Description
The Covid-19 pandemic has proven that a biological hazard can shake the states to their foundations, indiscriminately. Risk assessment and preparedness to fight a health care emergency is underprivileged globally. This observation incites thinking about the security protocols of the state. Sadly, it remains confined to the military and strategic aspects. A micro-level analysis demonstrates the urgency of critical governance on matters that concerns every common citizen. A global evaluation of the extant practices would, however, show that the world is focused still on high politics, liberal economism and strategic hallmarks. This paper argues that there are circumstances, albeit rare and temporary, which renders the common citizenry as ‘marginalised’. To this extent, the ‘citizen’ becomes the ‘other’ to the state machinery. The bragging of achievements —whether success in elections or a strategic/diplomatic victory— falls flat at the surge of Covid-19 cases. Nonetheless, IR has mostly refused to venture out from its salutations to the great powers. The hegemony at this stage seems superfluous at the face of managing the pandemic. By taking insights into the global cases of survival and denial during the pandemic, a ‘new normal’ in IR is desirable that which shall make marginalisation, the cynosure of the discipline.
