In America, economy first

Devinder Sharma
Food & Agriculture Specialist

Let’s be very clear. As Robert Reich, a professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley and the ex-Secretary of Labour in the then US President Bill Clinton’s first term put it: ‘The problem is the virus, not the economy.’ PM Narendra Modi echoed this when he told G-20 leaders to put human beings first, and then look at economic targets.

Nevertheless, the global response is on the right track — limiting the spread. India’s response is a step ahead, and rightly so. If you survive the crisis, you can rebuild the economy.

But as the world grapples to contain the spread of the deadly coronavirus pandemic, the voices calling for sacrificing people — especially grandparents — for the sake of the economy are growing. In an interview with Fox News, Texas Lt Governor Dan Patrick said grandparents should be willing to die for the sake of America’s economy, and for the sake of the younger generation. He said people should be smart to survive, but wanted them to return to work. However, at no stage in his interview did he say that he, being a grandfather himself, with six grandchildren, is willing to sacrifice his life. Obviously, he thinks he is smart enough. And we know the ultra-rich as a class are smart to always maintain a physical distance from the rest of society. Sale of bunkers — in reality, mansions — with special air-filtration systems, escape tunnels and assured food supplies for a year are skyrocketing.

And if you think Dan Patrick is alone in carrying such repugnant views, hold on. US billionaire Tom Golisano told Bloomberg: ‘The damages of keeping the economy closed as it is could be worse than losing a few more people.’ At a time when the number of people testing positive is increasing in a geometric proportion in the US, and the number of those succumbing to sthe virus are steadily growing, billionaires are instead busy raising concern over dwindling profits and, therefore, the urgent need to restart the businesses. With nearly half the global population under a virtual house arrest, with industries having pulled down shutters, and with international and domestic travel at a standstill, the Wall Street Journal in an editorial — Rethinking the coronavirus shutdown — wrote: ‘No society can safeguard public health for long at the cost of its economic health.’

Columnist Thomas Friedman wrote in New York Times: ‘Let many of us get the coronavirus, recover and get back to work — while doing our utmost to protect those most vulnerable to being killed by it.’ As if human lives don’t matter, and the death rate from coronavirus infection is nothing more than a set of statistics, like the way policy makers view farmer suicides in India, another advocate of ‘choose the economy’ refrain, another US billionaire, Dick Kovacevich, was quoted as saying: ‘We’ll gradually bring those people back and see what happens. Some of them will get sick, some may even die, I don’t know.’

US President Donald Trump tweeted on Sunday: ‘We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself. At the end of the 15-day period, we will make a decision as to which way we want to go.’ This was before the infection rate zoomed. Far away in Brazil, far-right President Jair Bolsonaro calls the outbreak a ‘little flu’ and thinks the media is ‘tricking’ people of the severity of the crisis, primarily to topple his government. He is not in favour of a lockdown in his country.

With such insensitive responses pouring in from the rich and mighty, if you are wondering what kind of a society we are living in, where economics takes precedence over what might turn out to be gravest of human tragedies, let me tell you it has historically been more or less like this. When the British government asked the then Viceroy of India, Lord Wavell, to explain the reasons behind millions of people (3 to 4 million) perishing in the Bengal Famine in 1943, the Viceroy wrote back saying that these poverty-stricken people would have died in any case. As we all know, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s seminal work later had shown that there was no shortfall in food production in 1943 and the resulting famine was the outcome of the British government’s deliberate policy of diverting food elsewhere. But instead of accepting the blame, Churchill is reported to have shifted the blame on to the poor Indians, saying they were ‘breeding like rabbits’. Much earlier, at the time of the Irish Famine, between 1845 and 1849, during which time an estimated million people died of starvation and another million migrated, the deaths from starvation were perhaps nothing more than a collateral damage.

At the 150th commemoration of the Irish Famine at Cork in Ireland, I recall the mayor of the city saying what kind of society existed in Ireland at that time, when people were dying of hunger from the failure of the staple potato crop, devastated by potato blight disease, while the colonial masters were busy loading ships with corn to be carried to Britain. From the starvation deaths to the pandemics — including the Spanish Flu in 1918 that killed roughly 20 to 25 million people — many political economists view it as a subjugation of the ordinary people by a small section of the elite.

At these pressing times, Robert Reich finds it ‘morally reprehensible’ on how corporations are exploiting the crisis. Senator Bernie Sanders said: ‘When we say it’s time to provide healthcare to our people, we’re told we can’t afford it.’ But when the stock markets feel jittery, there is no shortage of money. Out from the hat, the US government pulls out $1.5 trillion to calm investors’ worries. This is true globally. Hopefully, when everything calms down, the world may see a behavioural change as well as encounter a dramatic change in economic thinking.

Nevertheless, saner voices dominate. The global response to combating the pandemic is on the right track — limiting the spread. India’s response with a nationwide three-week lockdown is a step ahead of the international curve, and rightly so. After all, if you survive the crisis, you can always rebuild the economy.