How have Asian Governments responded to the COVID-19 Pandemic?

In the opening article for the Focus on the Global South newsletter, Shalmali Guttal alerts on how lockdowns in Pakistan, India, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar and Philippines have left millions of informal sector, agricultural and migrant workers, street vendors, and entertainment and hospitality workers stranded without wages, shelter, food and health care, and have prevented farmers, fishers and herders from crucial food production activities. She further alerts on one of the biggest dangers of emergency measures that are supposed to protect people during exceptional circumstances, such as COVID 19: they can persist indefinitely. COVID-19 has provided an opportunity for political leaders/regimes in many countries to enact policies that favour their interests, which can become institutionalized and be used in other circumstances that ruling regimes deem exceptional. Read the article in English here.