ROLE OF PANDEMIC IN TURNING THE CURRENT WORLD ORDER UPSIDE DOWN LEADING FOR AN ESTABLISHMENT OF NEW WORLD ORDER.

The Author is Pawas Tripathi, student from Amity University, Lucknow.







Covid-19 has caused a lot of volatility and uncertainty in the global economy primarily because of two reason (i) its potential to cause an exponential increase in the number of new cases and deaths (ii) we do not have a cure or a vaccine insight so this volatility and uncertainty caused by the pandemic has more or less permanently upset the global economic order. Amongst all the countries that have been affected, China is the only country which has some experience of dealing with the infectious disease on this scale.
While combating the SARS epidemic 2002-03, China gained valuable expertise and it has made use of this in its fight against covid 19 as well. Despite its initial mistake in the handling of covid 19 pandemic, China has more or less managed to contain its spread, but despite controlling the occurrence of new cases and deaths, the Chinese economy is going to be affected in its long turn, specially China’s manufacturing sector and its export have taken a massive hit and it might take years for china to recover from this impact.China being the world richest exporter of manufacturing goods, this disruption going to have a cascading effect on the global economy, almost every country including India and United States are heavily dependent on Chinese export and there are simply no others country which could take China’s place as far as the export of manufacture of goods is concerned. So, this disruption in Chinese export is going to significantly affect the global supply chain this is about to effect the economy of almost every country in the world.The timing of this disruption to the global economy is highly unfortunate because we were already witnessing a lot of uncertainty in the global economic and political environment. In a last one year, major economies around the world have decelerated and upon this we have witnessed an increase in geo-political tensions and trade wars. In addition to this existing uncertainty, the massive and unimaginable disruption caused by covid 19 pandemic we can easily conclude that global economic order is going to be disrupted forever.Only time will tell as to how the global economy is going to evolve during this uncertain period and for countries such as India, a massive challenge lies ahead of them. The confederation of Indian industry estimated that the current lockdown is going to cost India 120 billion dollars which is around 4% of India’s GDP, these losses is only going to increase further as the pandemic spread across India, growth estimate by World Bank, IMF and investment banking firm such as Morgan Stanley predicts India’s growth 1%-2.5% which happens to be a historic low for India in the recent past.
Prior to the pandemic India’s banking as well as financial sector was already  under a severe stress and this is bound to increase further as number of businesses will find it difficult to continue their operation. In other words from China to India, United States to Europe, there is going to economic turmoil due to pandemic and the post covid 19 world we are going to witnessed the emergence of a new economic world order.

POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES

Since, it is given that we are heading towards a global recession, most private businesses would need to be supported through government funds and this is going to push most government to breach their fiscal deficit targets and their enter to have a most severe political consequences. The weakening financial position of the government is going to affect its stability and we are all witnessing this in the United States. The United States is no longer the dominating power that it one’s was and it is clearly retreating from every sphere of influence, be it strategic, military, economic and this vacuum created by the retreat of the United States is being filled by the countries such as China and Russia.This change in balance of power marks the retreat of liberal world order and the rise of authoritarianism. Despite the impact of the pandemic, China will continue to remain a dominant economic power and it will continue to exercise its strategic influence across pacific region and beyond, then Russia under the leadership of Putin has managed to achieve a lot of political stability and as a result it is able to extend it strategic influence across Europe, West Asia and as well as Central Asia.
So, this growing stature of China and Russia accompanied with the retreat of the United States could very well mark the beginning of the end of the liberal world order.

SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES

Long period of the isolation caused by the enforcement of social distancing measures is bound to have a significant impact on the mental health of an individual, we have already seen increased in the number of suicide around the world and government will be left to deal with thousands of an individual, who are more depressed, angry and addicted to substances such as alcohol, drugs etc.So these social changes can caused erratic changes in person’s behavior and this will directly translate into a law and order problem and on the other hand, the pandemic is also increasing the inequalities in the society, the economic down turn is going to lead the job losses (formal and informal sector) so rising unemployment accompanied with the suffering to the migrant workers and the rising cost of health care is going to affect the lower and weaker sections of the society the most, such wide spread inequalities will not only affect the well being of the  weaker section but it can also translate a law and order problem, which could affect political stability.

DIGITAL AUTHORITARIANISM IN FUTURE

China being the first country witnessed the outbreak started to deploy a variety of technologies driven by artificial intelligence and machine learning in order to contain and control the spread of pandemic. These technologies primarily used for better surveillance and for monitoring the spread of pandemic, in order to carry out that is termed as social management of the patients and suspected cases. Such uses of digital technologies can help  a government in better control over the pandemic and China’s strategy  being followed by many countries including India.