“Life”, says John Lennon,”is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans”.

The scourge of Coronavirus has perhaps changed our lives forever and indeed the world we live in. The future will not be anything like the past. Societies and nations will need to learn how to traverse the shifting minefields of the post-pandemic world. The unprecedented crisis may force nations to reshape relationship between the state and society. The ‘market is king’ model and the GDPcentric growth have come under a cloud.

What the world needs is an economy for the many, an economy that suits society, and not society subordinated to the economy. Economic power must rest more equally. The growth fetish, coupled with artificial intelligence, automation and machine learning, has already exerted pressure on the existing social contracts. The global community will, therefore, be required to work for a new social contract.

The time has also come to move towards ‘Society 5.0’. Rather than focusing mainly on technology, there is need to place the people as main players. When it comes to handling the Coronavirus, neither the liberal world nor the authoritarian system has come unscathed. And yet, some states have performed demonstratively better than others. Taiwan and South Korea have broadly stemmed the tide of the pandemic given their experiences of handling SARS but their well-funded healthcare systems and efficient local governments also deserve credit.

As far as federal countries are concerned, the pandemic has moved centre-state boundaries as well. Federal states like Germany and Canada have done well, but Trump’s America has made a mess of the crisis. A halfbaked federal state like Pakistan has floundered. India hasn’t done badly but it could have done better. The US is not only the world’s largest economy, it is also the oldest federation.

Why have Germany and Canada done well and the US failed miserably? Germany and Canada have highly devolved systems of governance. Healthcare is the domain of state governments. Local governments too have been empowered in both the countries. The newly independent American people crafted a system of federal governance with the memory of their struggle for freedom and the tyranny that precipitated it.

They fashioned a federal system under which the national government would hold only limited powers whereas the states would retain what James Madison said, “a residuary and inviolable sovereignty over all other subjects”. Today, experts talk of “demise of federalism” in the US. The Trump administration’s self-centred, haphazard, and tone-deaf response to the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in thousands of preventable deaths.

And yet, Governors, both Democrats and Republicans have filled the void in their states. New York governor Andrew Cuomo came down heavily on President Trump for claiming he has total authority over states. Governors of states on both east and west coasts have come together to coordinate their efforts on reopening their economies. In another federal country, Brazil, most governors of 27 States, have defied President Jair Bolsonaro, whereas the “Trump of the tropics” has turned out to be what Arturo Vigilio, Mayor of Manaus, calls “virus’s main ally”.

Pakistan, another federal country, has devolved healthcare to provincial governments but rampant corruption, mismanagement and poorlyfunded states have rendered federalism infructuous. Nevertheless, it was the opposition-controlled Sindh provincial government which exposed the failure of the federal government’s policy failures. Had Sindh’s chief minister Murad Ali Shah not begun testing those returning to Pakistan, specially the pilgrims for Coronavirus, Karachi could have become Pakistan’s Wuhan.

Unlike Canada and Germany, federalism in India has been undermined by successive governments. Today, for all practical purposes, Indian federalism centralizes, rather than distributes power among state and local governments. When Prime Minister Modi spoke of cooperative federalism, one expected a new phase of decentralization. However, the reverse has happened. India has become what experts variously describe as “national federalism” and “federation of states”.

Though Prime Minister Modi has taken the States into confidence on lockdowns and on the steps to deal with the economic downturn, States seem to have seized the initiative. Real battle against the global pandemic has to be fought at the state levels. It is too early to say if States are winning the Coronavirus battle. But best practices have emerged from Kerala. Some other states like Odisha and Rajasthan too have been on the right move.

Kerala is the only state which has devolved all functions to local governments empowering these grassroots institutions. The 73rd Constitutional amendment envisages local governments as institutions of self-government. In most states panchayats have become mere agencies to implement Centrallysponsored schemes. No surprise therefore that best practices in handling the pandemic should emerge from Kerala.

People don’t live in national government. They live in local governments. Nations and governments also need to prepare for what Henry Kissinger describes as “transition to a post-Coronavirus world order”. Geopolitical sages are already talking of likely winners and losers. China is working to shape the international narrative in its favour by posing itself as a saviour. China can be trusted to sell its digital police state as a model of success claiming superiority of its system.

It may also take advantage of the fact that the democratic world has been on retreat. What is worrying is that there has been a surge of digital surveillance in authoritarian and democratic states alike. Will China succeed? History tells us that success came to the Romans not because of technology but ideology. Roman military author Flavius Vegetius writes that “The Romans were less prolific than the Gauls, shorter than the Germans, weaker than the Spanish, inferior to the Greeks in technology.

What they had was the ability to get organized and a vocation for domination.” Romans’ social organization helped them to build an empire that stretched three thousand miles from east to west and 2200 miles from north to south. How do the Chinese fare? They obviously have the ambition of the Romans. Interestingly, China had invented all of the technology to usher in an industrial revolution centuries before it happened in Europe ~ blast furnaces and piston bellows, gunpowder and the cannon, the compass and rudder, paper and printing press which were needed to become a global power.

But that did not happen as China did not have the right ideologies that could have given them world dominance. New technology was perceived as a threat, not an opportunity. Innovation was taken as a threat, not an opportunity. China still doesn’t have the right ideology. China has huge credibility crisis. Its ideas and visions are at best vague and clearly lack universal appeal. If the world has rejected Pax Americana, it will also reject Pax Sinica.

Will the West behave more responsibly? The crisis brings opportunity and change. The ‘Spanish flu’ of 1918 resulted in many European countries creating national health services and the Great Depression paved the way for the modern welfare state. Franklin Roosevelt introduced the New Deal to save the American economy. He ended up saving American democracy. India is confronted with a similar opportunity. It must save federalism and write a new Indian story.

Will the Coronavirus pandemic lead to genuine internationalism or push the world towards the Orwellian nightmare ~ greater digital surveillance of citizens through ‘Thought Police’, ‘Thought Crime’ and ‘Memory Hole’ remains a moot question. The pandemic has a sobering message for the post-truth world and post-truthing leaders as well. Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes perhaps saw it coming decades ago when he said, “I believe in people who are looking for the truth, not people who have found the truth.”

(The writer is Director, Institute of Social Sciences, Delhi)