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.