COVID-19: Political change on the cards?

The outbreak is here. Turned into Pandemic, spreading across geographies without much of obstacles. The impact is felt in so many domains, from hospitals to hospitality, from tourism industry to ride-sharing. Governments are scrambling to slow down its spread. The corporates are equipping employees with work-from-home options. Unorganized sector is going for a toss. So, how could the COVID-19 affect the governing bodies?

Late 2010s and the raise of Nationalists The Nationalists or Conservatives or Right wingers are in raise in the 2^nd half of 2010s, across the world.

All these countries are democracies. In above list, 3 are part of top 10 most populated countries and UK is making all the noise for Brexit. Elsewhere in France, even with defeat, Le Pen, the Nationalist candidate secured 1/3^rd of vote share. All the leaders are iconic figures of nationalism in their nations.

Cause of the trend After the fall of Berlin wall, with series of trade treaties, countries opened up the borders to globalization. The developed countries became market and developing countries became producers/manufacturers. The blue collar jobs of the developed countries starts shrinking due to various reasons like,

• Increased labour cost
• Environmental constraints on 20^th century industries
• Competitively priced goods from developing markets, compared with goods manufactured by indigenous means

Parallel to globalization, technology companies became mainstream. This resulted in not-so-holistic development, the urban centers starts growing. Once the economic engines, the rural regions started losing the importance.

The Left wingers/center-left were supposed to be the saviours for the affected. Also, the LW voices for equality among communities. For example, the INC of India favoured minority (Muslims) and Democrats of US favoured Immigration and minority communities of colour. The LW viewed their act as bringing fairness to the society.

However, the blue collar workers or rural voters seen this as minority appeasement. With a trigger from RW leaders, they elected Nationalists.

What’s wrong with Nationalists? The voter base of nationalists are strongly religious. The scientific facts doesn’t go hand in hand with religious beliefs. In one way or another, the Right wingers tend to believe in Pseudoscience. The leaders too deviated away from scientific voices from experts.

This doesn’t cause much of trouble when everything goes as expected. But, when we bring teeny-tiny Corona Virus into the equation, the status quo gets disturbed. The initial delay to response caused a huge loss of lives, while writing this the global death count is at 89k and 1.5M are infected.

Human behaviour during the crisis In our houses siblings tend to be in war with each other all the time, but when it comes to a bully hurting the younger one, the bigger one comes to rescue. Same behaviour is seen in countries as well. When it comes to crisis, the citizens, separated by political parties, rally behind the leaders and support the war at their capacity.

WW2 saw nations unite as Allies and Axis powers. Cold war saw nations rally behind Communists & Capitalists. The outcome of the WWV will be pro-science & pro-humanity. This will consequently bring wave of support for LW. When we add up the above mentioned countries, it will be 1/4^th of world population turning pro-science. Every catastrophe brings prosperity, let’s be hopeful.