Since I left South Block
August 31 will mark fourteen years since my retirement from the Indian Foreign Service. When I left South Block, after serving for thirty-six years as an Indian diplomat, just over a year had passed since the beginning of this century. The digital age was underway but few could imagine the speed and scope of its expansion. Now, as the century will soon complete its first quarter, there is hardly any field of human activity which is not governed by digitization. And, this is just the beginning; now digital processes are developing artificial intelligence. No one is certain, as yet, of its full potential but its influence is enveloping more and more areas of human life.
Ironically, with all this spectacular advance in mathematics, science and technology—digitization is, after all, only their product--- there are sceptics who are in governmental positions in advanced countries who are questioning whether digitization, in some of its manifestations is adding to human welfare or damaging human life. The continuing obsession of US Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. with the dangers posed by vaccines is a case in point. He has long been a vaccine sceptic, even though vaccines, which have been certified by global health authorities to be safe and efficacious, save millions of lives every year.
During his confirmation hearings Kennedy denied that he was against vaccines but authors Christina Pagel and Sheena Cruickshank, in an article in a US journal, published earlier this month, noted “Kennedy has launched a sweeping assault on the US vaccine infrastructure: gutting oversight committees, sowing doubt about settled science, politicising ingredient safety, limiting access to vaccines and halting funding for research. His strategy doesn’t involve outright bans. But the cumulative effect may prove just as damaging”. Currently, Kennedy is engaged in re-shaping the Centre of Disease Control (CDC) by denuding it of its top leadership to bring more in line with his thinking on medicine and health. Strangely, this questioning of modern medical methodologies is taking place not in a developing country but in one which is in the forefront of medical research. That there is much that is wrong with the US system of medical delivery to the people is true, but that is a different debate.
There is little doubt that the Covid 19 pandemic has been the most significant event of these past fourteen years. When the coronavirus disease began to spread from China in January 2020 and after the WHO declared it as a pandemic in March that year it raised memories of the Spanish Influenza of 1918-1920. That had led to an estimated 50-100 million deaths in a then human population of 1.8 billion. There were, at the beginning of the Covid 19 pandemic no known medicines to combat it. The only way of preventing its spread was social distancing. However, it is because of advances in vaccines development—and that occurred with great rapidity—that the spread of the pandemic was controlled within around two years. The virus mutated; in 2021 its Delta variant took a great toll in human life. However, thanks to vaccines and modern medical methods of treating those infected with the virus the global death toll was controlled at around 6.9 million lakhs—the present number when the human population has crossed 8 billion. This is far lower than the dire predictions made when the pandemic began.
Yes, in the years to come, some of the side effects of the vaccines may be revealed, but the fact is that but for the vaccines the pandemic would have been an unimaginable catastrophe. Yet, persons like Kennedy remain vaccine sceptics! I have deliberately mentioned the Covid 19 pandemic to be the most significant event of these fourteen years because it also had social, economic and political consequences though now it is hardly finds mention in the media. Perhaps, human nature is such that it does not wish to dwell on difficulties past but looks to the future. This is also good but the question is if the world has prepared a list of lessons learnt from the Covid 19 pandemic so that it is better prepared to handle similar outbreaks in the future.
That seems unlikely. The existential crisis facing humanity is because of anthropogenic climate change. Climate scientists had warned of catastrophic extreme weather events once the rise in global temperatures crosses 1.5 degrees Celsius. That is happening and the danger is that within a few decades the rise may become close to 2 degrees Celsius. True, some leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, are aware of the consequences of climate change and are taking decisions to reduce the generation of green house gases.
However, true leadership to combat climate change has to be provided by the US and President Donald Trump thinks that climate change fears are just mumbo-jumbo. He is taking no steps to either reduce green house gases or spend funds for the mitigation or adaptation of its impact on human life worldwide. He simply does not understand that a holistic global view has to be taken on climate change. That will also involve change in life styles which will mean change in global economics and abandoning thinking of climate change in power terms. Such thinking is nowhere on the horizon. One can only hope for a technological miracle in how energy is produced and stored for the planet to be restored to health!
Meanwhile the world will continue to live under the geo-political contest which has developed in the last fourteen years: between a resurgent China and the US, still the world’s leading power.
