan who allegedly said, “We run the
government and there cannot be an alternate
system”. Mr. Tareen said that the Prime
Minister “tried his best but his Principal
Secretary did not budge”.
It may be recalled that the role of robber
barons in winning elections and then
influencing government policies for self-
aggarndisement and creating monopolies
was discussed in detail in ‘Politics and sugar
wars’, Daily Times, September 17, 2017. It
was reconfirmed by Mr. Tareen in interview:
“After losing 2013 elections…I told Imran
Khan that we would have to bring in our fold
‘electables’ as 60% members in the Punjab
Assembly belonging this class”. He took
credit of win of PTI in 2018 through
‘electables’, whereas the Opposition calls
him “selected Prime Minister”!
On August 18, 2018, in a tweet by me and
later in a TV programme, objection was
raised on appointing Azam Khan as Principal
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May 2020
Secretary by Premier on the ground that like
Nawaz Sharif who selected Fawad Hassan
showing favourtism, Imran Khan did the
same ignoring merit-cum-competence
criterion.
Tareen till recently never raised any
objection and/or allegation against Azam
Khan. Why did he start finding faults with
Azam Khan, after an inquiry accusing him as
one of main “beneficiaries” in the sugar-
subsidy-scam? By targeting Azam Khan, Mr.
Tareen, in fact, implies that the Prime
Minister is helpless/captive in the hands of
his Principal Secretary! But Mr. Tareen did
not justify how after being disqualified by the
Supreme Court, he had asked to establish a
“strategic resource unit” under his command
to run the country!!
Had the sugar and wheat inquiry reports been
released in any other country then by now the
ruling party would have distanced itself from
those, who profited influencing the
government policies. However, there were
only cosmetic changes, some adjustments in
the Cabinet and team of advisers. This proves
the existence of an unholy anti-people
alliance in Pakistan of law-makers, law-
keepers and law-breakers that is the root
cause of failure of democracy and dominance
of State Oligarchy. Now, the nation is asked
to wait till April 25, 2020 for “suitable
action” against the culprits after forensic
audit. We have heard the same kind of
promise in the case of a real estate tycoon,
who later not only escaped punishment but
was allowed to pay proceeds of crimes in
easy instalments. This is the reality of much-
trumpeted accountability process in the Land
of Pure.
The common people are now highly
frustrated due to apathy of elites in the face
of lockdown after coronavirus outbreak, lack
of socio-economic justice and inability to
meet the rising cost of life. In days of harsh
economic days, indomitable State Oligarchy
is still enjoying unprecedented tax-free
perquisites at the expense of taxpayers. The
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powerful in the Land of Pure live in palatial
homes with free utilities, servants, subsidized
facilities of golf and clubs, rest houses etc-
just to mention a few. While they are living
lavishly at the expense of taxpayers’ money,
the sufferings of the poor are increasing with
every passing day (about 60 million lack
even basic facilities like clean drinking
water, sewerage etc.) and out of 8.5 million
migrant workers, some 3.78 million to face
immediate lay-offs.
The powerful members of higher judiciary
who daily criticise the government for not
doing enough to fight coronavirus outbreak,
are getting unprecedented perks, including
superior judicial allowance, all exempt under
clause (56), Part I, Second Schedule to the
Income Tax Ordinance, 2001.
Even, the so-called powerful media cannot
dare to expose the predatory elites-militro-
judicial-civil complex, businessmen-turned-
politicians etc-for fear of retaliation. The
unholy alliance between State Oligarchy and
politicians and unscrupulous businessmen is
the root cause of our many ills-undue
subsidies, politically-motivated loan write-
offs, tax evasions and then amnesties etc.
Billions are lost annually due to this unholy
alliance and now in this testing time, they are
asking common people to give “donations”
in relief fund. At the same time, the rich and
mighty after getting two amnesties in 2018
and 2019 are again extended another one,
that is invest in real estate/construction by
December 31, 2020 and no question would
be asked about the source. However, the rich
developers/contractors are not made bound
to provide social security/health insurance to
the workers as quid pro quo of extraordinary
benefits. The people voted for PTI as it
promised to take the powerful, greedy
predatory elites and rent-seekers to task.
Now they are disillusioned and wondering,
why Imran Khan, contrary to his tall claims,
is succumbing to money power.
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May 2020
WHY POLITICIANS IGNORE
DISASTER PREDICTIONS
D
somebody.
isasters are often painted as events
that come out of nowhere. But most
disasters are predicted—at least by
Disaster managers
researchers know what the biggest risks are
and
and can imagine how they will play out. In
part this is because many people, as you may
have noticed, are really good at imagining
bad things happening in excruciating detail.
But more importantly, there are also large
numbers of people who study seismology,
epidemiology, meteorology, sociology, and
other fields that deal with risk and disaster.
And it shows. Very often, a disaster has been
imagined and modeled with striking
accuracy long before it appears. Take the
example of Hurricane Pam, a simulation
exercise carried out in New Orleans almost
exactly a year before Hurricane Katrina,
which included most of the issues that the
real storm would cause. Or this 2016 project
by the Texas Tribune and ProPublica
predicting the devastation that would be
caused by Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Or the
2018 Palu earthquake.
It’s true for pandemics, too. Scientists have
known for at least a century, since the 1918
Spanish flu pandemic, about the risks of
