India’s COVID-19 fight needs a new social and economic behaviour. It’s easier said than done

The scale of coronavirus crisis is so great that governments need to focus entirely inwards. India is unlikely to have the resources to help its neighbours much.

Passengers wear protective face masks in the wake of novel coronavirus pandemic, at a railway station in Vijayawada, on 18 March 2020 | PTI

Governments around the world are finally beginning to grasp the scale of the coronavirus pandemic problem. But as they deal with the crisis, two realities must be faced. First, variations in state capacity will be telling both in how countries manage the COVID-19 crisis and what happens subsequently. Second, although it’s a crisis that forces governments’ attention inward, international conflict will be unlikely to abate.

State capacity, or rather the administrative abilities of a government, is an important variable in international politics, and it is not correlated to wealth. It affects everything — from the capacity to foster innovation to undergirding social cohesion to, most importantly, generating national power. Variations in state capacities will be even more telling in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic because this is a problem that has society-wide effect. Moreover, state capacity could also determine the relative standing of a country in the international order on the other side of the pandemic.

Worry for India

This will be a major challenge for India, where successive governments have failed to build up adequate state capacity, an issue that has recently been receiving considerable scholarly attention. Poor state capacity would make it particularly difficult to deal with the coronavirus pandemic if it should spread. Even governments with far greater administrative capacities, such as China, have struggled.

India has generally been reasonably efficient in handling disasters such as floods and cyclones. In such contingencies, the ‘steel frame’ of IAS has been able to direct state intervention to help citizens get through and recover from such disasters. But it is not clear that this prior experience and success applies in this contingency. There are many differences that make this pandemic a unique case.

For one, its effects are national and not confined to a particular region as in most natural disasters. Two, this is not a discrete event, as in a cyclone or an earthquake, but rather a problem that could possibly last for a while. The US government, for example, is thinking of an 18-month timeline. The longer the duration of the crisis, the higher the stress on India’s administrative capacities, and the greater the likelihood of a serious breakdown, leading to significant fatalities.

The Indian government has shown is that it does have the capacity to control international travel links, at least air travel. Will this suffice? So far, it would seem so. The spread of the coronavirus has been relatively low in India. Still, caution is needed in drawing too early a conclusion about India’s success because it may simply be the consequence of inadequate numbers of tests being conducted. In a country with as high a population density as India, in which there are some 60-odd cities with a population of over one million, the effects of the pandemic will be dramatic if the virus actually gets loose.

Reducing international conflict

As with any dramatic change, a key concern in international politics is the effect of this change on the propensity for conflict and cooperation. On the positive side, a widespread effect is that the coronavirus pandemic is forcing states to turn their focus inwards. No national health system can fully control this menace, which also requires altered social and economic behaviour. These are not easy alterations to make, especially for democracies, and we are only in the early stages of these behavioural changes. But the most visible effect is clearly in economic activity. Not surprisingly, the US and many other governments are moving urgently to shore up their national economic health even as the full effect of the pandemic on economies are still too early to assess.

Can India hope that this significant shift in focus will lead to reduced international conflict because national governments are busy fighting the pandemic? We can dismiss hopes of greater cooperation, beyond publicity stunts such as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s videoconference with SAARC leaders, or China’s offer of assistance to a couple of countries. Modi’s gesture was nice, and probably brought India some public relations benefits. But the scale of the crisis facing national governments is so great that they will need to focus entirely inwards. India is unlikely to have the resources to help its neighbours much.

Easier said than done

Even a reduction in international conflict is probably too much to hope for. Indeed, the crisis has demonstrated that when the push comes to shove, states retreat towards greater unilateralism, nationalism and autarchy. All of this suggests the opposite of a reduction in conflict: it suggests that insecurity will rise, and with it, the potential for greater conflict.

Add to this the temptation to use this opportunity to seize an advantage, or at least minimise disadvantage. Thus, the ongoing spat between the US and China over the coronavirus pandemic should not come as much of a surprise. Both Washington and Beijing are seeking to control the narrative — the former stressing China’s responsibility in trying to hide the outbreak and making things worse;  the latter projecting itself as having achieved success in controlling the coronavirus. International politics will not sit out even a pandemic.

The author is a professor in International Politics at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. Views are personal.