Given the fact that the en­tire at­ten­tion of the world is fo­cussed on in­vent­ing or dis­cov­er­ing a vac­cine to save teem­ing mil­lions in de­vel­oped, de­vel­op­ing and un­der­de­vel­oped coun­tries, civil rights ac­tivist and Delhi Uni­ver­sity As­so­ci­ate Pro­fes­sor Ku­mar San­jay Singh fore­casts that in the times to come it will be the COVID-19 vac­cine power that will in­flu­ence pol­i­tics in the new nor­mal that will emerge.

HOW A POST-COVID-19 WORLD WOULD BE LIKE is con­tin­gent on the dis­cov­ery of a vac­cine. News of Asia and Eu­rope turn­ing the cor­ner notwith­stand­ing, there’s an emerg­ing con­sen­sus that there will be more phases of the COVID-19 pan­demic.

News of the break­through in vac­cines is there­fore en­cour­ag­ing. How­ever, this scram­ble for suc­cess­ful test­ing and pro­duc­tion of a vac­cine will also pro­vide the beach­head for the emerg­ing world or­der.

It can be rea­son­ably spec­u­lated that con­trol over pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of vac­cine will be the grand road to power.

Avail­able ca­pac­i­ties of vac­cine pro­duc­tion are a sig­nif­i­cant con­straint, as cur­rently less than 40% of the ex­pected in­ter­na­tional de­mand can be met, even if the en­tire vac­cine pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ties were to be di­verted for pro­duc­tion of COVID-19 vac­cine.

It can be rea­son­ably spec­u­lated that con­trol over pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of vac­cine will be the grand road to power.

Paucity of sup­ply will re­sult in an in­tense power play that will be lever­aged by the coun­try con­trol­ling the vac­cine. How­ever, for con­vert­ing old ca­pac­i­ties to the pro­duc­tion of a new vac­cine and in or­der to scale up pro­duc­tion, cap­i­tal in­fu­sion is manda­tory. If the in­vent­ing coun­try has the nec­es­sary sup­ply of cap­i­tal, we may wit­ness the emer­gence of a hy­per­power.

If the in­vent­ing and in­vestor coun­tries are dif­fer­ent, we will wit­ness re­work­ing of power blocks. Here, Trump en­forced Amer­i­can iso­la­tion­ism to open up in­ter­est­ing sce­nar­ios.

Ad­van­tage for coun­tries with avail­able stock of in­gestible cap­i­tal is im­mense. COVID-19 has knocked in­ter­na­tional econ­omy back by 50 to 60 years. Up to a one-fourth to one-third of the eco­nomic ca­pa­bil­ity is lost.

The scram­ble for suc­cess­ful test­ing and pro­duc­tion of a vac­cine will also pro­vide the beach­head for the emerg­ing world or­der.

Re­viv­ing in­ter­na­tional econ­omy will re­quire a mas­sive fis­cal stim­u­lus. Es­pe­cially in a sce­nario where na­tional gov­ern­ments will be com­pelled to in­vest a large part of the al­ready de­pleted na­tional re­source to­wards pub­lic health and nu­tri­tion.

For a de­vel­op­ing coun­try such as In­dia, it will be manda­tory there­fore that it does­n’t get car­ried away by the cur­rent rhetoric of in­ter­na­tional diplo­macy. It will be wise to step back and latch on to those processes of emerg­ing world or­der that will serve it best.