Pandemic and Vaccine

 

Corona virus and globalized world

 

In 1991 the minority Congress government, under the leadership of Narasimha Rao and Dr. Manmohan Singh as the finance minister, opened India to globalization.  As a result, foreign direct investment started flowing into India.  India was getting integrated in the world market. Today we are fully part of the world market.  We have foreign cars of different shades and models running on our roads.  Foreign goods are easily available in our local markets.  In 1980is when I used to visit Europe I was crazy for the foreign goods and all my near and dear ones expected me to bring something foreign for them.  From 1990is this craze had vanished.  The American and European market got flooded with Chinese goods.  Our markets too did not lack any foreign goods.

Many people, even the left thinking ones, had welcomed the idea of India becoming part of the World Trade Organization.  There have been a lot of benefits for our economy.  But this is not to deny that there has been a huge setback to our economic, social and ideological aspects of our lives. But there is no way we can escape from globalization.  We have got used to live in one global world. In 1848 Karl Marx had already predicted in his Communist Manifesto that a time will come when the remotest tribal village will be integrated into the world capitalist order.

Why am I blabbering about this?  Yes, the pandemic of corona virus has demonstrated this most vividly.  The virus originated from Chinese city Wuhan, very quickly spread to all the cities and villages of our globe.  Within no time the whole world was locked down. The world economy plummeted.  Indian economy came down by -23%.  According to very objective assessments of some great economist of India it came down to -44%.  Corona virus spread across the world evenly affecting all the nations and people. It looks it did not discriminate anyone. 

But just as globalization has not affected all people equally so the pandemic corona virus has not affected all people equally.  In a capitalist society people are standing on a ladder.  The better off are on the upper steps and the lesser off are on the lower ladder.  When there a crisis in the society, economic, political and social, it forces people to climb down from their position on the ladder.  The people on the upper steps can come down a step or two.  But what happens to those who are on the last step of the ladder.  The whole lot of people come down on them crushing them to death.  Our society is like a ladder or a pyramid.  The life of the people at the bottom layer of the pyramid or at the lower steps of the ladder will sharply reflect the nature of our society. Globalization or no globalization nothing will prevent the lower strata of the society from bearing the full brunt of the crisis.  It does not matter what would be the nature of the crisis, economic, social, political or health and educational.

While the poor have suffered the highest the rich could not escape the evil impact of the pandemic.  Corona virus, in a sense was a leveler.  My friend and colleague, Fr. Stan Swamy in his poem said, “the jail is a kind of leveler”.  But the force that levels is not something that should make any one happy.  Since corona impacted the rich people and the rich nations the vaccine came up within nine months.  Normally, it would take ten years to get a vaccine.  When the rich get affected people frantically search for solutions.  The needs of the upper layer of the society bring to the fore the need for URGENCY.

The world is reeling under many pandemics, pandemic of poverty, starvation and malnutrition and many other diseases.  We have walked for many decades, nay many centuries, but no one found it urgent to solve these problems.