1 Answers
Definition of Pandemic: Unexpected challenges to the prospects of growth and the economy are quite common in Bangladesh; and the country is widely known as a land of natural and manmade disasters. At present, the coronavirus disease (Covid-19)--declared as a global pandemic in January 2020 by the WHO--has strained the humanitarian and socioeconomic system of the entire country. Furthermore, the havoc of the pandemic is still ongoing along with recurrent variation in intensity which has severely affected all aspects of life and economy across the country. The damages are unprecedented in the country's history threatening all dimensions of development outcomes. Since the virus has grown exponentially, the deadly and highly contagious disease has turned from a moderate to a strong category in Bangladesh within a period of three months. Further, as one of the most densely populated country in the world, Bangladesh's healthcare facilities have proved to be too limited to serve more than 165 million people of the country.
Covid – 19 Global health crisis: The sudden onset of the Covid-19 pandemic has brought about deep changes in the Bangladesh economy. During the initial periods, the rural economy displayed an extraordinary resilience to the effects of the pandemic, in sharp contrast to the experience of the country's urban economy. In reality, the performance of the rural and urban economy after the onset of the pandemic has progressed along two different lines-the rural economy flourishing at close to the normal vigour while the urban economy struggled to keep up.
Devastation social, economic and political effects: Since most of the rural economic activities (including farming) remained relatively unaffected from the Covid-19 restrictions, farming and allied activities continued without much hindrances; thus allowing the rural economy to move forward. According to the BBS, GDP growth edged down to a 30-year-low of 3.51% in 2019-20 due to the Covid-19 fallout, while GDP growth has been estimated at 5.43 per cent in 2020-21. The growth in industrial production in 2019-20 dropped to 3.25 per cent and rose to 6.12 per cent in 2020-21 although the rate had been more than 12 per cent for the last couple of years. The manufacturing sector logged more than 14 per cent growth in the fiscal 2018-19 that slipped to 1.8 per cent in 2019-20. The growth turned around to 5.77 per cent in the last fiscal year. For the service sector, growth was 4.16 per cent in 2019-20 which slightly increased to 5.61 per cent in 2020-21. On the other hand, the growth rate in agriculture edged up in 2019-20 to 4.59 per cent which fell in 2020-21 to 3.45 per cent. In fact, the agriculture sector was able to retain a relatively healthy performance in the post-pandemic period mostly on the back of increased rural consumption, relatively stable weather conditions, little disruption in the supply chains, as well as increased government spending on rural support programmes and varied measures to strengthen agricultural and allied sectors in the rural areas.
In order to be comprehensive, the government's response strategy with regard to Covid-19 should be guided by three major objectives: minimise loss of human casualties; reduce the loss of livelihoods especially of the low income populations; and contain adverse growth and employment impact due to Covid-19 related measures. However, since there are complex trade-offs between these objectives, the key for the government would be to ensure a proper balancing among them to minimise the overall adverse impact of the pandemic.
Conclusion: There is no doubt that the pandemic has pushed the rural economy further towards a massive technology upgradation phase with e-commerce channels developing, low ticket electronic items becoming essential commodities, and mobile phones becoming household necessities for education and other purposes. However, the long term compulsion for Bangladesh would be to adopt an integrated disaster and development paradigm, particularly with respect to its ongoing development process. The current paradigm needs to evolve and integrate practical ways to deal with such future crisis for the sake of survivability and sustainability. The experience of Covid-19 has no doubt contributed to some progress in the policy environment; but the reality is that such progress in policy making can only be effective only if the capacity to respond to the complex intersections of economic, social, environmental and other impacts especially on the most vulnerable population increases commensurately.