Coronavirus: Make MSMEs strong

COVID-19 has accelerated the thinking triggered by worldwide economic slowdown that it is better for each country to fall back on domestic economies and import substitution which had become a dirty word in the 1990s and 2000s. The intellectual retreat from globalisation has been gaining ground ever since the 2008 financial meltdown, whose aftereffects continue to linger a decade later. There seems to be every likelihood that the quarantine along national borders, necessitated by COVID-19, will become the conceptual framework of politicians and some of the industry and business folk as well for economic thinking in the immediate future. Modi’s Make in India, American President Donald Trump’s America First and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s ardent faith in the virtues of Brexit seem to have gained a backdoor validation as it were from the outbreak of COVID-19. This might turn out to be the dangerous Sirens music which would come in the way of getting the global economy back on to the growth part even as the pandemic runs its course as any viral infection would. Global coordination is a more effective way of combating coronavirus because research breakthrough in one country should be made available to the rest of the world in controlling it without delay. The instantaneous ripple effects seen in global financial markets born out of turbulence in one corner is also the paradigm of pandemics on the medical front. It is global research teams that are needed to get quick and better results in finding medication for the virus before a vaccine can be made to prevent it. It is indeed the case that in this moment of panic as COVID-19 spreads like wildfire and the economies take a hard blow as a result, the concern of national governments would be to protect the micro, small, medium enterprises (MSMEs) in their respective jurisdictions. National identities do not disappear but thrive in a globalised set-up because we have learned the invaluable ecological lesson that diversity is the keystone of any macrosystem.