Societies do not differ vastly in their ability to predict disasters, but their readiness to cope with them varies widely.
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New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, and the state of Kerala in India that stand out in their Covid-19 response are notable for their innovative actions and results on the ground. A common denominator in disaster readiness is the priority accorded to health and education investments, with which is also associated a good degree of people’s trust and citizen participation in institutions.
Over decades, Kerala has spotlighted basic education, public health, and social systems, involving the participation of local civic organizations—and these investments have been paying off as India struggles with a devastating second Covid-19 wave.
Despite high levels of recorded infection rates and spikes from periodic mismanagement, Kerala’s Covid-19 record remains a favourable outlier. The state showed strong resistance during 2019’s Nipah virus outbreak, and the massive floods of 2018 and 2019. The state has a country-wide low of 0.4% death rate from Covid-19 infections.
Singapore is ranked by Bloomberg as best among nations in building resilience against Covid-19, with a death rate from infections of 0.05%. Digital and technological applications responses have been high on the Republic’s agenda. Singapore’s new generation of apps and technologies like TraceTogether, a digital check-in system, SafeEntry, to trace and contain system for epidemics, ePlanner, to locate the vulnerable and their travel patterns. Digital technology is highly relevant for countries at all income levels. For example, Kerala’s responses have included the use of E-Sanjeevani, a telemedicine portal, offering psycho-social support for the sick.
New Zealand, ranked second by the Bloomberg index, makes intense use of scientific expertise, spanning public health, infectious diseases, genomics, modelling and immunology. Like Singapore, New Zealand has drawn on its lessons from SARS. Among its actions during the covid pandemic, a vaccine taskforce has been made responsible for ensuring access to safe and effective vaccines as a strategy for exiting the crisis. New Zealand cancelled all international flights, while rigorously adhering to public health guidance.
Facing a massive outbreak of the virus, South Korea installed drive-through tests, body sterilizers in public venues and thermal scanners. Health administration authorities developed mobile apps to track and monitor those under quarantines, overseas visitors and use drones to disinfect large public areas. South Korea’s high tele-density enabled dissemination of information to target population through information alerts sent to their mobile phones.
Noted for trust in institutions, South Korea has been able to gain from citizen participation as ICT’s reach was coupled with protection of people’s privacy.
Across the spectrum of calamities, investment in early warning and evacuation has proven to have among the highest benefits relative to costs. Note the dramatic fall in death rates related to these investments across South Asia.
Japan is showing how better warning can be strengthened with locating the vulnerable and enabling their escape to shelter. Following the bushfires of 2018 and 2019, the Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index assesses risk profiles of communities faced with bushfires. Following the 2004 tsunami, Indonesia’s Aceh region built multipurpose evacuation centres.
As no country or state can have enough staff power and financial resources in exactly the places that are worst hit by a calamity, there needs to be better coordination to get resources to the right places at the right time. Following the Great East Japan Earthquake and the 2011 tsunami, Japan has been improving the relationship between the national government that oversees policy and local governments in charge of implementation. It pays the Indian states to establish inter-state pooling of technology, supplies and staff to manage deficits.
Underlying crisis preparedness are high investments in health and education, with which are also associated trust and community participation in policies. Singapore and South Korea have had striking economic growth rates in the past, but it is their high shares of health and education investments, including private sector, that seems to make a lasting contribution to building resilience.
Kerala has not enjoyed high economic growth as other states. Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh are ranked higher than Kerala on measures of doing business. But the Public Affairs Index 2020 ranked Kerala as the best-governed large state in 2019 on the basis of 50 indicators reflecting equity, growth, and sustainability. In health, Kerala’s infant mortality is one third of Gujarat’s, and life expectancy 10 years longer than Uttar Pradesh’s.
Per capita spending on health by state governments (which is the bigger component than the central government in India) varies widely. Kerala’s per capita outlay is more than twice that of Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar.
Investments in health and education that bolster human capabilities, on the one side, and decentralized decision-making that empower those capacities with innovations, on the other, make a decisive difference to resilience and wellbeing during catastrophes. With the clear rise in extreme events, it is imperative that countries and states upgrade disaster resilience.
| State | Health Spending Per Capita |
| Himachal Pradesh |
233 |
| Tripura |
188 |
| Kerala |
125 |
| Chhattisgarh |
116 |
| Assam |
112 |
| Uttarakhand |
108 |
| Rajasthan |
106 |
| Haryana |
106 |
| Gujarat |
94 |
| Andhra Pradesh |
89 |
| Tamil Nadu |
88 |
| Punjab |
85 |
| Odisha |
83 |
| Karnataka |
82 |
| Maharashtra |
80 |
| West Bengal |
66 |
| Jharkhand |
64 |
| Madhya Pradesh |
62 |
| Uttar Pradesh |
61 |
| Bihar | 54 |
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.