Zong Wei   &     Zhang Hao

The rapid spread of Novel Coronavirus has overloaded national public health systems worldwide. The European Union and the United States are becoming two centers of the second wave of virus outbreak. The whole world has been shocked by the severe epidemic and massive death toll of patients in various countries. Measurements are taken such as "travel bans” and “cities/countries lockdown" in an attempt to slow down the spread speed among countries or cities. Due to South Asian countries all in developing process, the relative shortage of medical facilities, staff and the insufficient carrying capacity of the public's health system are likely to be unable to tackle large-scale epidemic and may lead to high death roll of critical patients.

As one of the continents with high population density, South Asians are currently under tremendous pressure to halt the epidemic and provide enough medical treatments for potential patients in critical condition. India, the country with the second largest population in the world, is extremely overwhelmed and concerned about the rapid spread of the virus. On March 24th, Prime Minister Modi made national TV announcement that from 00:00 on the 25th, the country would be in "complete lockdown" for 21 days. India, with a population of about 1.3 billion, officially entered a stage of "national lockdown". According to the data from the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare on April 5th,3577 cases in total had been confirmed and 83 cases died. It is worth noting that the potential number of infected people may be far beyond the government’s imagination as the limitation of testing capabilities. However, in the process of confronting the pandemic, it is undeniable that in the economic and financial fields, the out of control of the pandemic in Europe and the US has caused a series of predictably secondary disasters to developing countries which are export-oriented. India, as one of them, has to tackle the coming difficulties and cannot be kept out of the affairs:

(1) From a perspective of economy, Roberto Azevedo, Director-General of the WTO, indicated that cross-border trade and investment flows can play a role in fighting against the pandemic. This can be easily understood as excessive restrictions on cross-border business activities (especially global trade in goods)，which may trigger an economic downturn and be detrimental to the global economic recovery after the pandemic. Restrictions on the movement of people and goods will inevitably lead to a serious recession on India's related industries, especially the service industry. According to statistics in 2018, the added value of India's service industry accounted for 49.13% of GDP. Under the blow of the pandemic, the cross-border movement of people and logistics departments like aviation industry and shipping industry have hardest hit with the number of passengers, freight and ship routes suffered a cliff-like decline, and the unemployment rate would soar. Those above will decelerate the economic growth and even damage the national economy.

(2) India’s national debt will surge compared to the number in 2019，thus increasing inflation expectation. At the same time the economic growth has fallen sharply, the relief measures are limited but to seek for expansion of national debts and adjustment of monetary policy. The urgent need for loose monetary policy will inevitably initiate quantitative easing in order to avoid a sudden stop in cash flows of households and companies. It is estimated that the funding scale of the relief plan will reach 2 to 3% of India's GDP. On March 16, the Federal Reserve of US cut interest rate to 0%-0.25% while conducting quantitative easing of $ 700 billion. This action will inevitably shock to the financial systems among countries in a short term，and increase the difficulty and uncertainty for developing countries to maintain the stability of domestic currency markets. Meanwhile, it will cause severe stagnancies in export-oriented countries. As one of the largest export-oriented countries, India is bound to face the risk of a steep decline in the value of foreign trade exports under the dual effects from an appreciation of its currency and the spread of Coronavirus. On March 27th, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) reduced its repo rate to 4.4%, which was the lowest point in 15 years. In addition, the Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) of all Indian banks was reduced by 100 basis points to 3%, which would release 1.37 trillion Rupees of liquidity to the market. On an aggregate basis, as Governor of the Reserve Bank of India Shaktikanta Das said on March 28th, about 3.74 trillion Rupees’ liquidity will be infused into the financial system to deal with the pandemic.

(3) The short-term suspension of the "Globalization" process and cross-border spread of the virus may sharpen the populist trend of anti-globalization and give rise to negative pressure on governments of various countries to fight the epidemic. Due to the surge in the number of cluster infections from imported cases and the economic recession in their country, the public attitude toward globalization may change from “positive” to “negative”, which will accelerate the diffusion of the“Anti-Globalization Movement” across the society. In the light of social wealth and income highly differentiated in India, populist ideas have penetrated into areas of politics and society, therefore influencing public ideas. Whether this trend would turn into a radical "Anti-Globalization" or not needs to be further observed.

The Extraordinary G20 Leaders' Summit held for the first time in a video form, highlighted the subversive impact of Coronavirus on social governance, human behaviors, and daily lifestyles. More importantly, Countries around the world should focus on the downturn signs of global economy during the pandemic. The international community needs to be resolute in fighting an all-out global war against the COVID-19 outbreak; needs to make a collective response for control and treatment at the international level; needs to support international organizations in playing their active roles; needs to enhance international macro-economic policy coordination. The last proposal should be paid more attention that international community needs to jointly keep the global industries and supply chains stable with increasing its supply of active pharmaceutical ingredients, daily necessities, and anti-epidemic medicine and other supplies to the international market. Regarding the challenges faced by India in this virus outbreak, there are four viewpoints as follows:

First, the Indian government urges to enhance the "epidemic tracing" of confirmed cases, find out the virus transmission chain of close contact persons, and decelerate large-scale community-acquired infection risks to ensure basic economic activities.

Second, the government's bailout should focus on the relief of enterprises and low/no-income groups so as to satisfy the people's basic needs. Women, children, the elderly, people with disabilities and other vulnerable groups should be protected and provided for more help.

Third, strict measures must be implemented to prohibit gatherings, minimize the risk of cross-infection, and ensure that limited medical resources will not be overloaded in order to buy valuable time to fight the pandemic.

Fourth, the South Asian countries need to accelerate building or rebuilding the corresponding places as "makeshift hospitals" in advance, in order to prepare for a surge of confirmed cases in critical condition that may occur in the near future.

It is known that major infectious disease is the enemy of all countries worldwide. Governments should cope with this non-traditional security collectively and confidently. Stepping up international cooperation and fostering greater synergy are urgently needed to fight against the pandemic and international community will claim final victory on it.

ZONG Wei is a scholar at Kunming Institute for advanced Information Studies, China.

ZHANG Hao is a scholar at Sichuan University Jincheng College, China.