ABSTRACT
The Covid-19 pandemic created unprecedented challenges to highly interconnected human societies, education, health, and livelihoods. Notwithstanding its abatement and the recent declaration by the World Health Organization to end its emergency measures – the deleterious impact of Covid-19, for example, high borrowing costs and learning loss may be felt for decades to come (UNICEF, 2021). Moreover, it is expected that over the next decades, the emergence of future contagious diseases or pandemics is more likely to occur with greater frequency due to pervasive urbanisation, peak populations, climate change, and stresses from uneven development. Moreover, notwithstanding the important steps taken by countries to respond to Covid-19, countries – across all income levels – remain dangerously unprepared (Gwin and Miller, 2021). This raises a very salient and fundamental question as to how to make societies more resilient and robust to future pandemics. To this end, this edited book produces an assortment of papers on the impact of Covid-19 in South Asia and key lessons that can be learned towards creating a more resilient and robust society.
