Life Lessons from COVID

We are probably seeing the back of the 3^rd wave of the Covid pandemic in India. Here in Kolkata where I am a winter migrant, there are now many relaxations. All public places and spaces are now open to 75% capacity, the evening curfew starts at 11pm instead of 10pm, even though the city does not really have a nightlife. Schools have reopened after a very long hiatus. City parks, which had been completely shut for most of the last month or so are now open for some hours. I am certainly feeling much better now that I have resumed my daily walks in the Dhakuria lakes. There is a sense of optimism all around. Our worst nightmares seem to be behind us. After two years of unprecedented chaos we are now looking forward towards a brighter future. I have been wondering whether there are any lessons we should take with us. I know it may still be premature, but what the heck, we can keep adding and editing this list as our insights grow.

Lesson 1 – Death and disease remain closer than we would like to think. The search for immortality is futile.

There is much research into life extension or longevity in the quest for immortality. In 2019 scientists reported that by tweaking a couple of genes in its DNA, the humble roundworm could be made to live 5 times longer. The Longevity Science Foundation a Swiss non-profit is looking to promote medical technologies to extend health human lifespans to 120 years. The Longevity Fund on the other has raised over a billion dollars to fund programmes that reverse or prevent ageing. Sergey Young, the founder of Longevity Vision Fund explained the different areas of research into longevity in a blog on the Forbes website last year. These include cell reprogramming, tissue regeneration, rewiring the brain by developing a brain-computer interface, resetting the body’s biological clock, and editing genes. Everyone’s favorite billionaire and tech messiah Elon Musk is involved in developing one of these technologies through his company Neuralink, and anything he is involved in seems possible. Another maverick Russian billionaire Dmitry Itsokov set up the 2045 Immortality Initiative in 2011 to achieve human immortality by 2045. Considering that human life expectancy has increased tremendously in the last one hundred years, these goals seem eminently achievable. In the seventy-five years since independence here in India, the average life span has more than doubled from a very low 32 years in the 1940’s to nearly 70 years in 2019. This has been a remarkable achievement of science and technology

In the face of this technological optimism the two years of Covid have been somewhat of a dampener. The life expectancy in India has come down by 2 years. It is the same in more technologically advanced countries like the US, UK, Italy and Spain. The various life extension technologies were inadequate to manage a tiny virus and at the time writing the high-tech vaccines are just about managing to stave death, but not the infection. Something similar happened during the Spanish flu of 1918 when an estimated 50 million people lost their lives worldwide and life expectancy in the US declined by 11 years. For many years it was thought to be caused by bacteria, even though the science of virology had been established by then. It was only in the 1930’s that evidence was presented that virus from animals like pigs or ferrets could jump species and cause influenza in humans. This time around the ‘bat’ has been identified as the source but there are some lingering doubts whether the virus has been engineered.

The Covid 19 experience tells me no matter how much effort and money scientists and billionaires invest; immortality remains a mirage and good health for all is a far more practical and desirable goal. Till then for those who wish to live longer and healthier lives there are few simple things like eating frugally, being a dependable conscientious worker, and avoiding being single that may be useful suggests science writer Jennifer Walsh.

Lesson 2 – We must look beyond technology for the way forward

It will be some time before I can forget the images and stories from the 2^nd wave of the pandemic. At that time, I was in Delhi, with two of the largest Government hospitals in one direction and two private ones on the other. We heard the relentless sirens of ambulances rushing to and fro all day and night. Stories abounded of how people couldn’t get admitted in hospitals, how ICU’s were overflowing or getting an Oxygen cylinder was impossible. A city with some of the best medical technologies in this part of the world, where people from neighbouring continents came for treatment, was unable to provide health care to even its elite citizens. Nano technology, artificial intelligence, Internet of things (IoT) are expected to be the game changers of the future, and they are very important tools for humans, but we need to recognize our essential humanity first.

Drones captured pictures of thousands of funeral pyres on the banks of the Ganges which shocked the world. Apps informed people which place to avoid because there were people living with Covid there or to identify the closest available hospital bed. But a far more important service was provided by thousands of individuals and groups who provided food to stranded migrants, cooked food for families with Covid, arranged for transport for those who had started walking to their homes hundreds of kilometers away.

The pandemic has reinforced our already burgeoning faith in technology. Video conferences ensured that work continued for many who work primarily at the desk. Technology gave the illusion that schools and colleges could continue impeded. Technology stocks boomed and tech billionaires have become wealthier than ever. Even though mobile digital technology is multiplying rapidly, digital divide is a reality in India. More than half the world probably lives in what could be called the digital-shadow and we must find ways of illuminating those areas. Our leaders keep preening how telemedicine and digital classes will make the country future ready while this shadow persists. The sobering reality is that children who had learnt to read and write have forgotten their alphabets and numbers. Last month we visited a small village of artisans who worked with wood near Nabadwip in West Bengal. They make very colorful toys and furniture. The pandemic has hurt their trade. They have now learnt to share their digital catalogue with prospective buyers over social media. But with schools and colleges being closed, they have appointed private tutors for their children. It’s a tough economic decision with their incomes already constrained, but they don’t trust technology to be their saviour.

