The entire world at this moment is in a very difficult situation. We are having millions of people self- isolating. Nearly half the world’s population is under some form restriction because of the lockdown by the countries to fight against the coronavirus. Millions of health care workers are risking their lives on our behalf. In India the borders are packed with unstoppable migrants who are heading home because of nationwide lockdown despite the assurance by the government that they would be looked after where they are at present. The coronavirus has already driven the global economy into recession, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned recently. A social recession is also marked by growing loneliness and isolation due to the shutdown measures adopted by the government to fight against the pandemic. It is seen that loneliness is more than a bad feeling and it harms our health and our ability to perform. Economic shut down could be recovered but the social recession that is going to happen is a scale, will be hard for the society to deal with.
Now let’s see the other side of the story. When the human beings are locked inside, the empty roads and beaches are taken over by animals and birds. Many animals are roaming freely in the deserted roads and streets. Wild animals are also seen in the roads. It seems nature has taken over the earth. Skies have started to be clear. Air quality is improving across countries. The sound pollution has come down as well. We would have never thought to shut down the world for a day. But now we don’t know when we are going to back to our original situation.
No doubt the situation is very tough now. Some people lose their loved ones, some people lose their jobs and many more case of incidents. It requires a lot of inner strength and wisdom for all of us to overcome this period. Making the mind stable and helping the government in whatever possible way is the duty of a responsible citizen at this moment. Constant flow of information through mass media and social media creates fear factor in the mind. We must be aware about the updated information but should not be flooded with the information time and again.
In this hardest time, we can also have a silver lining. By our productive engagement at this moment to overcome the situation, we could end up with a more organized society where we would be developing more fellow feeling, more concern for the common people and more importantly concern for our planet which is under constant threat by climate change.
[1] The author works as a Director with POC Consulting Pvt Ltd
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