Opportunity for reforms
The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the few episodes in recorded history where all of humanity faces a common existential threat. Within four months, the virus has spread around the world and imperiled not just our health and wellbeing, but also our social and economic networks.
We have entered, to borrow an oft-repeated phrase, ‘an era of radical uncertainty’ in which we are racing to craft appropriate responses, not only to secure safe health outcomes for all, but also to ensure that lifestyles and livelihoods are protected. The pandemic has exposed fault lines in the global trade and financial architecture, disrupting our travel patterns, global manufacturing value-chains, and governance systems. The crisis brings home some potent lessons: individual health outcomes cannot be divorced from the health and hygiene systems of the community, that national borders are no defense against threats from nature, and that collective global action is increasingly a sine-qua-non for our own individual protection from such events.
The hope remains that the covid-19 crisis brings about a global epiphany regarding the need for saner responses to the other formidable (and less immediately visible) threat: the effects of climate change. Once this episode is behind us, if its only legacy is to bequeath us a wiser and more deliberative approach to balancing the often-conflicting objectives of economic progress and environment protection, then much good would have come of it.
India’s most respected & credible leadership awards popularly known as ILC Power Brand Awards from Network 7 Media Group’s India Leadership Conclave organized its 11th annual edition under the theme – Rebuilding India : Opportunities in the pandemic. Prominent voices of India & abroad spoke at the 11th Annual India Leadership Conclave & Indian Affairs Business Leadership Awards virtually & debated topics of tremendous significance. Satya Brahma, Chairman & Editor-In-Chief of Network 7 Media Group in his welcome address outlined the need to implement the policies for the welfare of the 70 % of Indian populations living in rural areas & said “A Billion Hopes need positives vibes, dream to win big, dare to challenge the mighty system”.
An opportunity for reforms
All crises are also opportunities for radical reform, for re-aligning priorities, and for tweaking policies in pursuit of the greater common good. History can serve, in the words of Pulitzer Prize winning writer David McCullough, as “a guide to navigation in perilous times”[1]. We might, in these trying times, take inspiration from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’, a series of reforms enacted between 1933 and 1939 that lifted the United States out of the Great Depression and restored hope to the American people. It focused on the ‘three Rs’ of relief for the vulnerable, recovery of the economy, and reform of the financial system– useful Mantras to keep in mind, as India seeks to re-invigorate its economy.
The pandemic has exposed fault lines in the global trade and financial architecture, disrupting our travel patterns, global manufacturing value-chains, and governance systems. The crisis brings home some potent lessons: individual health outcomes cannot be divorced from the health and hygiene systems of the community, that national borders are no defense against threats from nature, and that collective global action is increasingly a sine-qua-non for our own individual protection from such events. The hope remains that the COVID-19 crisis brings about a global epiphany regarding the need for saner responses to the other formidable (and less immediately visible) threat: the effects of climate change. Once this episode is behind us, if its only legacy is to bequeath us a wiser and more deliberative approach to balancing the often-conflicting objectives of economic progress and environment protection, then much good would have come of it.
