Globalisation: Rethinking Development in the Context of the Pandemic

Abstract

The stark reality of human existence with a predictable 90 per cent of most reported cases emerging from these showcases of development, urbanisation, and industrialisation — our cities and towns tell us something that we cannot ignore. The cities took the brunt and revelled as the epicentres of the pandemic and a public health disaster, with the lockdowns remaining prolonged, severe, and even punitive in many cities of the world. We discuss here, the impacts of unprecedented crisis as we continue to rely on a globalised economy, and gaze at the helplessness with which the state handles our lives and appears to compromise our destinies through in a market full of uneven players. COVID-19 first hit the global power centres, the developed nations, and the business capitals in developing countries. Excited holidaymakers cruising passenger returnees from Ruby Princess began infecting others and those others infected capital cities like Sydney and Melbourne, Australia. It is intriguing and highly disturbing that how responsibility for a disease that travelled across borders with passports and through commercial airlines came to be laid at the poor of Mumbai’s slums or Brazil’s favelas. It is really the well-off and the powerful who seem to rule the roost in cities. The density of populations in urban habitats and the intensity of local and global interconnectivity have made these urban habitats clearly more vulnerable to the spread of the virus. Be it the social housing that is vertical for low-income earners in Melbourne or the urban sprawls of Dharavi, Mumbai; evidence suggests that density per se correlated to higher virus transmission.