Coping with Covid-19 from the Capability Perspective: A View from a Developing Country

Faced with cruel dilemmas posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, many developing countries have been reluctant to impose a strict shutdown, and even when they did they have tended to relax it prematurely. This is a manifestation of the way most policymakers continue to be guided by the single-minded pursuit of economic growth even if at the cost of human misery. This paper argues that there is a better way of handling the pandemic – one that places human capability at the centre of policymaking. The proposed strategy consists of a judicious combination of three types of policy instruments: (a) physical distancing through economic shutdown, as a means of containing the spread of infection, (b) bold measures of economic support, especially entitlement support to households, who are facing the spectre of hunger as a consequence of economic shutdown, and (c) an effective system of public health support, as a means of ensuring that the economy can be reopened ‘safely’. While all three instruments are important, special emphasis is given on the role of entitlement support, in the form of income protection for households who have lost their livelihoods. The specific empirical focus is on Bangladesh, but the arguments have more general validity.