Prime Minister Narendra Modi wearing a protective mask chaired a meeting with chief ministers to discuss the coronavirus situation in the country. The Modi government will have to re-evaluate India's relations with the world in post-coronavirus era. (Photo: PTI)

Man is by nature a social animal. This is perhaps the most quoted statement of Greek philosopher Aristotle. It is this human nature that has led to the immense success of globalisation. Like humans, nations too felt the need for cohesion and cooperation.

The World War II accelerated the process of globalisation. The human crisis called for greater collective action to fight off any future crisis. Three key institutions founded after World War II - the United Nations, the World Health Organisation and the World Bank -- were expected to avert a global crisis.

Observers have flagged novel coronavirus pandemic as the biggest human crisis since World War II. On evidence, all three, the UN, the WHO and the World Bank, have failed the world as novel coronavirus hit country after country and destroyed their economies. All three face a serious challenge to their credibility, and this challenge is a major lesson for India to fend for itself and prepare itself better for future global human crisis.

First, the failure of the WHO in preventing the novel coronavirus outbreak of China from becoming a pandemic.

What makes novel coronavirus or Covid-19 outbreak dangerous is its human-to-human transmission, both from symptomatic and asymptomatic infected persons. The WHO is a UN-affiliated body with global presence. It is expected to pass on a disease alert, more so in the cases of fast-transmission contagion, to member countries.

Taiwan says it learnt about human-to-human transmission of novel coronavirus infection in Wuhan in December, and alerted the International Health Regulations (IHR) of the WHO the same month. A huge number of Taiwan nationals work on mainland China including in Wuhan, the coronavirus ground-zero.

Taiwan also sent the same information to China on December 31, which is incidentally the day when China first informed the WHO about still a mysterious disease caused by novel coronavirus.

The IHR is a WHO framework for exchange for epidemic prevention and response data to be shared among 196 member countries. Taiwan is not a member of the WHO under Chinese influence. The global body does not recognise Taiwan as a separate country.

Taiwan later accusing the WHO of ignoring its warning said the inputs from all countries are posted on the IHR websites as a global alert while Taiwanese warning of novel coronavirus outbreak and its human to human transmission was ignored. Taiwan said it had learnt about some doctors testing positive for novel coronavirus after treating Covid-19 patients in Wuhan.

This was a critical piece of information that the WHO could have shared with rest of the world by the end of 2019. It did not. The WHO depended solely on Chinese authorities, who were accused by the local population as well as some independent observers of covering up the coronavirus outbreak fearing economic repercussions.

China on January 20 admitted to "limited" human to human transmission. While panic was spreading in other countries, the WHO still maintained that there was no need for a complete travel ban to and from China.

Many countries, particularly, the European ones apparently responded late to the travel ban and stricter screening of passengers to and from China. The China-Europe and China-US travel routes are among the busiest ones in the world. The novel coronavirus spread taking these routes.

Novel coronavirus brings an economic crisis everywhere it travels. Recently, Ebola outbreak in Africa had a similar effect in the poor countries of the region. A pandemic financing instrument was devised in 2017 to deal with a similar health emergency or crisis.

It is called Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility (PEF) - also pandemic bond -- and was launched to "save millions of lives and entire economies" in the wake of any pandemic outbreak.

The current novel coronavirus pandemic came only two years after its launch but the World Bank waited for almost three months before announcing the first set of aid projects. By then, over 1 million people had already been infected and more than 51,000 had died. India is to get $1 billion in installments. Clearly, the World Bank was slow to respond to the novel coronavirus crisis.

But the most baffling of all has been the response of the United Nations, particularly its Security Council. Go back to 2019 decision of the Narendra Modi government to withdraw Article 370 from Jammu and Kashmir, and reorganise the erstwhile state of the Union.

At that time, China continuously pestered for a discussion on the Kashmir issue in the UNSC while the general international opinion was that the changes made were an internal matter of India. China even forced a closed-door meeting over the Kashmir issue, presenting it as a security threat to the region and the world.

The same China, using its veto, did not allow injunctions on some terror groups in Pakistan for years. But in the case of novel coronavirus pandemic, it blocked any discussion on the Covid-19 situation in the UNSC in March, when it was the rotational chairman of the most powerful body in the UN. It is certain to block any such move in future using its veto in the UNSC. The credibility of the UN is not being questioned without reason.

But China is not the only one to be held accountable for this crisis of credibility of the UN. Secretary General Antonio Guterres's response to the crisis follows a template similar to the WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Both have appeared too soft or "scared" of China.

While Guterres sang the same tune as China on Kashmir and later also on controversial the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in India, he looked looking away when novel coronavirus started wreaking havoc across continents.

In fact, he undertook a visit to Pakistan as late as February 16-19, and spoke about Kashmir but offered just a general prescription as the UN chief for the world when on the question of Chinese role or failure in preventing spread of novel coronavirus. His response looks very similar to Ghebreyesus's response on the China question where he warned about the dangers of "politicising" novel coronavirus pandemic.

All countries are largely left to bat for themselves. China offered help to some countries. So did Venezuela. But not too many efforts with the possible exception of India - through a special SAARC fund and call for collective response from G-20 - have been seen during coronavirus crisis.

Here is a lesson for India to learn. It cannot depend on the institutions of globalisation for dealing with any future crisis. And, that no country can deal with a crisis of pandemic scale on its own. India needs to redefine its diplomatic alignments.

Groups such as NAM may be redefined and revived by India admitting China as the new global power and hence threat. India needs to strengthen its relations with European powers, think of a new regional bloc instead of SAARC, and focus more on Quad - India, Australia, Japan and the US - and Quad Plus - also including South Korea, New Zealand and Vietnam. The old globalised order is a thing of the past. This is the loudest message for India from the novel coronavirus crisis.