7 Lessons From The Pandemic

We realised many things, from costs of overused state power to costs of poor quality local data

- Gurcharan Das

Covid appears to be transitioning to an endemic. There is always the threat of a new variant but the hope is that this is the endgame. A virus, ten-thousandth of a millimetre in diameter, has tested our character, our governance. What have we learned? How did we fare? Here are seven lessons.

Covid’s first lesson is to wield the hammer of state power cautiously, treading softly on peoples’ lives. India’s lockdown was the world’s harshest, perhaps too severe. At a stroke, millions lost their jobs. For a daily wage earner, this meant poverty. Giving migrants time to go home would have spared much pain – South Africa gave a week’s notice, Bangladesh four days.

A selective, targeted lockdown would have protected the infected few without bringing misery to a quarter of a billion workers. Easier said in hindsight, of course. Trump and Johnson faced massive criticism for not declaring national lockdowns. Desperate governments faced tragic choices of life vs livelihood in the fog of war.

Who should live, who should die? Should the elderly die to save the young? What if it is my son who must die? It’s a tragic dharm-sankat to which there is no answer. How many policymakers, one wonders, truly wrestled with this moral dilemma?

In the end, our GDP fell6.6% while we lost 38 lives per lakh population to Covid. Our neighbour, Bangladesh’s GDP grew 3.5% while losing only 18 lives per lakh people. Among low- and low-middle-income countries, India ranked 62nd of 74 in GDP growth and 56th in saving lives.