Many lessons the pandemic is teaching us

Even as it sweeps across the world, the coronavirus pandemic is imparting important lessons to mankind. Some of the lessons are easy to grasp. Some need to be distilled out. Inquiring minds are trying to figure them out.

Nearly one-third of the world’s 7.78 billion people have been under lockdown now for one month or more to check the spread of the virus.

That includes India’s entire population of 1.35 billion. China, which has a slightly larger population of 1.39 billion, had put only about 760 million under lockdown while it was battling the virus.

The most obvious lesson the virus has taught us so far, perhaps, is that the solution to the problem of environmental degradation, which has been troubling us for decades, is in our own hands.

Three years ago, on the basis of a worldwide study, the British medical journal Lancet reckoned that one-sixth of all deaths were attributable to environmental issues, mainly air and water pollution.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimated that more than 80 per cent of those living in urban areas are exposed to air quality levels above safe limits. It said the figure could be as high as 98 per cent in low-income countries.

With factories and establishments shut down and motor vehicles off the road, the lockdown saw distinct improvement in the environment everywhere.

The European Space Agency has said measurements by one of its satellites show that nitrogen dioxide levels over industrial areas in Asia and Europe are now 40 per cent below last year’s levels.

Young people living in the plains of the northern Indian state of Punjab have reported seeing the Himalayan mountain range from their rooftops for the first time, thanks to clean air. Elders recalled seeing the sight in their childhood.

Residents of Varanasi and other places on the banks of the Ganga, sacred to the Hindus, say the river water looks clean now.

Soon after assuming office in 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who represents Varanasi in Parliament, had launched a Rs 200-billion project to clean the river by 2018. The deadline was later pushed to this year.

In 2017 the National Green Tribunal said the government could not clean even a bit of the river after spending Rs. 70 billion over two years. A 2018 report said only one per cent of the river had been cleaned in four years and Rs 500 billion more might be needed to complete the project.

Last week a news agency quoted local residents as saying pollution had subsided as factories which discharged effluents into the river remained closed and people were not turning up to bathe in the river.

The report made no reference to the practice of dumping half-burnt bodies in the river from the cremation grounds on its banks. Presumably, the lockdown has put an end to it.

The improvement in the quality of the Ganga water under lockdown shows better social and religious practices can do what money can’t. Those concerned about the lethargic response of governments to climate change are hoping the pandemic will convince them that science matters.

They argue that recent experience testifies to our ability to make quick, drastic changes. So, the sooner we mobilise for action, the better.

Modi said last week the biggest lesson of the pandemic was the need for self-reliance. The fact is that making the country self-reliant was a paramount objective of several of his predecessors, notably Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. They gave high priority to schemes to achieve self-sufficiency in food and milk and milk products.   

The big public undertakings which Modi has been selling to raise money for his projects were built by them as part of the effort to make the country self-reliant in critical areas.

If Modi is serious about a new drive towards self-reliance, he has to re-arrange his priorities. The Statue of Unity, which he built at a cost of Rs 30 billion in his first term, had no element of self-reliance in it. The statue itself was cast in China.

Currently, unmindful of the decline in the nation’s finances, the government is going ahead with several gigantic plans about the urgency of which it has not been able to convince the people.

One of them aims at rebuilding New Delhi with a new Parliament building and a new Prime Minister’s house. Another envisages a bullet train service between Mumbai and Ahmedabad.

The pandemic has taught us that all sections of the people are vulnerable, but some are more vulnerable than others.  The challenge before the world as a whole and every individual nation is to develop a vision of a just, peaceful and sustainable society. Can we do it?