I have a question that I am asking all the economists, epidemiologists, scientists, policy makers and any every businessman and or thinker I know or can get in touch with, and it is this:
What will happen in six months, or one month? How do you process the future?
The goal however is not to know the right answer, the goal is to understand different visions of the future, or at least how people are thinking about it. We spend a good amount of time thinking about the future. It is also true, that we spend time lamenting about the past which led us to the present. The present in the true sense is incomplete without the past and the future. There are no easy ways to think about what is happening currently and what chain of events will take us into a future we don’t know much about.
To put a very simplistic model forward, the present is made up of inputs and learning of the past, and the goals we have for the future. These in addition to our values, our cultures, moral sentiments probably which are constant (albeit calibrated along the way) make up the recipe for the future. Complications increase when the future of billions of people have to be taken into account at a time when we have to abandon our economic and cultural/social activities.
There are two important strands of our lives put simply:
- Economic activities and transactions
- Social and cultural activities and transactions.
Robust And Brittle Transactions: Social And Economic Fronts
I am not denying huge interplays between the two strands of our lives, but the COVID19 has forced us to somewhat separate them. India as a country has to sustain itself for sometime doing the minimal and essential amount of economic activity. To be dramatic, we are killing the economy and interactions that form it to keep the people alive. It also turns out, a large number of our population (300 million - 500 million) depend on day to day economic activities and they have almost no future economic activities to sustain them, which is a huge worry.
Internet based activities contribute to around 14-16% of our GDP according to some estimates. I am not an expert in calculating at how we arrive at these numbers, but one can argue that a good amount of offline labour and production also is behind these numbers. Coming back to our point where, India as a country is now stuck with its cultural activities (Gudi Padwa (Hindu New Year) in Maharashtra, Ramzan coming up in few months, and others). Make no mistake, these activities and transactions will not and can not be “cancelled”. Say what you want about the 5pm “thali festival” convened by Modi, it just shows how the people of India are always excited to commit to perform intrinsically non economically rewarding activities. Calling it “inspiring” or “lame” are really besides the point. It happened and some cultural capital got built for sure.
Marx was both wrong and right when he said, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people”. Without going into details let me put an alternate perspective with which, on the margins, I sympathise more. Tyler Cowen, maybe one of the most important cultural and economic thinkers of our time says:
“Some people will say, “I’m spiritual but not religious.” I would sooner say, “I’m religious but not spiritual.” My cosmology is maybe agnostic, tending not to believe that there’s a God as commonly understood, but I have this core American idea that you have values, you go out, you build things, you do things. You take on projects, and those projects should help other people. You’re very committed to this, you see it through. I’m a big believer in that… Obviously each religion is different and contains many strands, but it’s not an accident that those are the stickiest ideas, right? Those are what carry culture more effectively than, say, political philosophy or the great books of the ancients.”
I think time will show us, that social and cultural activities are robust in nature and have an inbuilt capacity to bounce back. You can cancel the pilgrimages of Mecca and Pandharpur, for a couple of years and the third year you will see more pilgrims continuing that activity. Somehow cultures and social practices are anti-fragile (Taleb readers would know) in nature, their continuation and sustenance becomes easier after a black swan event.
Economic activities on the other hand, are brittle, sensitive and demand continuity on a day to day or week-to-week basis. The repetition, the engagement has to be continued or problems begin to occur. Economic activities and transactions occur on the external and hence are affected by the external. The study to understand economic actions have to study many many external agents and its effect on the actor. Models while trying to understand and predict future states of systems, assume that agents in the system behave rationally. I think very few economic, cultural and political actors would have predicted the needs of a response to the COVID19.
Future Common Economic Aspirations
When I met a friend last month in my native town in Solapur, he did not think highly about the new food for all service launched by Maharashtra government. His over all sentiment was, to put it shortly, that it was somewhat insulting for the government to offer cheap and low quality food and instead governments should focus on generating employment that helps people put food on their own table. Most of others agreed to this point of view. I talked to the same friend yesterday, it seems like he has a different perspective altogether.
The gravity of the situation and the urgency make a deep impact on how we think about our future. Those of us who can not help the present situation, should sit back and analyse what is actually happening to our economic infrastructure. Daily wage workers are going to be badly hit, many small businesses may go out of business. We are sliding into an economic system where the state may have to directly provision resources for the workers and the most vulnerable.
We will be mostly forced into being a huge welfare state even though we could afford it or not. If the direct transfers, some sort of an UBI (universal basic income) finds favour in the general populous, the government will have to stick with it. What happens then? Does the buying and spending patterns make an impact on what goods are produced and how they are marketed? Will government spending on particular schemes be lesser and thus less effective?
The urgent need for PPE, ventilators and other medical equipments has caught the manufacturing by surprise. Again like most topics, I am not an expert on manufacturing and supply chains, but the fundamental question remains that if the COVID19 situation inspire us to become self reliant, energise our entrepreneurs or it leaves them with little hope for the future. What we are will be revealed (dramatic, I know).
A future is foreseeable where citizens demand a bigger welfare state, but directed towards individuals rather than schemes. Scheme politics will somewhat decline. Direct cash transfers, especially to the poorest may become a norm.
Health, Nutrition And Habits
Our attitudes towards what we eat and how we think about diseases have been contradictory to say the least. Each household in India follows or tries to follow some nutrition advice that may even be promoting some pseudo-science or placebo effects. Putting that aside, the intent seems to be at the right place. But again stats show we are the diabetes and cardiac disease capital of the world given our actual diets.
My experience working a small stint in healthcare analytics firm showed me that Indians are also bad at following doctor’s prescriptions. Not following simple doctor’s prescriptions and relying on ad-hoc treatments is a separate problem that exists in our healthcare ecosystem. Companies and startups looked at alerting patients about their own prescriptions as an innovation. One of the most thoughtful persons I know who I approached for his perspectives on the current crisis and overall views on the future noted that not listening to experts, is a disease that runs in our country from the Prime Minister’s Office to every citizen on the street. (I am paraphrasing a bit.)
Does the onsite of a pandemic, a once in 100 years event help us see our healthcare and the public health in a different light? The current crisis demands huge investments into the ailing healthcare ecosystem which was somewhat neglected since our independence. If we are to beat the pandemic, the prize is that we will have a somewhat improved healthcare ecosystem with more hospital beds, more ICUs, more trained paramedics and enhanced system capacity. We cannot afford to waste this crisis.
Public especially in the first and second tier cities will keep on the mask, it will become a habit that will grow (imagine Japan and South Korea). I also feel that some will not get over washing their hands 10 times a day. Some habits, in some clusters will stick and that is a good thing.
Future
Predicting the future is probably a fool’s favourite errand. I am trying to be that fool for the most part. The most smart people I have read and observed do predict the future by doing it in a different way. They lay out visions or possibilities of possible futures. One of the targets of the series of essays is to think what the future holds for India. Maybe put a version of possible future and maybe more.