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Sunday, July 27, 2025

The Restfulness of a Fake Normality

by

Dr Fazal Ali
1297 days ago
20220109

Dr Fazal Ali

Through­out his­to­ry, peo­ple were born in­to and gen­er­al­ly con­tin­ued their lives in a fair­ly in­elas­tic eco­nom­ic band. It was ac­cept­able that the dis­tri­b­u­tion of eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits and bur­dens was fixed by des­tiny or de­ity. How­ev­er, it was on­ly when hu­mans ac­cept­ed that the dis­tri­b­u­tion of eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits and bur­dens could be im­pact­ed by states, did dis­trib­u­tive jus­tice be­come un­avoid­able anx­i­ety. Na­tions al­tered laws and sched­ules af­fect­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits and bur­dens, es­pe­cial­ly those in­volv­ing tax, in­dus­try and ed­u­ca­tion. These changes have had vis­i­ble dis­trib­u­tive ef­fects. Con­se­quent­ly, every so­ci­ety dis­plays a dif­fer­ent mod­el of dis­tri­b­u­tion at any point in time. More­over, at all in­flex­ion points, in­clud­ing pan­demics, all so­ci­eties are chal­lenged by the choice to up­hold, mod­i­fy or dis­band un­fruit­ful mod­els. Dis­trib­u­tive jus­tice of­fers on­ly moral guid­ance for this un­end­ing stream of choic­es.

Ad­vo­cates of Rawls’ Dif­fer­ence Prin­ci­ple are most con­struc­tive­ly un­der­stood as ar­gu­ing for the re­moval of Sen­ian “un­free­doms” which would im­prove the life­time prospects of the least ad­van­taged in so­ci­ety. At any in­stant in every so­ci­ety, the ex­ist­ing eco­nom­ic and in­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work in­flu­ences the cur­rent dis­tri­b­u­tion of eco­nom­ic and life prospects. To as­sert that we should not change the cur­rent arrange­ments, de­spite ev­i­dence to the con­trary, is to take a de­lib­er­ate po­si­tion on the dis­trib­u­tive jus­tice de­bate. It is to con­tend that main­tain­ing and man­ag­ing the ex­ist­ing dis­tri­b­u­tion is eth­i­cal­ly prefer­able to chang­ing to any ben­e­fi­cial al­ter­na­tive. The dis­tri­b­u­tion of ma­te­r­i­al goods and ser­vices is not the on­ly eco­nom­ic dis­tri­b­u­tion that hu­mans val­ue. They al­so place a pre­mi­um on the dis­tri­b­u­tion of op­por­tu­ni­ties that af­fect their life­time eco­nom­ic prospects. On­ly when we choose fresh al­ter­na­tives from be­hind a veil of ig­no­rance can de­vel­op­ment re­sult in free­dom.

Life changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly for cit­i­zens in de­vel­oped economies dur­ing the first two decades of the 21st cen­tu­ry. These economies dis­play vi­brant struc­tur­al ad­van­tages such as ac­tive in­vestor com­mu­ni­ties, out­stand­ing uni­ver­si­ties; ac­cess to tal­ent; a favourable reg­u­la­to­ry en­vi­ron­ment, and bur­geon­ing tech ac­tiv­i­ty. Along­side these big wins are provoca­tive in­fra­struc­ture play­ers sup­port­ing start-ups; non-prof­it fun­ders; in­cu­ba­tors; and im­pact in­vestors. Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (LAC) is a vi­brant re­gion where sig­nif­i­cant ad­vances are jux­ta­posed against eco­nom­ic vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and a pletho­ra of struc­tur­al is­sues which COVID-19 has am­pli­fied. In 2020, The Ko­rea De­vel­op­ment In­sti­tute and IDB In­vest ex­am­ined the case for dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion in Ko­rea with a view to shar­ing learn­ings with com­pa­nies in LAC. On the Asian Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion In­dex from the Econ­o­mist In­tel­li­gence Unit (EIU), Ko­rea placed sec­ond out of 11 na­tions. On the IMD Dig­i­tal Com­pet­i­tive­ness In­dex Rank­ing 2020, Ko­rea was eighth out of 64 coun­tries and was first in the Eu­ro­pean In­no­va­tion Score­board in 2021.

