Neighbours Against The Virus

Context: Despite troubled histories, countries of the subcontinent can learn from each other’s experiences in battling Covid at the grassroots level, find ways to amplify local successes regionally.

Rationale behind cross-neighbourhood coalition in handling of the pandemic

• Despite wide variation in how nations have responded to the pandemic, the most successful strategies find commonality in their adherence to science and attention to the local context.
• Given our shared and mostly similar social, economic and cultural contexts, local successes must be amplified across the region.
• Every country in South Asia has struggled to ensure consistent mask-wearing to contain Covid-19. Beliefs, priorities, traditions and aversions to behavioural change are more similar across South Asia than we admit.

Challenges in cooperation among South Asian countries: The mutual mistrust appears to have hit a new low as SAARC has not even managed to hold a summit since 2014.

Case studies: Following examples in the neighbouring countries of South Asia can be replicated elsewhere in the region –

• Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) campaigns to solve the problem of open defecation — originally developed by Bangladeshi NGOs in partnership with an Indian consultant — now broadly applied across South Asia and beyond.
• The Grameen Bank microcredit model was an indigenous South Asian innovation that spread rapidly.
• India’s digitised social protection ecosystem with Aadhaar ids and Jan Dhan accounts serve as a model for the region.
• E-governance programmes in Pakistan, like eVaccs and Citizen Feedback Model, have been replicated and provide strong models ready to be deployed regionally and globally.
• NORM: A combination of No-cost distribution, Offering information, Reinforcing the message in markets, mosques and other public spaces, and Modelling and endorsement by community leaders (NORM) lead to large, sustained increases in mask usage.
  • The Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) quickly implemented the model to reach over one million members in Gujarat.
  • Lahore’s commissioner adapted NORM, where masks are delivered using the postal service and are targeting beneficiaries on the basis of billing information from utility companies.
• Community Science Alliance (CSA): A host of physicians, scientists and community-based organisations created the Swasth Community Science Alliance, committing to pragmatic, science-based protocols to manage mild and moderate cases of Covid-19 in rural India.