The World after Corona

Its difficult not to imagine a different world after Corona is over. It may appear that we are not there anywhere soon, but diseases have given us lessons historically. Diseases of this scale and magnitude makes it easier to make decisions which otherwise take years of deliberations and political will. Such decisions have the capacity to shape much of the future and when you are nowhere near the future you can only imagine that the future will be strikingly different!

Corona which 'only'  kills about 4% of the people getting the virus, yet it has rocked everything at present. Nearly one quarter of the entire world's population is staying at home in order to fight corona. Countries like Italy has already collapsed completely to deal with the exponential growth affecting nearly thousands everyday. India, the country in which I live has taken one of the most toughest decisions of observing the complete lock down of the entire country for 21 days (which might like to increase).

Calculation based on https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ (till 26.03.2020, 8:45 pm)

What does the future hold? Certainly human population will not be wiped out of the planet and it is even more certain that Corona is not the only bio-cultural threat that human kind will face. What would be the responses?

Public policy prioritisation:

As countries like Italy and France has failed miserably to control over the disease and its spread despite of their world ranking being the second and first in terms of healthcare (Click here), countries which perform miserably might have a huge push towards rapid development of the healthcare facilities. India with global rank of 145 (out of 195 countries) in terms of quality and accessibility of health services (click here) and blatant privatization of the healthcare services is in an ideal condition that the public sphere will push for making government's prioritisation right. Temple, Mosque dole politics might continue but its a golden opportunity for the people and opposition to push for creation of basic assets like public funded healthcare and education. The identity fault-line is expected to change rapidly as the disasters such as this one cross-cuts all the artificial boundaries, be it identity, nationhood or any other. Additionally in countries like India the upwardly mobile middle classes will start valuing the importance of public healthcare system and mechanism which has rather been carelessly and mercilessly destroyed by the rise of private enterprises. Corona will make people demand for an affordable treatment mechanisms and it can be expected that for once people will no longer feel proud to be able to consume high-end health care facilities just because they have more money than others. In that sense Corona is a great leveller, but for a thousand other reason it is not.

A lot will depend either on the extent of the disaster or on the opposition to keep otherwise weak public memory alive for quite sometime, so that people can place demands such as this.    

Economic consequences:

Although, I am no expert, but it is needless to mention that all the countries affected by the virus will have to deal with toughest economic situations and India will have to face some more simply because it has more mouths to fed. India faces the toughest challenge to manage the informal sector workers and migrant labourers whose saving is minuscule and who cannot survive without getting paid regularly. Additionally, they lack most of the safety nets and India being torn apart through traditional hierarchies repeatedly these are the people who will face near annihilation. However, it is important to note that this section of the people have a variety of informal mechanisms through which a sizable portion of them would be able to survive this disruption and it is expected that the State and Central relief measures will ultimately reach to a large section of them. Given the corrupt channel of public transaction a sizable portion of the relief measure will definitely be siphoned away through a variety of informal mechanisms (click here). However, economic consequences will be far reaching than the serious problems that has just been discussed. There will be fall of productivity as there will also be a considerable fall in the consumption of the people. Large-scale layoffs are in the cards which will affect each and every sector. Consequently the purchase power capacity of a substantive number of people will be reduced leaving secondary and tertiary impact on the service industries, private enterprises (schools, hospitals, hotels, malls).

As an unprecedented recession is expected to step in a lot of people will loose job some of them of course insanely high paid. The proud 'standard' of living or 'class' of living is definitely going to get affected. As till date, the epicentres are located in traditionally the 'core' of the World Systems (click here) the peripheral dependency will definitely have devastating consequences which is going to shape much of the world we are going witness soon. First, the lack of earning and large-scale layoff will demand a lot of people to resort to basics. Consequently mushrooming bars, restaurant chains, hotels, spa parlours, shopping malls with consumables might face a tough time to continue. The booming real estate might face a stagnation with thousands of unfinished apartments - the typical manufactured middle class dreams.

Instead your ola driver might go back to the small village where he used to work in the paddy field, the hotel waiter might start a small business near the station of his village and the like.

The cultural resistance of the upwardly mobile middle-classes:

I have seen this section of the people from a close vicinity. Almost all of my school friends belong to this class. Baring a few, the rest belong to a lower middle class families. Most of their parents have tried their best to provide them with the best facilities. They could afford the best in the region primarily because single child or at best two children was already stepping in to the generation in which I am born. When it was important to make decision regarding the life course, in our time private engineering colleges were just opening up and nearly 95% of my friends jumped in. They already started earning about 20K as a beginner around 2005 when I was doing my masters. Some of them already started making plans to move abroad and most of them did eventually. A substantive portion of the people now has a consumerist selves which includes new flats, central air-conditioning living, cars, weekend parties, long drives, home delivery of everything. Their commuting is detached from the everyday world through their own cars or the appcabs, their office is on AC for eternity so does their homes.

There is Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo in their 2011 book Poor Economics showed through their fieldwork how difficult it is for people to adjust with the standard of living facing economic crisis. The poverty trap where income tomorrow is lesser than income today and a person can slip into an extreme poverty is otherwise cultural and it is most severe among those who resist lifestyle adjustments. While the waiter coming from a distant village in the Country Roads micro brewery would be able to go back it will be depressing for his customer including myself if they have to stop going to the place and grab a drink or two once in a while. 

Technology led poverty and the public sphere:

Make no mistake human civilisation is not going to go back to even a century in terms of technology use. Even if Corona wipes off a sizeable portion of human kind the rest will definitely make attempt to bounce back to the life. The priorities of state might change but building effortless technology to reduce human involvement will be there and there is no way that large scale employment generation will be in the card. Rather, more corporations will now try to invest more in automation so that their liabilities to their employees are reduced. 

A practical demand for initiatives like 'minimum income guarantee' might start to take shape in many places of the world, which will further the importance of state power and less on the need for large-scale privatisation. Again Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo in their 2019 book Good Economics for Hard Times showed why ensuring the minimun earning is not enough, people need the assurance that life is worthy of living. Which needs the creation of new myths, new signification, in sum work.

Mental health emergency:

The effect of global slow down, joblessness or pay cut will definitely put a lot of stress on the people who might have to adjust with their life choices. A lot of suicides, depressed individuals are going to touch dozens of families within coming few years and countries will have to bear consequences of demoralised workforce. While the public funding for employment creation will be rising, states must be prepared to deal with the mental health issues rapidly.

Privacy issues and surveillance: 

Perhaps one of the most radical alteration might be seen in the public opinion regarding the state's control over its people. A substantive development of the public opinion allowing the state's intervention in people's everyday life is likely to be formed. States might like to exercise much more precise control over no only the activities of its people but also their biological components through the technological surveillance and big data analysis. It will get a consent. A new hegemony in terms of consenting the surveillance is going to take place and the data will definitely be misused and curtail the freedom to live for many. A hypothetical example can be that a diabetic patient denied of a drink or a sweet shop because state would definitely want their workforce to be fit. 

Finally, for some time people may appreciate the value of their domestic help, sweeper, cleaner, farmers, informal sector workers who constitute more than 90% of the supply chain meeting the everyday requirements. The value of perhaps the 'housewife' who hadn't been given a single 'lockdown' day to do what they want to do. Perhaps people will learn to appreciate little things in life, like the balcony in which a bird actually comes regularly, or the setting sun which you haven't seen for ages... perhaps the twilight to know how long the twilight actually exists!