The inequality virus

The pandemic has left the world with some of the sharpest disparities in wealth, health, and education. These have created bigger gap in the society that will manifest itself in street protests and social tensions over the coming years unless we address these challenges urgently. According to the International Labor Organization (ILO) the pandemic and the resulting lockdown caused 114 million people to lose their jobs over 2020.

Training and reskilling of employees who have lost jobs has not kept pace with the disruption. Large number of job losses, specially in India, have been in the unorganized sector and all of these jobs aren’t going to come back. All these will create disproportionately high social disparities resulting in wealth inequalities.

The world is also facing an unprecedented education crisis triggered by the pandemic. At the peak of school closures in April 2020, 1.6 billion children were out of school worldwide. Today, around 700 million students are still studying from home. Access to devices and unavailability of bandwidth were serious challenges in a country like India.

Countries are relying on effective immunizations to save lives and revive businesses. The World Bank’s projection for 4% growth in economy this year depends on widespread deployment of vaccines. High-income countries have secured 85% of Pfizer’s vaccine and all of Moderna’s. 49 higher-income countries are rolling out COVID-19 vaccines, compared with Only 1 lowest-income nation reporting the first 25 doses, according to WHO.

The top 10% of the Indian population holds 77% of the total national wealth. 73% of the wealth generated in 2017 went to the richest 1%, while 67 million Indians who comprise the poorest half of the population saw only a 1% increase in their wealth. It looks almost same or even worse for countries like USA and these are pre-pandemic data. 

These challenges will require organizations, societies, and governments to come together to work with a ‘purpose.’ Never has purpose been so important. Leadership with a purpose is required to a building a post-pandemic world.