Live After Quit

The vulnerability of the masses is the highlight of the pandemic. To get closer to reverse the attacks of the pandemic in this century itself, we would need to be more mindful of the human rights issue that we see developing around us. Seeing sights of homeless people, flooding of refugees with no safety standards in place, waging wars in pandemic hit nations, migrants suffering from the lack of safety nets and prison cells becoming breeding ground for infections aren’t the sights that are reassuring for a world that is wishing to reverse the deadly trend.

The pandemic and the rush to go back to ‘normal’ has also shown us the cracks that are there in our ‘normal’. For a long time, societies have breathed easily in the false illusion that they are a democracy where everyone is safe and hearty. An invisible virus has broken the spell and shown the ghastly lengths of the inequalities. The pandemic and our response to it has shown that we are not equal before the pandemic.

Those who were impoverished before have become even poorer, and those who were already vulnerable have become even more vulnerable. By giving governments freedom to crack down dissent by restricting movement and passing laws, the pandemic has attacked the very democratic fabric of the free world.

We now stand at crossroads. If we keep on exploiting human rights the way we are doing now, a century on, forget reversion, but we will have a much worse global system. To successfully reverse the effects, it is pivotal that we do not undermine democracy and empower people instead of marginalizing them.

Covid for us is not just a health crisis but a well-being crisis. To successfully reverse its trends, we need to recover not just economically but also in the developmental areas such as gender equity, educational equity, and climate change. Unlike sectors such as aviation and tourism that might witness a tremendous boom when they reopen, developmental sectors are more slow-paced and take years of hard work for slight progress.

This crisis, as natural as it looks, is socially driven. What we as a society do now will determine what the next century will look like. As we stand to decipher ways in which we can get on track, it is worth thinking about how we can stop the next pandemic from happening. Driven majorly by the exploitation of nature, by ensuring the protection of the ecosystem, we might if not stop, then at least delay the next pandemic.

So, as we move ahead, it is crucial to remember that future ahead of us will also depend on how the governments and societies respond to crises in front of them. We, as a community, are desperate to go back to our normal. What we must accept now is that the world has changed and it is crucial to adapt to newer ways of thinking and being. The leaders of today need to resist the urge of promising people of sunshine-laden days. We need stricter policies. Conspiracy theories of the origins of viruses will only take us so far. Rather than looking to blame countries, looking to collaborate with them might be a better solution.