Takes all to tango

Takes all to tango

Deglobalisation can neither defeat Covid-19 nor keep the world economy afloat.

When asked why as a healthy individual he volunteered to participate in the coronavirus vaccine trial in Washington state, Neal Browning said, “It’s to make this end as quickly as possible for the rest of the world.” People in the frontline of the war against Covid-19 understand well that not only does this virus not stop at national borders, its antidote can only be found by international teamwork. Not just vaccine research but even treatment protocols are very much outcomes of global cooperation networks.

But since global travel and tourism have spread the virus, it’s also fuelling a pandemic of deglobalisation. Blame games are being built around populist nationalism. For example, in China there’s surreal propaganda that Covid-19 was smuggled into Wuhan by the American army, and in America there’s loaded labelling of it as “the Chinese virus”. But while both countries have stumbled in their early encounters with the virus, neither country can make it through difficult days to come without the other’s resources, institutions, expertise.

Covid-19 has brought India and Pakistan back to the same table. There are joint training sessions taking place for Israeli and Palestinian healthcare professionals. As WHO directorgeneral Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has underlined, there’s a common enemy and we need to fight in unison. Countries have needed masks, protective gear and test kits from each other. Poorer countries will need extra help in managing the crisis. As much as the last few decades of globalisation have created much prosperity, if the outcome of Covid-19 is a lift to forces of populism and deglobalisation, then gains in poverty reduction worldwide, including in India, stand to be reversed.

India of course has intimate experience of the sad fruits of protectionism, licence raj, import substitution and hatred of expertise. It’s far from a growth friendly mix. While a closing of borders is essential at this point to fight the pandemic, this must be strictly proportionate to the threat and not lead to greater insularity, xenophobia, stigmatisation of victims or an ideological closing of the mind. Instead of walls all countries need rules based multilateralism now more than ever, both to fight the pandemic and to keep the world economy afloat. There’s an obvious analogy to climate change here, where too it’s witless to think in terms of just national defences. The thing to remember is that we all share this one planet. This is not a romantic notion, it’s hard reality.