disease in a globalized world where a virus
can leap from a village market to a
metropolis on the other side of the world in
days. The SARS and swine flu outbreaks
reminded governments, nongovernmental
organizations, and corporations to update
their planning for managing and surviving
epidemics. The U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services had a series of exercises
on a pandemic scenario earlier in 2019.
So if we know what to worry about, why are
so many countries seemingly so poorly
prepared to deal with disasters?
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The first important answer is that many of
these predictions do help— especially in the
countries that take them seriously. The
experience learned from SARS, MERS, and
the swine flu left East Asian countries in
general more capable of dealing with the
coronavirus. The Hurricane Pam simulation
demonstrated an awareness of what a
hurricane would do to New Orleans, but it
also highlighted problem areas that officials
hadn’t considered, such as the difficulty of
evacuating people who didn’t own cars.
These weren’t completely ignored; the
Senate report on Katrina found that although
the plans being developed from the
Hurricane Pam exercise weren’t finished in
time for Katrina, “some officials took the
initiative to use concepts developed in the
drafts, with mixed success.” The problem is
not in knowing what to do, it’s in doing it—
and in the willingness to pay for it before it’s
too late.
Mostly, as the Hurricane Katrina example
shows, it’s doing it in a timely fashion.
Because while we know quite a lot about
probable disasters—where they will happen,
what they will do, whom they will affect the
most—what we don’t know is when. We
predict disasters in poorly understood
probabilities or vague ranges on the order of
decades or even centuries, such as the “500-
year flood.” That uncertainty has led
decision-makers to postpone disaster
preparedness, which studies have shown to
have a significant return on investment in
saved time and money during responses.
Leaders can somewhat rationally hope that a
predicted disaster will hit during someone
else’s tenure and put their budgets toward
more visible objectives.
It’s not just money, however. For many
disasters, effectively preparing means
making unpopular decisions: telling people
they can’t build or live in flood plains or on
the coast, prioritizing wetlands over industry,
restricting travel. An emergency manager
from Kesennuma, Japan, where oil from fuel
tanks at the port caused an immensely
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May 2020
destructive fire in the wake of the 2011
tsunami, told me that not only had his
jurisdiction ignored this risk, oil tanks
continued to line the coast of Japan. Knowing
how dangerous it was, the government was
still reluctant to restrict that economic
activity.
This is nowhere more obvious than in that
epitome of predicted disasters, climate
change. We know what we need to do, or
stop doing, to address the threat, and yet we
keep pretending that it’s not our problem,
that it can be left for later, that someone
else—whether in another country or another
generation—can make those necessary
changes and pay the costs, in dollars and in
discomfort. One study shows that $1 spent on
preparedness mitigates an average of $15
worth of damage later — but that voters will
reward spending on disaster mitigation, but
not disaster preparedness.
That’s happened with wave after wave of the
COVID-19 pandemic: Even after seeing it
happening elsewhere, even with the rational
understanding that countries needed to act
before they felt the impact, there were still
delays and reluctance.
Our reluctance to believe in disasters is
worsened by the way we treat each one, after
the fact, as the only disaster. Government
reports and media accounts alike are studded
with words like unprecedented and
unimaginable. Those reports supposedly
have the purpose of learning from mistakes
(and, more rarely, successes) to ensure that
future disasters are handled more effectively.
But, like simulation exercises and
probabilities, those carefully documented
lessons are rarely given the funding or
political attention to be put into practice.
After a disaster people are more likely to
heave a sigh of relief and slide back into
normalcy, forgetting those whose lives
continue to be affected by the aftermath. And
yet, the United Nations Office for Disaster
Risk Reduction has found that “general
acceptance for disaster risk reduction and
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recovery planning peaks after the disaster.”
That is the brief window when we are
convinced that devastating upheaval is
possible and could happen to us.
We know that disasters will happen. We even
know how and where. Let’s demand that our
political leaders start putting that knowledge
to good use.
THE GLOBAL CORONAVIRUS
CRISIS IS POISED TO GET
MUCH, MUCH WORSE
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
W
hat happens when the pandemic
strikes nations of millions of
people that have only a half-dozen
ventilators?
The editorial board is a group of opinion
journalists whose views are informed by
expertise, research, debate and certain
longstanding values. It is separate from the
newsroom.
In some places in the United States and other
developed countries hit hard by Covid-19,
the question is when might it become
possible to start getting back to work. For
much of the rest of the world, the nightmare
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May 2020
is yet to start. And part of the horror is that
many poorer countries won’t have the means
to do much about it. Nor, given the
international community’s lack of
organization and leadership in the face of a
global crisis, can they count on richer nations
to help them.
With the exception of Iran, the countries
hardest hit up till now are among those with
the world’s most advanced economies,
scientific establishments and medical
services — and even Iran has a relatively
functional medical system. What probably
lies ahead is the spread of the coronavirus
