Covid-19 Pandemic and the Future of SDGs

Covid-19 has been the century’s most unprecedented biological disaster yet the response of Indian as well as most other governments around the world to this pandemic has been pavlovian and blind as if, they were caught unawares. Most governments suffered huge losses to their GDP and massive devastation of their markets, livelihood and also their progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This suggests that for the next few years SDGs may be subdued, diluted and compromised to the need for survivability and for addressing medical and health priorities in countries affected by Covid-19. This paper attempts to address some fundamental concerns of law, governance and economy, which have been subdued under an overreaction to Covid-19 prevention and mitigation policies. Much of this has largely occurred as per the present study due to lack of institutional preparedness, institutional coordination and failure to encounter a pandemic with an advanced training in community health services which, establishes social attitudes towards disease transmission, its pathology and drug prophylaxis. This paper establishes the logic that disaster preparedness could reduce economic losses, institutional coordination between disaster and health agencies which could have flattened the curve faster and finally a holistic planning of the Covid-19 implementation which would have prevented the dilution of sustainable development goals. The key takeaway from this paper is that disaster preparedness (1) should be a continuously coordinated process, (2) should be a community driven preemptive design (3) should be led by trained personnel. Unless the three conditions are met, no nation can prevent a pandemic from turning into a phenomenal developmental and economic disaster.