Resilience perspective for economic remedial of COVID 19 impacts

By Rabi Kiran Adhikar

Consideration of a larger integrated approach to cater to the basic needs are the urgent quest of today. The scientific approach of priority setting and targeting is utmost important in developing countries because of resource constraints. There are a double burden as well as a complex array of the problem emerged due to this global pandemic of COVID 19, which has substantially affected the education life of children. The situation of children affected with the situation of their family and it is determined by the capacity of resilience to cope with stress and livelihood options. But the situation is worse with those having limited capacity to cope with the stress that emerged due to a new type of health disaster. Even during a normal period, they were struggling to support their family need including education as it is costly to afford the fees and other necessities due to market inflation. So as increased the burden seriously due to this recent unpredicted crisis, children and women are largely affected particularly in education, food security, nutrition, health and livelihoods etc. Also, this movement restriction we had recently, has tremendous and long term impact on the lives of the poor and marginalized population as we have been observing the market trend that food prices are increasing which will ultimately affect the resilience capacity. This may bring the problem with the food insecurity and worriedness towards food availability and affordability, which seems to increase. Food security and nutrition intake does have a direct impact on children education. The government is putting a series of measures to address the situation, but more needs to be done. As all the countries are struggling to fight against the pandemic, it is pivotal that the global friendship and solidarity is required to ensure that the situation does not affect the future generation. As the COVID has also impacted very largely with the economic situation of the countries, the potential job loss and economic deprivation would further impact on the resilience of people which will ultimately emerge with other social problem, which needs to be prioritized from the policy process too. We are seeing the trend that the food aid program is also being launched at the local level. However, there is very less evidence that it is being fairly done as we lack the information about the poverty index and the ranking of HH from a through a vulnerability analysis. So, we must advocate the need of humanitarian response with the lens of prioritizing and targeting the food aid and another relief programme while ensuring that different needs, priorities, and capacities are addressed when designing, planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating humanitarian response efforts. Many people have lost their regular income and jobs so economic revival remedies are an important consideration to create the job and income opportunities which ultimately strengthen the capacity.

It has also impacted very largely the economic health of the country which ultimately impacted in their regular work schedule and these people are also added in the list of potential risk groups, which clearly shows that the economic deprivation is the bitter truth and is very near. The global impact in the job market has also an immediate effect in Nepal, as a result, the number of people working aboard is willing to come back to Nepal and they would have a tendency of habitual work-life balance and if not continued, brings with negativity and pessimism. This would bring further problem in the resilience capacity as the dependency to remittance is more prevailing in Nepal and the employment or entrepreneurship has both affected largely in one side and on the other side, on-farm activities have also been affected with the limited use of imported materials, seeds and other technological supports. There would be a chance of positive impact if those coming back with skills and resources are willing to invest if the business environment is created addressing the administrative hassles during this critical period. But the history was neither positive even in a normal situation, nor we can expect a more robust system now. This is a challenge for the government to ease the process which ultimately supports the vision made by the government in a budget speech recently.

The people working in the informal sector has also shown their worriedness and in many instances, they clearly stated the need for relief and demanded the government liberalness. This deprivation would further impede to the dependent population, especially the people living below poverty line mostly the children, pregnant and lactating women as the initial sign of malnutrition has already started to increase, and which might be more dangerous to the overall health and progress of the state in long run and this has a direct relation with the productivity of future intelligent generation. As it is evidenced that malnutrition can delay the brain development function and production of talent and creative mind in long run. The normal expenditure they are incurring in the children’s education, health, food and other necessities should be compromised which brings a series of stress and negatives consequences for family and nations as a whole.

There are many families they are dependent to a single source of income and livelihood have already shown a demonstration effect of it in the form of suicide and psychosocial disorder in recent days and it would potentially be a concern from social safety and security perspective, and it may emerge with other social problem, which needs to be prioritized from the policy process too. We are seeing the trend that food aid programme is also being launched at the local level to address the immediate need of the family which is a short term solution.

To sum up, the resilience development during disaster/critical time is a key concern of all of us. A combined effort of local level, provincial and federal level is therefore important including a partnership with NGO, private sector and cooperatives etc. We are seeing that all the state agencies including key development players and private sector have a role to play during this period of disaster. But it seems like each of them is doing duplicate work and the work distribution and responsibility has not been made scientific to cater to the need for a broader development perspective. Almost all the sector seems to be confused and the priority setting, and multi-tasking mechanism are somehow missed. An integrated approach to address the wider array of prevailing issues is the need of today in which an evidence-based policy and system mechanism needed to be at the place.

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