through countries ravaged by conflict,
through packed refugee camps and detention
centers in places like Syria or Bangladesh,
through teeming cities like Mumbai, Rio de
Janeiro or Monrovia, where social distancing
is impossible and government is not trusted,
through countries without the fiscal capacity
or health services to mount a viable response.
That would be disastrous not only for them
but also for the rest of the world as supplies
of raw materials are disrupted, fragile
economies collapse, strongmen grow
stronger and the virus doubles back to
reinfect northern regions.
So far, the most vulnerable regions have
reported comparatively few cases — one in
Yemen, a smattering across Africa and the
Middle East. But that may be partly a
function of unreliable reporting or deliberate
denial. The numbers are growing, and as the
world has learned, they are likely to swell
radically and swiftly.
A survey by the International Crisis Group
said the full impact is hard to anticipate, but,
“If the disease spreads in densely packed
urban centers in fragile states, it may be
virtually impossible to control. The dramatic
economic slowdown already underway will
disrupt trade flows and create unemployment
that will do damage at levels that are hard to
forecast and grim to contemplate.”
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For a sense of the scale of the plight of some
developing nations, consider one of the most
critical pieces of medical equipment used in
treatment: the ventilator. The United States
has some 160,000 ventilators, according to
one estimate. Sierra Leone has 13. South
Sudan has four. Central African Republic has
three. In Venezuela, where 90 percent of the
hospitals already face shortages, there are
only 84 intensive care unit beds for a
population of 32 million, according to a
report from the International Rescue
Committee.
“The lesson of the crisis is that the weakest
links in the global health chain are a threat to
health everywhere,” said David Miliband,
the organization’s president. “We cannot
afford these weak links, and must strengthen
the efforts in war-torn countries and
communities to lift their life chances.”
In the United States and Europe,
governments and businesses have been able
to pay many furloughed workers at least part
of their salaries, and others are eligible for
unemployment benefits. But billions of
people in Africa, Latin America and South
Asia have no safety net and no savings. The
United Nations has warned that income loss
in developing countries could exceed $220
billion.
The impact will not be uniform. The
International Monetary Fund and the World
Bank have moved quickly to offer billions in
emergency loans to poorer countries, though
they’ve warned this will not be enough.
Countries with relatively stable
governments, like Peru, have been quick to
mount countermeasures, while battered
nations like Haiti and Venezuela have few
defenses available. Some dictatorships, like
Egypt, have used the outbreak to tighten their
grip. Across the Southern Hemisphere, the
pandemic’s effects may be cushioned by
young populations. In such African countries
as Niger, Angola, Chad, Mali, Uganda and
Somalia, nearly half the population is 15 or
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younger. In the United States, that share is 19
percent.
The U.N. secretary general, Antonio
Guterres, and Pope Francis have both called
for a cessation of all global conflicts to focus
on what Mr. Guterres called “the true fight of
our lives.” Last week Saudi Arabia
announced a cease-fire in its war against
Houthi rebels in Yemen, and armed groups
have indicated a desire to stop fighting in
Colombia, Cameroon and the Philippines.
The Afghan government and the Taliban
have both begun efforts to stem the spread of
the virus. And Russia may find the burden of
supporting Syrian troops or secessionists in
eastern Ukraine excessive if Covid-19 begins
to take a heavy toll on the economy.
But the Islamic State has called on its
followers to ramp up their efforts. The
Houthis have not reciprocated Saudi
Arabia’s cease-fire, and fighting has
escalated in parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
It is understandable that governments of rich
nations have focused first and foremost on
the crisis within their own borders. Nothing
like the coronavirus has ever overwhelmed
so much of the world in such short order, or
with such cataclysmic force. Yet it is
dismaying that a danger that confronts the
entire world, that is likely to hurt the entire
global economy, has led to so little global
cooperation and has been met with so little
global leadership.
This is a crisis in which the United States
could have emerged as the leader. The
country still may do so. But on top of the
widely chronicled failures at home, the
Trump administration has provided little
inspiration for the world. The response in
Europe has also been marked by confusion
and disunity: The president of the European
Union’s main science organization resigned
last week in protest of the bloc's handling of
the crisis. The World Health Organization,
meanwhile, is under heavy fire from critics
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who say its complicated relationship with

China may have undermined its mission.

That is not likely to change, especially while

the disease continues to ravage the United
States, Italy, Spain and many other countries
in the Northern Hemisphere, and most
especially in an American presidential
election year, when the struggle against
Covid-19 is likely to become only more
politicized.

But the weakness of Washington should not

prevent the brain trust of the developed world
— the think tanks, news media, universities
and nongovernmental organizations — from
focusing on a strategy for the next and
possibly most brutal front in the struggle
against the scourge of the coronavirus. Many
organizations have already begun to do so,
recognizing that this may be the defining
struggle of our era, and that if ever the world
demanded a global response, this is it.

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