Democracy, economics, or health-Time to look to the east for leadership

While the capabilities of the low and middle-income countries (LMIC) have always been defined as “doubtful” to deal with public health crises of Covid pandemic magnitude, a flip-flop and incoherent response by the high-income countries (HIC) was unexpected. In the unprecedented moment of the pandemic, it is that we are beginning to find among ourselves, across the globe a search for stronger, resilient, scalable, and economy-efficient foundations in health systems that are capable of delivering healthcare to all. The apparently underperforming international health bodies have only increased this willingness of individual nations to look towards multilateralism as the foundational principle for not just the exchange of ideas but to deliver on these. India, a vibrant and the largest democracy, has showed her willingness to overcome, for example, the limitation of the vaccines during COVID to a few by making availability and possible delivery of a safe and effective vaccine to populations across the world. This has not only been seen as a hope to surmount challenges through help from others but also as a show of human resilience in the face of adversity.