9 Ways In Which Our Lives Could Change After The Coronavirus Lockdown
The coronavirus pandemic has thrown open a volley of
questions, including a rather important one - will it change the way we interact and socialise, for the foreseeable future? Will we, forever see another person with a suspicion of carrying a contagion?
Will we ever be ¡®social animals¡¯ as theorized by Aristotle? All of these are
looming questions that the lockdown lifestyle has posed for us all.
The world over, healthcare professionals are putting their lives in the line to save those suffering from the terrifying disease. How long will they, and others like them who deal in essentials, have to be on high alert and do their jobs while considering the possibility of their life being in danger?
In the strange new world of the COVID-19 crisis, everything is unbelievable and overwhelming - almost like a dream or an apocalyptic movie. Life has come to screeching halt in literally every corner of the world. From the summer Olympics in Tokyo, major trade conventions, to big-budget film shootings, you name it and everything has been put to a complete stop. While it¡¯s still too early to assess the impact it will have on the global economy in the long run, one thing is for sure - it will gravely alter the way in which we consume, learn, work, and how we socialize and communicate.
Here are some of the major points to consider when we think about life after the coronavirus lockdown in India:
1. The world of ¡®touchless¡¯ greetings
The first casualty in the war against the spread of the virus was the handshake, the convention both in the east and the west. But there¡¯s one thing that stood the out, the Indian Namaste, the time-honoured ancient convention of greeting, which is being considered the best way to greet someone amid the pandemic. Since the handshake posed such a grave threat to one¡¯s life, there is a huge possibility for this socially-accepted habit fades into oblivion. To be honest, even after the lockdown ends and the number of cases (hopefully) plunge, the paranoia attached to the virus is going to linger on for a while.
2. Changing education
In a matter of weeks, coronavirus (COVID-19) changed how students were being educated around the world. Online classes on apps like Zoom became a go-to for many. Educators around the world have taken swift and decisive actions to mitigate the problem of schooling. In India too, many schools are using the same approach; however, things are slightly different in terms of access to broadband connections and laptops. In our country the online schooling culture has brought about a sense of social equity, wherein children in urban areas are already catching up with their daily lessons, while those who are lesser privileged are lagging behind. Perhaps, necessity will push administration and leaders to take steps to alleviate this gap so that education is equally accessible to all students, even in difficult times like this.
3. Spitting in public
TOI
There¡¯s a possibility that the coronavirus fear could forever end the spitting festival in India. For years now, we¡¯ve seen government buildings, railway stations, public toilets and roads without pan stains and the like. It¡¯s something Indians just didn¡¯t seem to care. Take for instance South Korea and Singapore, they successfully mitigated the spitting problem by imposing a hefty fine and banned it by law. But none of it seemed to work in India - time and again, fines have been imposed posters have been put up to no avail. Perhaps the mask-wearing habit might stop the ¡®babus¡¯ from spitting, and the general sense of hygiene sparked by the pandemic might finally kill this age-old gross habit.
4. Washing hands
Reuters
This is another lesson that the pandemic has taught us all - it has laid extreme importance on personal hygiene. Never, in our wildest dreams would we have imagined that in 2020, the theme of some of the most viral songs or favourite PSAs would be something as simple as the right way to wash hands. Heck! People were even drawing inspiration from an orangutan¡¯s hand wash technique. This emphasis on personal hygiene is going to stick on for a long time to come.
5. Racism with regard to people from the northeast
PTI
A pandemic has always had a tendency to inflame xenophobia and racial scapegoating. During the 1853 yellow-fever epidemic in the United States, European immigrants, were the primary targets of stigmatization. When the Ebola outbreak emerged in 2014, Africans were targeted. During the SARS outbreak, which originated in China, much like the current Coronavirus outbreak, Asians have been at the receiving end of xenophobia and hate crime. In India, people from the Northeast are increasingly facing racism and discrimination in the rest of the country since the outbreak of the coronavirus. According to the Deccan Herald report, a research paper named 'Coronavirus Pandemic: India¡¯s Mongoloid Looking People Face Upsurge Of Racism' cited at least 22 cases of racial discrimination or hate crimes. The incidents had taken place across the length and breadth of the country in places such as Gujarat, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, West Bengal and Maharashtra, showing that prejudice, acts of racism and racial discrimination are not confined to particular places.
6. The way lockdown improved air quality
PTI
As humans retreated into their homes as more and more countries go under coronavirus lockdown, wild animals are slipping cover to explore the empty streets, and pollution levels hit a new low in years, in many cities. From Malabar civets to Indian bison, videos of a lot of animals roaming around, have gone viral. This just shows the amount of disruption we as a species have caused in nature. Life beforelockdown gave offered no space for nature to breath and this is something that will put a whole lot of things into perspective for human beings across the world.
7. Sense of gratitude and appreciation
The coronavirus pandemic has shown what it means to be unprepared for such a large scale disaster. Movies and video games might have given us an exaggerated sense of a post-apocalyptic world, but none of them made us think that this could be a real-world situation, a scenario in which the dynamics are entirely different. The coronavirus pandemic is one such instance of not taking things seriously; measures were so inadequate in the initial stages of the outbreak that it led on to becoming one of the worst pandemics humanity has ever faced. Perhaps, these will serve as a lesson to our future generations - to be prepared and more importantly appreciative of the present and compassionate towards one another.
