WHAT HAPPENS WHEN RULE BOOKS GO OUT THE WINDOW

OR the first time in decades, the principles on which the modern world was built are open to question. The healthy instinct of nations to hang together, first in security blocs and UN bodies, and then in free trade zones and multilateral mechanisms like the World Trade Organization, is being replaced by a disregard for the treaty-based and rules-based order that holds the world together.

- PRATIK KANJILAL

Meanwhile, the clarity which the culture of transparency had brought to public affairs is being replaced by the fog of state-backed disinformation.

This week, it was reported that US president-elect Donald Trump's administration would withdraw the polio vaccine. Then, he denied it in his first press conference since he won a second term. The point is not whether the initial report was true—what matters is that people took the news seriously.

The polio eradication programme, which began in 1988, is of great significance for all of humanity. It could be the second great victory against a viral disease, after the eradication of smallpox in 1980. Success would also confirm that an organism which infects only humans can be tackled by herd immunity, without the challenging process of inoculating the global population.

Such projects need nations to follow a common rule book. And Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the disease remains in the wild, have faced criticism for breaking ranks. Their inoculators have been resisted due to the colonial-era perception that vaccination is an imperial plot to sap the strength of sons of the soil. It did not help that the CIA used a vaccination programme in Abbottabad to find where Osama bin Laden was hiding. But since diseases do not respect national borders, these nations could be endangering the world's children, not only their own.