'Coronavirus may foment new inequalities'

Tens of millions of people are susceptible to slip into abject poverty if they are forced to pay a single heavy bill to hospital for treatment or if the crop fails them for a single year.

Hyderabad: "We are 99 ... remember, you're the only one on the other side" was the slogan chanted in 2011 by people waving flags at Wall Street in New York, the heart of global capitalism. The uprising, which began nine years ago in New York under the name ‘Occupy Wall Street’ against widening economic inequalities and growing exploitation, spread worldwide within a month.

The uprising, which spread like wildfire, particularly in North America and Europe, sparked more than 750 protests. The debate surrounding the rise of the wealth in the hands of the world's richest one per cent has taken another turn with the Covid threat. Just as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned a few months ago that ‘decades of global progress is in danger of being ruthlessly crushed by this virus’, at least ten crores of people have been recently pushed into the vicious clutches of poverty due to Covid.

It is pertinent to note that if the wealth of the world's top ten billionaires increased by $ 30 trillion due to the outbreak of Covid pandemic this year, the number of poor people living on less than two dollars a day has increased by an additional ten crores!

Experiments of exploitation

The false premise that the greater the plunder of resources, the greater the development - has led to the destruction of the economic, political and social values ​​of developing countries. They accelerated the spread of inequalities around the world. The latest World Bank report reveals that the number of people who have lost their jobs due to Covid and fallen into abject poverty is higher in urban areas compared to rural areas.

Covid has badly affected the lives of millions of people who live in the slums and work as labourers doing odd jobs or work in the industries.

A World Bank study in several African and Asian countries found that urban people were the most affected by poverty. More importantly, Covid has recently pushed at least five and a half crore people into poverty in South Asia.

The economic growth of the 47 countries at the bottom of the list of developing countries has been worst than the health due to the Covid crisis. Global trade has plummeted, tourism has stagnated and lockdowns have done irreparable damage to employment; the trade deficit of these poor countries is expected to exceed last year's deficit of $ 9.1 thousand crores. More than 110 countries have appealed to the IMF for humanitarian and financial assistance, unable to know how to fight with Corona.

The big countries have announced that they will impose a ‘moratorium’ on the debt repayments of some poor countries until the end of this year.

To that extent, even though the burden of making payments of $ 73 trillion this year has been reduced for those countries, the biggest question is how they will carry that burden, which will double next year.

It looks that the wait of poor countries for vaccines to control Corona will be endless. Wealthy nations, which make up 14 per cent of the world's population, seem to have already made arrangements to procure about 53 per cent of all vaccines! Wealthy countries are all set to give three doses of the vaccine to their people by the end of next year. Canada tops the list, ready to vaccinate five times per person if needed. If this situation continues, hundreds of millions of people around the world will not be able to get the vaccine for at least another year!

Need for new models

The precarious condition of a few enjoying the wealth and the majority suffering from poverty is now not limited to third world countries only....it is slowly spreading to the rich countries as well. Studies have shown that economic inequalities between the 37 countries of The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in the affluent arena have widened to levels never seen in the past 50 years, shows the extent of the negative impact created by Corona throughout the world.

Tens of millions of people are susceptible to slip into abject poverty if they are forced to pay a single heavy bill to hospital for treatment or if the crop fails them for a single year.

Studies have shown that people from poorer communities die on average 15 years earlier than those from affluent families. There has already been a lot of discussion about the changes occurring in the social, economic, political and cultural life of poor countries due to the strategies of big countries and multinational companies.

What is required now is the will and sincerity to implement an appropriate plan of action. In the form of Corona, we have got yet another opportunity to change all the current models at once and adapt the economies to eco-friendly way. If we take advantage of this crisis and convert it into an opportunity, it is for sure that humanity has taken the first steps towards establishing a social order free from inequalities.