Lesson 3 – Democracy is not just about votes and elections

Many would believe that democracy is alive and robust in India. During the Covid crises several elections have been successfully conducted and one set of elections are ongoing. Record turnouts and regime changes have proved the power of the electorate. But my lesson for Covid is that we cannot consider democracy to have delivered!

Democracy at its core is government ‘of the people, by the people and for the people’. People are paramount as citizens. Their interests are central, and their participation is crucial to governance. In India we seem to have outsourced governance to our political leaders and the bureaucracies that they command. Outside the machinery of the state, by which I mean those who run the state and those who aspire to run the state, I see broadly three groups of people. The poor who seek the blessings of the political rulers. Instead of being active citizens they are more like expectant subjects, who have the privilege of changing their leaders or ruler. They are wooed by political parties using the carrot of freebies and the security of caste and religious affinities. The second group includes a large section of the urban middle class. They do not have many expectations of the government. They make their own arrangements for most basic services and rue the fact that they must pay high taxes and still suffer bad roads. Many do not vote because they know that no matter which dispensation comes, their interests will be secure. Large sections of this group have been politically energized in recent times as their religious and social prejudices have been validated by the ruling dispensation. The third group, which is found both in rural and urban India, are like satellites around the political leadership. They are the friends and courtiers who seek direct benefits from the benevolence of the political leaders.

There are in my opinion two important weaknesses in this democratic model which were exposed during the Covid pandemic. The first is that there is no respect for accountability and the second is that there is no space for participation. From the very onset of the pandemic many hard and drastic decisions were taken by the government. These can be seen as a sign of a strong decisive leadership. Unfortunately, most of the decisions have hurt the most vulnerable. While much has been written about the crises in India in foreign and Indian media, there seems to have been little serious reflection among those in power. Opposition political parties have raised slogans and questioned the government, but the political culture of reflection and accountability has been irrevocably damaged for a long time. And those in the opposition are also complicit in this. There are few legitimate spaces for citizens to raise their concerns.  And civil society organisations are increasing under the scanner for anti-national activities. A very senior government official went far enough to declare that the civil society was the ‘new frontier of war in what you call the fourth generation warfare’. The big fear is that civil society promotes questioning of people in authority, a task that those three categories of voters I mentioned earlier have no incentive for asking. Rules and laws related to receiving foreign grants on which many civil societies depend, were made more restrictive during the pandemic, even though these organisations were at the forefront of providing support to those in need.

In the first and most draconian phase of lockdown all diktats were issued from the high office of the Prime Minister. Very few people were consulted. Even though previous experience of managing similar outbreaks in Africa had pointed to the importance of consultative processes, India adopted a very rigid top-down approach. Later all states also adopted similar models. Democracy is based on the empathy and shared concern of fraternity along with the freedom of participation. However, these two values were absent in all official approaches to Covid management. Instead fear and stigma were instilled, and they continue to this day.

However, beyond the ‘official’ spaces, there was a spontaneous outpouring of empathy and efforts of reaching out to those in need of help. These demonstrate that these values continue to be strong in our people. Its time to make accountability and participation pillars of our democracy and move beyond the narrow constraints of voting and elections, otherwise democracy itself may be doomed.

Lesson 4 – Men can cook

Lockdown reversed social order like never before. Popular imaginations of the past of humankind have shown men as the hunters, who go out in groups with bows, arrows and javelins to bring back food for the tribe or clan. Women on the contrary have been imagined as stay-at-home mums who cook the food, care for the babies, and gather roots and shoots close to home. In modern times this has transformed to men as the breadwinner who go out and women as the home-bound nurturer. For close to two years Covid has challenged this distribution of roles and space as entire families have been locked indoors. There were apprehensions of increasing violence against women and many instances have been noted. At the same suicide rates among men have also increased. Some months ago, there was a plea on Twitter from a harassed ‘wife’ to the CEO of a large corporate house that he stops work from home as soon as possible because her husband was only ordering cups of coffee which added to her pressures while doing little else besides sitting in front of a screen. The distortion in social order has clearly affected many people.

At the same time experience across the social spectrum also shows that men have been engaged in many activities at home, those which they rarely did earlier. Many among my friends have started cooking and baking and have in these two years become adept and are showing-off their skills on social media. Others have taken to sharing childcare responsibilities, even though it maybe not be out of choice. In a short survey I conducted among my friends, many of my male friends said that they were cooking and cutting vegetables, helping in washing dishes, washing and drying clothes, ‘jharu pocha’ and similar domestic chores. We found a similar pattern among men of rural and lower income communities where we work. Clearly some men were adapting to different roles from what they had been socialized for. And even if they may not have enjoyed it, they were executing it with some degree of competence.

This brings me the fourth and final lesson in this list. Covid has clearly demonstrated that gender roles can easily change in times of crisis. Life doesn’t come to a standstill, nor does the ‘maharbharat’ become ‘ashudh’ if we change the existing gender order. Women and girls will obviously benefit from this change as they are increasingly being expected to manage roles both within and outside the homes. Men and boys too will benefit from this change as it promotes greater collaboration and friendship. But do we need to wait for a pandemic to teach our boys to cook? We certainly don’t need to wait for that even though experts caution that there may be other pandemics around the corner.

I believe that these lessons are very important as we reclaim our lives beyond the pandemic. Do share your life lessons from Covid as well.