The study re­vealed that Ko­re­an pub­lic in­sti­tutes fund­ed a na­tion­al in­for­ma­ti­sa­tion pol­i­cy since 1996. Pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships un­flinch­ing­ly nur­tured the de­vel­op­ment of a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion ecosys­tem, in­clud­ing in­fra­struc­ture, in­dus­try, and tal­ent. The re­sult be­came a sub­strate for the ef­flo­res­cence of the present so­cio-eco­nom­ic and busi­ness change man­age­ment cli­mate. The evolv­ing ecosys­tem pro­duced some no­tice­able trans­for­ma­tion cas­es across fields like e-com­merce, en­er­gy, and ed­u­ca­tion.

As the pan­dem­ic por­tal widened, coun­tries are oblig­ed to ask: Are the tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vances of green and dig­i­tal economies at odds with eq­ui­table de­vel­op­ment? How do we en­sure that the dig­i­tal econ­o­my does not deep­en in­equal­i­ty? These two in­ter­ro­ga­tions con­joint­ly force a ter­tium quid or an uniden­ti­fied third el­e­ment that is in com­bi­na­tion with these two known ones: Where is the new so­cial con­tract? De­bate on how the so­cial con­tract changes are liveli­est dur­ing in­dus­tri­al, so­cial, and geopo­lit­i­cal up­heavals. Jean-Jacques Rousseau in­voked the term in his 1762 book, “On the So­cial Con­tract”. This is­sue has pre­oc­cu­pied hu­man­i­ty for four mil­len­nia en­cir­cling the Code of Ham­mura­bi, Pla­to’s Re­pub­lic and the Eu­ro­pean En­light­en­ment.

At its core, the so­cial con­tract is lo­cat­ed in the in­ter­stices among in­di­vid­u­als and in­sti­tu­tions. Mar­i­ana Souto-Man­ning of Teach­ers Col­lege, Co­lum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, NY, in a Bank Street Oc­ca­sion­al Pa­per (Vol 2021, No 46) agreed with Arund­hati Roy, that be­yond the pan­dem­ic “noth­ing could be worse than a re­turn to nor­mal­i­ty”. In the end, nor­mal­i­ty—in schools and school­ing—has long been marked by in­equities. In­stead, Souto-Man­ning yearned for “a more just fu­ture.” Not a re­turn to “pathol­o­gis­ing por­tray­als, and in­ju­ri­ous ped­a­go­gies” that mask the rest­ful­ness of fake nor­mal­i­ty. COVID-19 pushed pause. As Roy (2020) point­ed out, it “brought the world to a halt like noth­ing else could,” as we wit­nessed “the wreck­age of a train that has been ca­reen­ing down the track for years”. Tac­it­ly, hu­man­i­ty im­bibed every long-stand­ing pat­tern and prac­tice of un­fair­ness.

COVID-19 raised a look­ing glass. In these echoes, hu­man­i­ty wit­nessed spec­ta­cles re­sem­bling the ones LeRoy Clarke paint­ed on a co­coa es­tate in Aripo. Can­vas­es that re­ver­ber­at­ed un­bear­able ge­o­gra­phies of our­selves. Panora­mas which frac­tured the so­ci­o­log­i­cal con­tours of West In­di­an land­scapes like the po­et­ry of Wal­cott. Can­vas­es that made hu­man­i­ty set­tle with Clarke’s lament that Laven­tille ceased to be a place. Laven­tille is every­where. Un­der the brush of Clark–Laven­tille be­came a cir­cum­stance. An ail­ment in Ca­roni and among the “Lone­ly Lon­don­ers” in Cam­den. And with every new vari­ant, more schools closed. Fi­nal­ly, we ac­cept that on­ly a ram­shackle project will try to “stitch the fu­ture to the past” (Roy, 2020).

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