South Asia's ticking Covid-19 time bomb

Funeral workers in Bangladeshi capital Dhaka bury a person who died from Coronavirus (Photo by Stephan Uttom/UCA News)

The Covid-19 pandemic might have hit South Asia a little late, but the damage has already been done.

More than three months after the ordeal began, the region’s 1.7 billion people, one fifth of the world’s population, are passing their days and nights in fear of a grave human tragedy.

Major South Asian countries have seen a jump in daily infections from a month ago. In early May, Bangladesh was recording 400-500 infections; now it averages 2,500 a day. India has been registering about 10,000 new cases daily, up from about 2,500 in May.

Infections and deaths continue to surge in the region every day, yet India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal have eased nationwide lockdowns that somewhat managed to tame the deadly virus but failed to stop it effectively. 

Current trends in most South Asian nations indicate that the easing of the restrictions and heath emergency rules are most likely to fuel the spread of the pandemic that has rocked even the richest and most developed countries in the West.

South Asia’s massive population, extreme poverty, weak human resources and poor healthcare systems provide perfect conditions for a looming humanitarian disaster.

Home, homeland and aliens

Rohingya refugees arrive in Bangladesh from Rakhine state of Myanmar in 2017 (Photo: AFP)

Home is a place always close to our hearts, not only because we were born, grew up and belong there but also because home is where there is love and care.

Our homeland is an extended version of home, which in addition invokes our patriotism.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic and long lockdowns, we have been staying home not only because we love and care but mostly to save lives. But this long confinement at home has not been loving and caring for everyone as people are under pressure from loss of work and income, mental anguish and fear of death.

The troubles are even more dire for tens of thousands of internal and overseas migrant workers who returned home penniless and hopeless.

Despite this turmoil, people should remain calm and consider themselves luckier than the millions of poor souls around the world who are deprived of home and homeland.

There are nearly 70.8 million forcibly displaced people in the world, according to United Nations refugee agency UNHCR.

People are displaced by natural disasters and conflicts, and they are referred to by many names — refugees, stateless, internally displaced persons, asylum seekers, etc.

Maybe we should call them aliens, because they are alienated from what we all love — home and homeland.

South Asia: a region of rising intolerance

Muslims protest against the verdict of India’s Supreme Court to award Hindus control of the bitterly disputed Ayodhya holy site for a Hindu temple, widely seen as a victory for Narendra Modi’s ruling BJP. (Photo: Arun Sankar/AFP)

“When a fire engulfs the city, even the temple cannot escape.” That is an old proverb but it still resonates strongly in a world today that is overshadowed by increasing intolerance and extremism.

The proxy wars in the Middle East, the constant global export of extremist Salafist Islam by some Persian Gulf countries, the deadly terrorism of transnational jihadist outfits like Islamic State and Al-Qaeda, the state-sponsored campaign of annihilation of Uyghur Muslims in China and the brutal ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. The list is ever-increasing.

South Asia is home to more than a quarter of the world’s population and is well advanced in intolerance and extremism, having exited British colonial rule (1757-1947), during which time the imperialists adopted a divide-and-rule policy that stoked communal tensions and led to the bloody 1947 partition of India and Pakistan along religious lines.

Feeling the earthquake

The newspapers in Bangladesh today are all headlining the 6.9 magnitude earthquake that hit Nepal, northwestern parts of India, Tibet and Bhutan.

It also affected Bangladesh although there are no reported casualties so far – just two buildings have been tilted slightly. But it was the first time I’ve ever felt an earthquake.

I was in Dhaka, attending my class at the British Council on Seven Mosque Road in the capital’s posh area, Dhanmondi, when suddenly the building started trembling. It felt like some giant force was either passing under the earth surface or a giant was pushing the building slowly. All the objects, including 13 humans in the room, were shaking.

It lasted about half a minute and phone calls started coming to our mobile phones though none of them rang, because we’d all put them onto vibrate mode. Some of the older people looked pale, possibly through concern for their families.

Our teacher was trying to make light of the tremor. “Don’t worry, this building will not fall,” he said. “If it does fall I’ll die with you!”

I wasn’t scared but I was worried about the country. As I’ve written in an earlier blog, it’s thought that the next great earthquake after Haiti and Japan is lurking beneath Bangladesh.

While reading today’s papers, more bad news caught my eye. The United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security has released its World Risk Report for 2011, which ranks Bangladesh as the sixth most disaster prone country in the world, second in Asia after the Philippines.

I don’t know what is in store for Bangladesh in the near future, but any disaster is bound to be magnified many times over, because the country has hardly any resources or facilities to sustain itself against a blow.

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