Anoy Mukherjee
At present, the whole world, including Bangladesh, is facing a new war and is fighting non-traditional security challenge called coronavirus or Covid-19. All of a sudden it seems that the whole world is caught unaware and is about to crumble before it. Wealthy countries as well as the superpowers along with the developing countries are also struggling to fight.
Already, more than 30 lakhs people are affected and death toll is over 2 lakhs. More and more people are being affected everyday compelling the countries to think a way out as early as possible so as to avoid an economic and social catastrophe.
As WHO said “As COVID-19 is a new disease, we need more epidemiological data to draw any conclusions of virus shedding profile”, citizens across the world are clueless and they are gasping for a way out and earnestly waiting to get back to their previous pristine pre-Covid-19 world.
People of the world are praying to their gods and eagerly waiting for science to find an answer to this pandemic. However, in this milieu of science and religion, we must not forget the real problems and future course of actions pertaining to the geo-political situation.
A localised health problem has turned into a global pandemic. All the countries caught off guard and faced a unique moment in history. In this current scenario, the powerful nations are in a no a different situation in comparison to the countries which they considered developing or weak.
The military might is of no use in a rare pandemic and economy is rapidly crumbling down. The world is glaring at severe economic fallout of the pandemic from which it might take years and generations to recover.
More than 80 developing economies are now seeking help from the International Monetary Fund, which has already warned of a recession “as bad or worse ” than in 2008 . In the last three weeks, 16 million US nationals have lost their jobs.
Not just in USA, millions of people around the world are losing their jobs each day. All kinds of economic activities remain standstill as the means of communications are closed. With rising unemployment, human lives are at stake.
One of the mainstays of the economy of many of the countries of the world is the tourism sector, which is in total paralysis today. The worst time in the stock market is now in the history of the 21st century. The International Labor Organization (ILO) has already hinted that two and a half million people in the world could lose jobs.
Although, Governments and non-governmental organizations of every country are working hard to help the needy, the developing countries of South Asia like Bangladesh and India are doing much better in comparison to developed country.
As the developed Europe and the USA were shocked, Bangladesh and India took early actions and implemented lockdown at an early stage to prevent the spreading of the virus. That helped immensely in fighting the pandemic and the situation in both the countries are under control as of now.
The PMs of both the countries already took some bold steps to support keep the economy alive during this tough time. Our PM has already announced almost Taka 1 lakh crore to revive the economy. The Prime Minister of Bangladesh is also trying hard to feed the poor in this hour of need.
China, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore are trying their best to control the situation and to bring their economy back on track.
This will definitely change the face of the world as a pandemic has the capability to change the human nature across the world as well as to change the fulcrum of political and global power.
In a globalized economy, countries are associated with each other which was reiterated when the SAARC countries held a video conference together to fight the pandemic.
It is expected that South Asia might be the next centre of political and economic power as the USA and the Europe suffered heavily in the pandemic and will take time to recover. Only time will testify this.
Anoy Mukherjee is a member of Sampritee Bangladesh