The world is on the cusp. After the giant wheels of economic growth came to a grinding halt, Mother Nature is reclaiming Her space. With no industrial pollution, the air and water are a lot cleaner now. With less people out in the open and less vehicular traffic, flights and trains, other species in the animal kingdom are once again moving about with gay abandon. Forced indoors by a microbe that’s creating havoc across countries, the overarching human society is finally retracting. After centuries of plundering Mother Earth’s precious resources, humans have finally retreated inside – getting out occasionally only to buy stuff deemed essential, and not to flaunt their socio-economic status.
Prolonged lockdowns by governments have brought home the realisation that life can even go on without luxury cars and apartments or costly dresses and watches, going to movies, visiting malls, eating out in restaurants, etc. But ironically, economic growth was thus far being driven and sustained by creating demands for stuffs that people actually did not require and with the money that they did not have. Now, all these could change forever as the society is being suddenly forced to rethink the way it has been behaving and conducting.
Confronted with dealing an invisible enemy, the entire human society is actually at crossroads today – undecided whether to continue doing what it has been since thousands of years, once the crisis blows over, or embark on a trajectory that’s totally counter-intuitive but could perhaps prevent recurrence of such a pandemic. Or the “new normal”, as they say. For, sans any cure, people are being forced indoors and into doing things that can be described as counter-intuitive. Besides stressing on personal hygiene, people are now being forced to change the way they’ve been conducting themselves since aeons. Consider calls for “social distancing” or avoiding touching of face or shaking hands. Now, all these run counter to basic human nature. Physical touch is normal in everyday life, as is touching face – at least they were until five months back. Also, asking people not to go out unless necessary or socialise runs counter to what they have been doing since the hunting-gathering days when they would go out in a body to hunt or gather food. Children can’t go to schools or play out in the open, while adults can’t go around mingling with other people or to work though socialisation is intrinsic in the entire animal kingdom.
Further, as more students attend digital classrooms, both studying from home and even working from home are already becoming the new normal. As could stand-alone or take-away restaurants for, eating out with family and friends could soon be a thing of the past. The current situation has also forced many to take a relook at some age-old customs and traditions and rediscover their virtues after they all fell into disuse, especially the way people greet each other without physical contact. Many in the West are suddenly finding merit in greeting each other with “Namaste”, which to them is counter-intuitive. But while washing hands frequently might come easy, being counter-intuitive perhaps won’t and could take awhile before becoming “normal”.
Meanwhile, as closed communities and communities that live in relative isolation fared better in battling the pandemic, there could be a relook on the overall approach to “growth” and “development”. Such communities handled lockdowns and the resulting chaos far more effectively than the mainstream communities. For instance, village-level communities across Northeast India played a proactive role in enforcing lockdown by erecting barricades to keep “outsiders” at bay. Some village communities even constructed their own facility quarantines at a safe distance from their villages to house natives returning from towns and cities. But those riding high on the wave of “growth” brought about by economic liberalisation of early 1990s paid a heavy price. The centres of economic growth soon turned into pandemic hotspots as they were teeming with people from virtually every corner of the country, thereby helping in easy transmission of the virus. And now, as migrant workers return to their villages in States like Bihar, West Bengal, UP, etc, which contribute a major chunk to the country’s floating migrant population, the threat of the virus travelling with them to their native places looms large.
Even on the global stage, countries that were considered “advanced”, “more open” and had always pushed for greater freedom in movement of goods and people suffered the most in comparison with those long considered less open like Bhutan, Cuba, Mongolia, North Korea, Vietnam, etc. Actually, economic mainstreaming has also helped in mainstreaming diseases that were once mostly confined to a particular locality or geography. The pandemic has shown that, like people and goods, diseases too respect no natural or man-made boundaries. Of course, after decades of pursuing the agenda of “growth” through “globalisation”, there’s no turning back the clock. But the pace at which these are pursued could perhaps slow down.
Similarly, the existing world order too could alter and power equations change as nations that currently dominate the world stage could get too busy battling their own internal problems due to the pandemic like massive unemployment, economic recession, etc. With huge layoffs across the globe (International Labour Organisation estimates loss of 305 million full-time jobs and livelihood loss for another 1.6 billion workers in informal sector), the entire world could well be headed towards a major socio-economic and political crisis, and governments will be too hard-pressed to rehabilitate and provide livelihoods to billions. While focusing more on public health and education, they would also need to reignite the engine of “growth” with limited public finance. So, a major cataclysmic change could well be underway the world over, something that no one had perhaps ever anticipated. Of course, it’s too early to describe how the post COVID-19 world would eventually look like. But one thing is for sure, it will never be the same again – the way humans conduct themselves and where counter-intuitive could be the new normal.
Anirban Choudhury