Nisar Ahmed
It shook the world and triggered a wide spectrum paradigm shift in changing the once immutable social, economic, cultural, and behavioral norms & perspectives of humankind. This remodeled our cognitive consciousness to a new fundamental praxis and convinced us to reshuffle our priorities in life. For all the breakthroughs and achievements, even the strongest economies have laid down their arms to this pandemic and have immersed them in quandary and pushed them to think through their accomplishments. The outbreak of COVID-19 has questioned the present-state avant-garde technology and compelled us to reconsider whether we are more resilient or vulnerable than before! It has trundled the global economic vehicle into the largest global recession after the Great Depression of 1930s.
The staggering effects are more pronounced for less developed economies and have spared none, no matter what class, gender, age, or region one belongs to. If we talk about Pakistan, inadequate and already overwhelmed technical, financial, healthcare & infrastructure resources have intensified the predicaments of a common man and paralyzed its economic state of affairs; and need thorough consideration for tallying the associated social, health care and economic costs.
For more than a year, a large number of children was out of schools and unfortunately, we couldn’t arrange an effective alternative system for imparting quality education to our future generation which is going to have costly repercussions in the long run. To some extent, private schools and colleges managed to arrange remote tutoring and proctoring, again at a cost beyond the reach of impoverished class. Although WHO praised the smart lockdown policies of Pakistan but the shutdown of transport, businesses & offices called for containing the rife of virus jacked up unemployment and slashed GDP per capita by more than 19% from all time high of $1,482 (2018) to $1,194 (2020) as per The World Bank, and still we are nowhere near being out of the woods. As of 2020, unemployment stands at all time high of 4.65% of the total labor force, this menace breeds low-self-esteem and depression which potentially leads to increased crimes in the society. Since early 2000s, poverty rate dropped from 40% to 24% until 2015 lifting more than 23 million people out of extreme poverty, however, this was a short-lived drop until the outbreak of pandemic as IMF suggests an impending surge in poverty rates to 40% in coming years!
Social, political, economic, and cultural roadblocks are responsible for our dilapidated and frequently disrupted healthcare system, and it was for the very first time that PTI government introduced “Sehat Insaf Card” under praiseworthy Universal Health Insurance Program which provides free healthcare for residents of KPK up to Rs. 1 million. Pakistan was caught napping by the pandemic, when it didn’t have adequate healthcare facilities and resources, even so the government started a step-by-step vaccination drive that runs parallel to strict SOPs compliance, which has possibly subsumed the devastating effect of this menace; however, the rife of viruses is not over yet and its fruitfulness in preventing the disease is still misty. As of now, with over 45 million fully vaccinated individuals, it has been possible to reopen the workplaces and business, however the aftershocks of the disaster are to be felt in the distant future.
A break in the clouds is that the onset of pandemic has challenged us into new ways of doing things and evolve into a resilient nation. Hesitating adoption of indispensable automation & technology has kept us at bay from achieving supremacy in digital innovation, e-learning, e-business and e-commerce and it’s nothing less than a nerve-racking nightmare to see it at the lagging end of the list at 99th position out of 132 economies featured in Global Innovation Index Report 2021. Safety of the country takes supremacy over any other matter, so availability of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) across the country and robust healthcare system would appease the appalling situation of the public health care system. As of 2021, Pakistan’s economic freedom score is 51.7, which measures the economic liberty and satisfaction of individuals in a country, thus making it mostly unfree economy compared to Singapore being the freest economy with a freedom score of 89.7 in the index. This leaves a huge room for further improvement in this end to freed us from the shackles of international monetary organizations.
In the conclusion, I must say COVID-19 necessitates us to enshrine a national policy by bringing all hands-on deck for adoption of new ways of doing things by capacity-building and digitalization of all sectors of economy through a concerted effort of government, concerned ministries and international partner agencies. It’s never too late to embrace our failures, learn from mistakes and work for a better future ahead.
(The writer is a professional under apprenticeship in a private organization in Islamabad & is accessible at:
[email protected])