At first glance, the COVID-19 pandemic seems pervasive, unsparing, and indiscriminate. Yet, anyone who has been even fleetingly cursoring international news headlines would know that there are vast multidimensional disparities, both quantitative and qualitative, among regions, demographics, and sociocultural strata, in terms of infection and mortality parameters. Apparently, everything from geopolitical boundaries and demographic dividends to unassuming ethological codes and sociology can exert exaggerated, and often seemingly capricious and vagrant influences, upon the various facets and attributes of its spread. 

This begs the question - is it that COVID-19 is just fickle or is there a method to its madness? It’s almost as if the pandemic has served more to idiosyncratically highlight our stark cultural distinctions, creases, and contours, rather than serving to recklessly trample upon and level them, as most expected it to. Drawing a faunal analogy, COVID-19 seems to be more of a fussy, taste-preferential predator than a desperate, ravenous beast raging on, trampling, and devouring all that lies in its way. This is palpable all across the socio-cultural spectrum as well as discernible at both short-range and long-range geopolitical entities. Minor policy decisions seem to have drastic consequences. The smallest of alterations, introductions, or omissions sways numbers in a big way and the enlightening wisdom of retrospect always seems to arrive too late.

Statisticians and epidemiologists are having a tough time keeping up with such disparities and thus with devising a workable predictive model or even moderately-specific, novel prescriptions regarding policy and behavioural norms, let alone a common man exercising their prudence when most of us have been unacquainted with pandemics of this scale for our entire lifetimes.

Staying wary of drawing early, sweeping, and superficial generalisations, one can’t help but note a very conspicuous pattern - The West is neck-deep in the crisis, while the Orient is only, say, waist-deep. Moreover, neighbouring countries, even in ethnically homogeneous regions, often show the significant disparity in their statistics, most of which can be safely stated to be unaccounted for by virtue of differences in data collection. 

Social customs

Social customs are a good starting point to analyse. In the orient, most greetings are non-contact, kissing, and hugging still being largely rare. Mind that it is just incidental for these to be so, and the virtue of one set of customs proving to be safer during a pandemic in no way implies its superiority or inferiority. Yet, perceptible and consistent differences in cultural practices have a large and directly-established bearing on the transmission of contagions. Folding hands in namaste and bowing rather than shaking hands or other contact greetings greatly mitigates the risk of transmission in interpersonal interactions. There is also a distinct aura of reservation and a lack of social overtures in South Asia.  Pubs, bars, and club culture albeit growing, persist largely in the metropolises.

With the exception of cosmopolitan hubs, foreign visitors, in general, find it difficult to spontaneously and naturally intermingle with the native population in Eastern nations, in spite of the warmth of welcome and service they receive. 

South Asians are typically conscious of foreign visitors. It is important to note that “being welcoming” can have different connotations - from something as innocuous as a distinct curiosity to preservation-motivated wariness. Some countries might view tourists very favourably but be severely averse to prospective immigrants. Nonetheless, it is as foolish to assume that cultural consciousness necessarily implies bigotry, as it is to take the efficiency of alienation in preventing a pandemic as its prudential and moral substantiation. Moreover, none of these factors should be taken in isolation or out of context - New Zealand ranks as the world’s most gregarious countries but with exceptionally well-timed and accurate leadership decisions, and adaptation measures managed to be the most successful in combating the pandemic. 

In most of South Asia, there are prescribed norms of conducting oneself - sharing food from the same plate, for example, is rare. Even within the family, there are often subconscious contact reservations and a general air of formality. Traditional joint-family structures and the virtue of the elderly living with families serve to aggravate the risk of microscopic transmission, albeit like most distributions it might exert a mitigatory effect elsewhere, such as reducing the number of disjoint household points for the authorities to track, monitor, or contain. 

Calamity responses

South Asia is better acquainted with coping with large-scale phenomena than the consistently stable, personal-freedom oriented West with continually shrinking governments. South Asia has seen multimillion-killer outbreaks a handful of times and epidemics of cholera, dengue, chikungunya, etc. haven’t faded from recent memory. South Asia thus has pervasive and ongoing routine vaccination programs, besides food distribution networks, rural units autonomous and well-knit enough to allow for effective dissemination of central governmental orders yet retaining not too much freedom so as to take rash decisions typical of small, localised, isolated groups of people.

Indian grassroots village administrative units have played an integral role in its Public Distribution System. They have also been indispensable in clear communication of instructions from the higher administrative units of government and bureaucracy, as well as mediating between modern legislations and traditional, rural mindsets. In the West, rural areas albeit significantly more technologically-equipped, often tend to fall for pseudoscientific and conspiratorial beliefs because of their indiscriminate pursuit of traditional libertarianism, and a blind mistrust in being “controlled” by the State machinery.

South Asia is all too acquainted with all forms of calamity response, whereas most other regions of the world have to frequently or regularly deploy one or two.  While the US sees regular natural disasters, Europe comparably doesn’t. Europe provides at least some extent of social safety netting in healthcare, while in the US, it won’t be an overstatement to call it a capitalist dystopia, being milked and reaped at the whims and fancies of big-health and big-pharma. Most of them have experienced epidemics of considerable size in recent years, while almost every part of South Asia, teeming with tropical vectors undergo one every few years. 

A limited, contained, yet perturbing medical upheaval every once a while ensures that South Asia medical systems are every poised to spring into the crisis-response mode and general action at little notice, with little preparation, and fare way better in situations that appropriate improvisation, thinking-on-the-feet, and cost-effective solutions rather than automated Western grand schemes  and National Healthcare Systems where doctors have little ground insight in coping with crises, relying on databases and well-organised and allotted equipment. 

Cultural drawbacks

South Asia’s experience with mass vaccinations for eradicating ailments such as poliomyelitis have proved critical in timely-enacting optimally-sophisticated life-saving arrangements nationwide.

Yet, there exist certain cultural drawbacks that South Asia suffers from, in the context of pandemic management, especially as compared to East Asia. In an attribute shared with the West, mass mobilisations often turn chaotic and violent. Any agglomeration of people often tends to take a rash turn and crowds tend to turn into mobs acting irresponsibly. East Asia tends to have markedly more peaceful and productive protests. A prevailing ambiance of intercommunity alienation, tension, conflict, and clash in multiethnic demographics of South Asia, especially the Indian subcontinent, is often perceptible at times of crisis. Both systematic inculcations of state obedience as well as culturally-ingrained voluntary, individual self-discipline and social responsibility are largely absent in South Asia. 

In South Asia, crises often highlight even irreversibly deepen communal faultlines and in general prove divisive. In East Asia, crises evoke an undivided response, with the populace spontaneously casting its internal differences and reservations aside. In South Asia, justified skepticism tends to obscure individual responsibility, discontent becoming an excuse from exercising diligence and discretion, and dispensing fundamental social duties.

In times like these, culture behaves like fencing; it proves to be as much of a deterrent to intrusion as it is an obstruction to fleeing. What is important is to be constantly considerate, observant, and vigilant, and retain a fair degree of plasticity. Some cultural conditioning might need to be unlearned, while other values simply need to be reinforced. This is a crisis, do not expect consistency from age-old constructs, but do the most South-Asian thing - improvise, adapt, overcome!

(The writer is an independent journalist, writer, researcher, and columnist. He can be contacted at pitamberkaushik1@gmail.com)