How would history remember 2020? For the losses suffered or the how the pandemic put our civilisation under the microscope? Going by the experience the answer could be both.

The global lockdown put us inside our home. Days, then, were marked by the rising number of deaths and ‘contagion’ jumped right back into our daily vocabulary. People searched for parallel in fiction and those that came close to the reality started getting hailed as being astute.

While we, the ordinary, learnt to find merit in living an austere life and mask and sanitiser took up pride of place on our shelves, there were others who went cracking, finding solutions to the challenge thrown at us by the coronavirus. From healthcare to communication, the pandemic while claiming lives, also forced us to take a relook at what we had missed in life.

Besides life, the most important victim has of course been the marketplace. But the need to survive has always been a powerful motivator for innovation. While the physical production requirements remained a challenge for a few months, all other services found a way through the net.

New edutechs took up the challenge of taking the schools to the students’ doorsteps, and the use of internet spread like wildfire. Social media transcended its basic use into an economic connector even for those who didn’t know how the technology worked. Even the local corner stores took up home services in a way that would have been impossible to even dream of in the pre-COVID days.

The production system quickly transformed itself into meeting the challenges of the days. India started producing ventilators in hundreds and hospitals started learning new ways of coping with the demand. The government healthcare systems, castigated for long as being negligent, started scoring brownie points. A gain that would serve the society even after COVID, provided we remembered what it means to be without an efficient healthcare system.

And then the vaccine! History doesn’t remember any such effective response in such a short period of time. While the healthcare response would be the pinnacle in our fight against the pandemic, the innovations for easing our daily lives must take the second place. Of the top 100 innovations listed by The Time magazine during 2020, the majority has come up spurred by the needs highlighted by the during the pandemic. For example, Caitin Daleart and Maria Rabinovich have invented an app that makes accessing emergency help easy to access. You don’t have to search for an ambulance number anymore. It would automatically access the nearest facility. Those who have tried to access ambulance during the lockdown would understand why The Time has given it a prize of place on its pages.

And the civilisation survived! So I would say, the history would mark the 2020 as a year in which a virus raged the world in an unprecedented manner. But more than that it would take note of how the people fought back the menace with grit and knowledge, by acquiring the new and dredging the existing; how the civilisation again bonded with the nature, and how they collaborated to resurrect the old values and learnt anew the meaning of the world being one.

On this note, I wish a very happy and prosperous New Year to all of you. Stay safe and stay true to yourself.