Kuldip Maity

The pandemic has thrown many questions at us, answers to which we had known in a different way. For example, giving our children smartphones. Before 23rd March, most parents were firmly convinced that children should not be given smartphones as they could stumble upon things in the internet that their young minds cannot process.

However, in a little over a couple of (locked down) months, the opinion largely stands on its head! Not entirely though, but to a large extent. Parents who had steadfastly refused to give their children smartphones are now racking their brains to fashion arguments with which they can reverse the “no smartphone for you” argument they had drilled into young minds earlier. With classroom teaching forbidden since March 24, when the lockdown began, many schools (in urban areas at least)have begun teaching students digitally.

Working parents are in a bind. First, they need their smartphones to keep in touch with the office or work from home if their job permits. But their child needs the same smartphone during school hours to take online lessons from their teachers.

So at least one parent must give up his or her phone to the child. And if they have more than one child in “school”, the experience becomes fodder for a Bollywood comedy!

Education boards have dictated that schools should exploit digital access and continue classes. Teachers have the hardware, but a lot of students don’t. With the lockdown in force, one can’t just go out to a mall and buy a smartphone or a laptop (if the parents can afford the extra ones). Ordering online has just become possible, but delivery takes time.

So, have we, by restricting our children’s access to the digital world so far, chosen to turn a blind eye to what is a reality in our time? Were we right in denying access? These are the questions that have started dogging us now.

Giving our children their smartphones has its pros and its cons. Being aware of the cons make us adults. The coronavirus pandemic and the lockdown that entire nations have imposed on themselves has shown us that in today’s digital world it is difficult to function without a smartphone.

The point here is that denying children their smartphones will not make their life safer or better—it will just disempower them. However, parents must supervise the access while showing the children the positive side of a digital world. Schools will also have to rethink their digital aversion.

Any topic that we touch now invariably gets a pandemic reference. It’s even truer in the case of using social media. It now envelops our lives. Social media has turned into the key to our existence, whether we are looking for entertainment, updates in the coronavirus picture, protection against the virus or even conspiracy theories. As is the case with everything else, this dependence is also not without its negatives.

With the outside world in its physical form remaining out of bounds, we are getting almost married to the screen. The information flow on social media is staggering, as is the access to entertainment. But if we are not careful, we may acquire habits that could be debilitating in many ways.

Let us look at the pros. Social media, properly used, gives us easy access to a wide spectrum of information and entertainment that had so far required some degree of physical connect. With the myriad ways this new age information basket is connecting us to our requirement at our convenience wherever we are 24x7. Something that could not even be dreamt of a decade back.

With this kind of access, cooped up at home, we are reading newspapers online that we otherwise wouldn’t have read, watching television channels that we didn’t know existed and learning to share our lives with celebrities and friends in a manner that under the normal circumstances wouldn’t have even been explored. We are getting intellectually enriched, learning new things and doing stuff with help from social media. And we are keeping in touch with our relatives more regularly.

But our new lifestyle is also bringing a new set of illnesses that we had not foreseen earlier. It’s turning out to be a debilitating addiction. Glued to various screens as we are, our first damage is to our eyes. Doctors are warning us against continuous and prolonged exposure to bright screens – whether of mobile phones or tablets or laptops or televisions.

Psychiatrists are reporting cases of patients with withdrawal symptoms. Denied access to social media, people are turning restless – a symptom that reflects the ills of an addiction. This is being referred to as FOMO – the fear of missing out. Then comes the much-required physical activity that is required in our forced captivity. With the screen taking us away from even that little movement of taking a book from its shelf or putting the DVD into the player, we are increasingly turning prone to lifestyle diseases in addition to what our previous mode of existence has burdened us with.

So, in these days of the coronavirus, I would say, stay social digitally – for we have no other ways of being so – but do so keeping in mind how we are doing it. Let’s not bring more afflictions while trying to stay safe from the coronavirus!

The Covid-19 pandemic has dealt a huge blow to the concept of globalisation. It is not as if the essentials of the concept have been challenged. But it has challenged globalisation’s extreme form of country specialisation. With the world depending on China for a vast array of manufactured products, the national lockdowns aimed at preventing the n-coronavirus from spreading have cut off or choked supply lines of almost everything, from medicines to ventilators.

The global reaction to the Chinese monopoly in manufacturing has not been very unexpected. Led by the USA, all other nations are looking towards cutting their dependence on China. India has decided to seize the chance and attract those investments that are looking to disperse away from China.

We must also remember that it is not going to be easy, neither will it happen overnight. According to the United Nations Statistics Division, China has a share of nearly 29 per cent in the global manufacturing cake with the USA following with a mere 16.6 per cent. India, with a share of about three per cent, occupies the sixth position.

The power of China and its stranglehold on the world economy are quite clear from such numbers. And for India, that is a big opportunity. China’s vice-like grip on the world economy has now started to worry all nations and the companies.

Anticipating a shuffle in the manufacturing investment strategy, India has swung into action. According to various media reports, the Centre has already earmarked 461,589 hectares for investments shifting away from China.

South Korea is three per cent the size of India but has a 3.6 per cent share of global manufacturing against India’s 3.3 per cent. India is not only a huge country but its population of 1.38 billion is the world’s second-largest. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had, after assuming office, declared the importance of manufacturing and made “Make in India” a mission statement of his government; we can now realise how astute that call was.

The coronavirus pandemic is a survival challenge, but it has also opened an opportunity for us to seize – for India to become a major manufacturing nation again. Let us seize the day.

More flowers are blooming than usual. A popular Bengali newspaper carried a report to this effect. It is up to the scientists to validate this claim, but the sentiment is unmistakable. With industry, commerce and transport having practically halted, the air is cleaner - and this is making us feel blessed.

The story of cleaner air and cleaner sky is doing the rounds across the globe with similar passion and frequency. But some voices are sceptical and say that we should enjoy it as long as it lasts. And they cannot be faulted either as they have a reason to justify their alarmist position.

Social media is awash in viral videos (some real, some fake) of animals seemingly enjoying the outdoors as humans remain indoors. There is a video of a herd of elephants walking majestically along a road somewhere in Coorg. Then there is a pangolin, known as a shy animal, walking across a deserted thoroughfare that is usually choked with traffic. The cake goes to a clip showing how dolphins and swans are back in the cleaner waters of Venice. (These were fakes: the swans were shot in Burano near Venice, where they are regulars. Similarly, the dolphins were regulars in Sardinia.) But such “happy” videos reflect the general sentiment about the pollution that engulfs us.

However, as Jonathan Watts writes in The Guardian dated 9 April, there has been a general fall in the carbon and nitrogen dioxide emission by about 18 per cent between early February and mid-March. And the advocates of alternative energy are arguing that we should learn from this and embrace greater exploitation of clean energy sources.

But will the policy makers agree? The current global evidence, especially, the US policy swings, is a negative pointer. The US Environmental Protection Agency has stopped enforcing environment protection norms. The administration has also rolled back fuel economy standards for motor cars.

It is being argued that the world may not learn from the lessons of the lockdown days. From Africa there is a graver message coming loud and clear. With the tourism industry down in the dumps because of the lockdown, the parks are running low on funds. Some parks may not be able to afford the rangers entrusted with the job of fending off the poachers. This is dangerous news. Similar stories are being heard from the Amazon.

Given the spread of things as is being witnessed across the Earth’s environment, will we learn a lesson and mend our ways? Or, as environmentalists have been warning us for quite some time now and if we don’t there might be other pandemic to face, will we decide to submit to the revenge of Nature?