HEALTH Pause and Reboot: Reflections on Economy, Society and Polity during Covid-19 Global Pandemic and Lessons for India

The current global crisis arising out of Covid-19 pandemic that has already consumed hundred of lives worldwide, has once again exposed glaring weaknesses of the economic, social and political order presided over globally by the neoliberal architecture. This article attempts to understand not just the current global and national/regional crises from the perspective of the Covid-19 pandemic, but to take a look at the historical processes of widening inequalities in the context of the overarching phenomenon of neoliberal socio-economic and political programmes. I propose that world capitalism, especially after the growth of sea-based trades, which eventually translated into creation of worldwide imperialism that captured and controlled natural and productive resources in more than half of the world geographical area, has been continuously reinventing itself to remain in the privileged position of power. The ever rising scope and intensity of global capitalism and its current avatar—neoliberalism, is closely associated and responsible for widening economic inequality, socio-spatial concentration of wealth, extensive and irreversible environmental degradation, climate change, political disenfranchisement, accumulation by dispossession and deepening of social class and ethnic divisions and conflicts within national boundaries as well as between and among countries. The current crisis is a culmination of greed based trade and unnecessary competition. It is imperative now to redefine global priorities and in the light of insightful recent innovations in the field.

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