The Covid-19 Conundrum in the Developing World

Kanishkh Kanodia, Policy Punchline Podcast

Kanishkh Kanodia

As the eyes of the world are turned towards the rising number of COVID-19 related cases in developed nations, most notably across Europe and in the USA, the footprint of the outbreak has been rapidly growing in the developing world as well. Nations across South Asia, South East Asia, Latin America and Africa, which have limited state capacity, poor health infrastructure and weak social welfare policies, are now scrambling to contain the spread of the coronavirus. Here, the choice for policymakers is not just a trade-off between the economy and implementing norms of social distancing. Rather, any choice to contain the spread is an unsettling bargain between saving their citizens from dying of hunger or the coronavirus. 

In these developing nations, a majority of the populations work in the informal sector, that is in a part of the economy that is neither taxed nor monitored by the government. These include people like vegetable vendors, people owning small corner shops and salons, and informal employees working in households and firms without any proper social security. In India the informal sector comprises about 90 percent of the total workforce; in Mexico, the sector accounts for about a quarter of the economic output. In fact, a report from the Internal Labor Organization indicates that about 68 percent of the employed population in the Asia-Pacific works in the informal sector. As a result, unlike their counterparts in developed nations such as Italy or UK, these workers have neither any compulsory sick paid leaves, nor do they have formal means of social protection and access to financial resources secure them during a pandemic. For these workers, staying home means a depletion of their meagre savings, perhaps even sleeping hungry on some days.

Moreover, a sizable proportion such workers are migrant workers who often work in different parts of their home country or perhaps even in different countries to earn a living. These include a Bengali construction worker in a Delhi site, a Malaysian worker in a Singapore factory, or a Filipina servant in a rich Bangkok household. During massive lockdowns, such workers have two choices: live in the overcrowded and unhygienic government shelters which have the potential of becoming incubators of the virus or migrate back to their villages, potentially spreading the virus to the rural areas of their nations. Either way, the prospect of containing the spread seems gloomy. The crisis of the migrant workers in developing nations, most notably India, has revealed the limited impact of a lockdown on such nations. Any step to contain the virus should have been accompanied by a set of policies that prevented such mass internal migrations by sheltering the workers in the cities. Moreover, the weakness of the bureaucratic networks of these states have prevented an efficient distribution of food and essential supplies to these invisible workers. The government needs to ensure that the supply and distribution chain of food remains unhindered or else hunger will kill workers before the virus does.

A second challenge facing these nations is implementing the behavioral norms and changes among the densely packed populations in the urban slums. Dharavi, the largest slum in Asia, is an area of one square mile in the heart of Mumbai that has a population density about 30 times greater than New York City. Houses have no running water. They often share their toilets and kitchens. Cities such as Lagos, São Paulo, Mumbai, Karachi, Jakarta and Johannesburg are replete with such dwellings. How can one possibly socially distance themselves in these conditions? The sharp inequalities in developing nations render social distancing to be a privilege rather a practice. Once the virus enters these communities, and it already has, it will spread here more quickly than anywhere else. Containing the spread in these areas will require a massive ramping up of surveillance and contact testing measures, none of which are yet to be seen. 

The developing nations so far haven’t witnessed a surge in the number of cases as seen in Europe or the USA. Many fear that it is the lack of the state’s capacity in surveillance and testing that has resulted in an underreporting of the numbers. Nevertheless, given the ground realities of such nations, lockdowns and social distancing without additional policy measures only seem to delay the doom. These nations are still at a stage where they can check the spread and prevent a stockpiling of dead bodies. Within their limited state capacities, they need to take the social realities of their nations into account and frame adequate policies, before it’s too late.