Many ideals and ideologies of the modern world appear to be under a threat today in the wake of Covid-19 pandemic, and even the most vendible system like Capitalism, which was widely seen as a driving force behind everything from development to democracy in the contemporary world, now seems to be failing in the aftermath of the novel Coronavirus spread.
These thoughts were reflected by senior UK-based journalist Murtaza Shibli in a session titled ‘Socio-Political Repercussions of Covid-19: An Analysis’. Held on April 16, 2020 as part of IPS’ webinar series ‘COVID-19: Global Challenge, National Response’, the session was chaired by senior analyst and IPS associate Syed Mohammad Ali, and comprised EP-IPS Khalid Rahman, GM-IPS Naufil Shahrukh and the Institute’s research faculty in the discussion panel.
Analyzing different socio-political repercussions of the Coronavirus spread, Shibli said that everything pertaining to capitalism today – including the banking industry, aviation industry, tourism industry, supply-chain management, etc. – was failing in the post Covid19 world, whereas the only help they could hope to get now was from the socialist model where the government steps up to bail them out. He said that the capitalism, which was taught for long as being the best mechanism to run the world and a best solution to solve global problems, was today on its knees, exhibiting how fragile the system, its ideology, its mechanisms, and the whole infrastructure actually was.
Speaking of the fast-reshaping international scenario, the speaker said that the world of today already seems to be heading towards re-tribulizing. The Euro bloc, which was seen as the most prominent success story of regionalism in recent past, has faltered bad in the current crisis, whereas the local responses of the Western countries from the US to Europe have exposed capitalism inside out as none of them had any potent mechanism to deal with the pandemic. He pointed that there have been some pandemics in the West in past as well, but even while dealing with them their focus remained on profit generation all along. The defense industry in these country for instance had developed overwhelmingly, but the health industry did not enjoy much attention baring the pharmaceutical industry for obvious reasons. As a result of all that, today we see that the health infrastructure in the whole of the West has been completely exposed.
Speaking on the role of global as well as Pakistani media in reference to Covid19 reporting, Shibli said that the international media was generally much responsible and rational in its handling of the crisis. Despite facing deteriorating business conditions itself, it duly supported their respective governments in preventing the spread of anarchy by holding informed and constructive discussions with relevant field experts and specialist.
The role of Pakistani media on the other hand, he said, was somewhat contrary and tinted at times. Instead of realizing its influential role and its consequent responsibility to bind people together by adopting a re-conciliatory approach in this time of need, it was seen promoting uncertainty and anxiety, playing a role of a dividing factor instead of being a uniting force.
The intellectual saw an urgent need of bringing substantial reforms in the media industry of Pakistan by training and bringing those journalists to the fore who know the intricacies of emergency situations and understand the requirements of a health or economic crisis, as well as the interventions being made in its response.
Ali endorsed Shibli’s viewpoint maintaining that the role of media in such situations should be managed strategically. He stressed on the need of developing guidelines and adopting best practices in the national communication and information domain for the purpose, with the Ministry of Information taking a central role while taking different health-related departments on board in order to impart correct information using different platforms of communication.
Concluding the session, Ali expressed his apprehensions over the present phenomenon of fear that has seen the whole world coming down to a halt. He said that the prevailing pandemic fear is generating massive behavioral change worldwide, as a result of which a mono-culture is being developed in which we are being restrained to a certain shell. It is a shell in which we are starting to base our activities, our transactions, and in turn all our life on technology. Doing this, we could risk giving up the controls on our lives, even giving up our personal autonomy. We could end up living in a world where we will be traceable at every step and everything we do would be recorded. It will be critical to recover from this present phenomenon of prevailing fear as early as possible and the media will have an important role to play in this regard.
