Aashiyana Adhikari

Will the world ever go back to normal? One doesn’t think we can ever go back to what normal was before COVID-19 disrupted the regular pattern of life. How fast do we start traveling and vacationing again? That depends on hotels, airlines, airports and their employees. I believe this experience will emotionally scar a generation. It is going to make the political divide even worse, especially along wealth and income lines.
With rising infections and death of four people so far, mass panic has been spreading in Nepal a bit rampantly. While the country is in a lockdown for almost two months now, enforced to slow down and prevent community spread, our economy is facing a huge impact. As people cut down spending on luxury items such as travel and purchase, as borders tighten, and as governments start spending big on health responses and stimulus packages, there are real fears of a coronavirus induced recession.
Despite infection cases and deaths, the recovery rate is also encouraging. Despite that there still is a crippling anxiety across the globe on when all this will end.
Many countries are trying to follow the China model to contain the virus as they feel that a complete lockdown and effective screening are the only ways to contain its spread. Russia is using facial recognition system to catch people who try to violate quarantine and self-isolation. Countries like Israel, Italy and Austria are working with their telecommunications network to track people in infection hot-spots and also to monitor citizen to stay indoors. Hong Kong is using electric bracelets for those who test positive for the virus to make tracking easier.
While our neighbour India has been taking aggressive measures from imposing lockdown to tracking the infected, we quite have not been successful to even test people in high numbers. Hospitals in Nepal are still struggling to arrange adequate number of isolation beds. Although China has been generous to provide Nepal with medical supplies, there still aren’t enough masks and gowns to adequately protect staff, ventilators to deliver oxygen to patients who can’t breathe, or respiratory technicians and nurses to operate those ventilators. If the cases begin to increase, than like every other country facing the pandemic, doctors, nurses and health workers of our country who are under-protected might fall sick.
“Visit Nepal 2020,” carried a huge expectation to uplift the economy of the country through tourism. In 2019, 1.17 million tourists visited our country. This year, the government had a goal to attract two million but with the influx of the virus around the globe, they had to cancel it. It is said that arrival of one tourist creates job opportunity for around 14 people. With the increased lockdown measures around the world can travel and tourism go back to normal in the second half of 2020? Even when it does, will people be able to afford the luxury travel? World economy is going through a recession which will directly impact our hospitality sector. Many hotels and restaurants have already started to cut back costs by laying off their staff. It’s not a good time to be in the travel and tourism business. Airlines, hoteliers, tour operators, restaurateurs and transport service providers have all been hit hard as a consequence of travel restrictions. Amidst this atmosphere of fear and global shutdown, it will take a long time for Nepali tourism industry to recuperate from the losses.
Nepal like most other developing country has become increasingly reliant on remittances sent by our workers. It plays an important role to economic growth and development comprising of a substantial chunk of our GDP. The benefit associated with remittances inflow have multiplier effects driving the whole economy towards growth as it fuels up for other sectors like consumption, education, construction etc. Remittance has also remained a key factor for lowering the population of poor as the families of the migrant workers get regular source of income to meet their essential expenses, including the costs for education and health of their offspring. Regular inflow of remittance has helped significantly for lifting the living standards of the Nepali people living in the villages. But with large companies and construction works in the Gulf and Malaysia being forced to shut down due to the pandemic, Nepalis abroad are losing their jobs and some have returned home. At the moment, this is a primary cause of worry for the government.
Nepal Planning Commission(NPC) recently endorsed a 15th five year plan where it envisioned service sector to contribute to the national gross domestic product by 57.6 percent.But its not likely to happen until the pandemic subsides. As people start to socially distance themselves, those in white collar jobs are easily being able to work from home, while workers in sectors like hospitality, retail and industries are being told to let go as their companies get less or no business. This further jeopardizes some of the least financially secure workers in the country – jobs in these fields are often part-time and typically pay low wages.
In Nepal, many small businesses and restaurants have come on the verge of permanent shut down due to lack of financial cushion needed to survive. The government announced plan of a three month delay on loan payment hardly meets the expectation of the SMEs. In addition, the government needs to do serious homework on how low-income families will pay for their electricity bill of last month and house rentals.
The global economy can pick up rather swiftly but for developing country like Nepal, economic crisis can come as a bigger shock than that of direct impact of the virus. Nepal, on one hand, needs to improve its capacity to deal with future disasters and on the other hand needs to start focusing on decreasing the poverty rate.
When we come out of the present crisis, the world will be different, and so will we. The COVID-19 crisis is likely to change us and the ways in which countries function. We might travel less, work cultures might change, work from home can be a new thing and people might be Zooming more.

(The author is a research associate at Centre for South Asian Studies.)