Thinking Aloud: Volume VII, Issue 2: July 2020

The July 2020 issue of Thinking Aloud focuses on “COVID-19 Crisis: Economic and Social Challenges”. The first page article titled “An ailing health sector in Bangladesh: Any scope for a politically feasible reform agenda?” emphasizes that the health sector in Bangladesh has a ‘stable anti-reform coalition’ among the dominant actors in this sector and resultant ‘policy paralysis’. A general scenario of the interplay between the interests and influence of the main actors in the health sector shows that there are missing actors concerning high-interest and high-influence for health sector reform in Bangladesh, which explains the lack of reform in this sector. The second and third pages of this issue present three more articles. The article on “Challenges of employment generation in the context of COVID-19” discusses the major challenges of employment generation in the context of this pandemic from both short term and long term perspectives. Given the widespread impact of the pandemic on those producing products or services with income elastic demand and living on daily or weekly earnings, many of them might have already lost their small capital base to safeguard livelihoods. The article suggests that incentive packages and budgetary allocations should be accompanied with terms and conditions favorable to those engaged in informal activities with a small capital base. The article titled “How do institutions matter in addressing a pandemic like COVID-19?” highlighted that weaker institutions result in inadequate handling of the pandemic. The article suggested for systematic political decentralization and transformation towards a pluralistic political institution. The article titled “The social protection budget fails to meet the expectation” assesses the actual amount of transferred money to the vulnerable groups through the social protection system. The article concludes that the social assistant budget as proposed in FY2020-21 has failed to meet the expectations and requirements. The fourth page writes about the SANEM Netizen Forum, SANEM SHONGJOG on health issues, and the two budget related webinars organised by SANEM.