DR RAJKUMAR SINGH
SOUTH Asians have long suffered from intra-regional tariff and non-tariff barriers that make it difficult to move goods and people across borders. Home to one-fourth of the world’s poorest people, the region has disproportionately high trade costs, poor logistics infrastructure and inefficient trade facilitation. Our benchmark report, A Glass Half Full: The Promise of Regional Trade in South Asia estimates that the trade within the region could be worth $67 billion rather than its recent value of $23 billion. South Asia also has significant constraints on its services trade, even though the services sector accounts for more than half of the economies in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The region’s countries now have an opportunity to come together to remove tariffs on medical devices, protective gear, disinfectants, and soap, and they have started to do so. They must also act to avoid restrictive actions by importers and exporters that could reduce global supply and affect critical supply chains, especially tariffs on food and other necessities. Short-term collaboration to fight the pandemic could bring longer-term benefits by strengthening regional institutions, improving regional infrastructure and connectivity. This is a critical inflexion point for regional cooperation in South Asia, as an increase in cooperation has the potential to produce significant economic gains, accelerate shared growth and reduce poverty.
Status in India: South Asia has achieved significant progress through cooperation in the power sector, and that experience can be applied to special priority areas such as food security, critical logistics, and health services. The World Bank is a committed partner of regional cooperation in South Asia and stands ready to provide technical and financial assistance as the countries marshal regional resources to focus on the human toll of COVID-19. Governments of the region have warned that widespread transmissions could be disastrous in a country where millions of people live in dense slums. Deaths from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, stood at 239 on Saturday last in India which accounts for more than half the tally of those infected with coronavirus across South Asia, which crossed 12,000 on Friday, government data showed, despite a harsh weeks-long clampdown to control the outbreak.
Position in Delhi and Mumbai: India’s capital of Delhi, and its financial hub of Mumbai have emerged as hotspots and local officials are urging Prime Minister Narendra Modi to extend a 21-day nationwide lockdown beyond its expiry date of Tuesday. India’s vast shutdown of 1.3 billion people has left millions out of work and forced an exodus of migrant workers from the cities to their homes in the hinterland, but state leaders say it is more important to save lives. If the trend continues like this, we may have to extend the lockdown,” said the Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi, where a {alleged} religious gathering by a Muslim missionary group last month caused a spike in cases. They have warned that widespread transmissions could be disastrous in a country where millions of people live in dense slums, social distancing norms are often impossible and the health care system is overburdened. However, India’s tally was still small, compared to the rest of the world, and the lockdown prevented a surge that would have been difficult to handle. An internal assessment by a government body, the Indian Council of Medical Research, forecast the number of virus cases would have hit 820,000 by mid-April without the lockdown.
COVID-19 in Pakistan and Bangladesh: In neighbouring Pakistan, the number climbed on 17 April to 7025, with 135 deaths. Authorities warned of tough penalties if people flouted the lockdown to go to mosques for Friday prayers. The rules allow only five people to pray at a time in a mosque but many more gathered last week. Pakistan announced a cash transfer scheme worth $900 million for 12 million families to receive 12,000 rupees a month for the next three months, in the largest such scheme in its history. This is a great achievement of the government to transfer cash to the needy in our society on such a massive scale across the country. Imran Khan, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, had initially resisted a full lockdown, saying it would hurt the poorest the most, but has had to relent as the virus has spread.
In Bangladesh, the first three known cases were reported by the country’s Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) on 7 March 2020. As of 17 April 2020, the Government of Bangladesh has 1572 confirmed cases and 60 deaths in the country. On 22 March, Bangladesh declared a 10-day shut down effective from 26 March to 4 April and again in 3rd term the shutdown increased to 25 April. As of 9th April, about 52 residential areas in Dhaka have been kept under lockdown. Presently Dhaka, Narayanganj, Comilla, Gaibandha are in lockdown. The economic shutdown sparked by COVID-19 threatens millions of livelihoods in the country imminently. Dhaka’s streets are eerily empty. When 10 million rickshaw drivers, day labourers, factory workers, maids and others raced to get home before the start of the shutdown — announced by the government on 26 March — the city became unnaturally quiet. According to World Bank data, only 15% of Bangladesh’s population makes more than 500 taka ($5.90) a day. They can meet their daily expenses, send their children to school, and hope that they reserve enough for an emergency health crisis. Most villagers depend on remittances from the cities or abroad. For Bangladesh, let’s admit that COVID-19 is a humanitarian crisis with a public health dimension. If large-scale physical distancing is required, we must find ways to mitigate the economic shock that will bring the majority of the country into food insecurity within weeks.
— The writer is Professor and Head, P G Department of Political Science, Bihar, India.
