The Canvas
The world is on COVID fire. Debatable
claims and contestable data apart, death lurks around the corner. Expansionists
and exclusionists alike, nations have sealed borders. Within borders, states,
regions and provinces are erecting boundaries in desperate acts of
self-preservation. Planes grounded, ships harboured, rails blocked, roads
deserted, factories shut and shops emptied, world economy is covid-struck.
While governance is stretched, hoarders, black marketers and speculators play
havoc. Richest to the poorest, mightiest
to the meekest, technologically advanced to the technology untouched, humanity is
under siege.
Spread of infection, likely
causalities and how it will end are mathematical models only time can validate.
But for now, the deluge of patients overwhelms even advanced medical care
systems forcing doctors and nurses to choose who should live. The pandemic has
put every possible element of societal existence to test. People are locked-in
amidst growing uncertainties.
Mankind never looked so pummelled
ever before.
Exodus
The twenty-one-day Indian lock
down, triggered an unprecedented population displacement. Lakhs of migrant
labourers, each one a potential corona vector, clinging on to measly
accumulations from a life of toil, fill the once-busy highways and toll ways in
desperate attempt to get home. The exodus could result in exponential spread of
the pandemic across the country, should a few be infected. They could, if not
managed, also add dangerous dimensions to the situation.
Fuel to Fire
Social media is abuzz with all
sorts of conjectures about the pandemic. Well-intentioned and ill-intentioned, believers
and atheists, doctors and quacks, in fact the whole world seems to be there,
indulging in the ridiculous smothering the few meaningful and useful.
What Caused the Pandemic?
One could choose answers, at convenience, from an endless range of options like, Armageddon, angry God, nature’s
revenge, biological war, economic war, etc, list limited only by imagination. The
truth could be anything but discussions on the likely cause will occupy prime time
for a long time.
What About Us?
Having enslaved science and
technology, we conferred on ourselves the apex position amongst all known
species. But we are still part of the ‘food’ chain. Most species ‘down’ the
chain adapt and mutate to survive and propagate. Many naturally outlive us. Unfortunately,
the highest in the chain is also directly linked to the lowest, the family of
microbes. In fact, microbial colonies reside within us.
Somewhere a corona virus decided
to mutate and become lethal. How and why it did so, is stuff for investigations
and imaginations. COVID-19, like influenza, will reach each one of us sometime.
Most of us won’t even realise it and go about as usual. Some will need help. The
sick and old, without intervention, could succumb. Lock-ins attempts to prevent
community spread so that numbers simultaneously requiring critical care are restricted.
When that fails, mortality would spike.
While we may be traumatised by
large scale deaths, nature goes about with business as usual, working on inter
species equilibrium.
Behavioural Change?
Many feel that this collective
trauma would change human behaviour. The most comforting theory is that mankind
would become compassionate and considerate.
Nothing but fallacy, for history
speaks differently.
Men, women and children have
fallen dead like flies even before. The five pandemics[1],
together have killed more than two hundred million people. If natural
causes were inadequate, we killed more than twenty million people, during the
First World War and another sixty million during the Second. Carnages, continues
across the globe even amidst the pandemic. Compassion remains a faraway
destination as humans remain discriminatingly inhuman.
Change for Sure
Yet, there will be remarkable
changes.
Disruptions have this unique
capability of ushering in dramatic changes. League of Nations, United Nations,
trade and military alignments, efficacy notwithstanding, have all emerged
after disruptions. In the wake of every recession came new class of business
and newer ways of conducting it. Despite fudged data and loud denials, economies
were already slipping into recession. This pandemic just silenced lies and accelerated
the fall.
From this lock-down will
sprout, new industries hitherto unheard of. New class of service providers would
mushroom, providing more jobs than what would be lost. Office premises will invade
homes and acquire different dimensions. High speed data and high definition video
would drive business practices and may become universal and free, eliminating
requirements of physical meetings. Hospitality industry will have to rig up
newer ways to stay afloat. Tourism industry could crumble but recover in new
forms. Insurance sector is likely to see major thrust feeding on human
fallibility. Logistics and warehousing industry will be reorganised. Mining and
manufacturing would see surge in automation. Production lines would become agile, flexible and decentralised. Digital transaction of money could
surge sending paper currencies to the vaults. Education industry too could
experience dramatic upheavals. Possibilities are phenomenal and the bounce back,
imminent. Sadly, income disparities will become even more stark.
Focus Now?
Change will come, at its own
pace.
The focus now is to stay alive
and see the light of the day beyond COVID.
Human race has periodically
been tested. This too, we shall overcome, scathed or unscathed.
That is how mankind
has evolved.
[1]
Plague between 541 - 542 AD
continued till 750 AD, is believed to have wiped out, 25 to 100 million. The
plague pandemic called ‘Black death’ is believed to have wiped out one third to
half of Europe in the four years from 1347 to 1351. The bubonic plague of 1855
is said to have erased 10 million people in India alone. The Spanish flu caused
by a strain of influenza tormented the world between 1918 to 1920, infecting
about 500 million and killing between 17 to 50 million humans. The Swine flu of
2009, infected more than 700 million people killed just 18,306.
