We shall overcome

A screenshot from the Atmanirbhar Bharat Webinar session

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The gradual shift in the post-cold war world order has been accelerated and reformed by the pandemic. Data released by the government agencies across the world, have revealed that the response to this pandemic has significantly dented the economic growth of all major economies (except China). This means that the much-anticipated, gradual shift from a unipolar to a multipolar world might in fact be a rapid transition to bipolarity. This hypothesis is further substantiated by the fact that in the last few months China has accelerated and intensified its designs for territorial expansion.

From a relatively safe and stable position, in just 6 months India has been pushed to an extremely unsafe and an uncomfortable position. At the beginning of this year our major concerns included a decelerating economic growth and a couple of hostile neighbors. Today, this list has grown considerably, and it now includes a shrunk economy, massive joblessness, deepening health crisis, challenged borders and a couple of unfriendly neighbors. Nationally and internationally, much seems to be aligned in a manner it ought not to be. The pandemic has pushed India (and other countries) and the global order to a highly unstable position. It would not exactly be wrong to assume the COVID 19 pandemic as the biggest catastrophe in the history of the modern world.

Pessimists and cynics across the world are of the opinion that the pandemic is in fact the beginning of the end of the human civilization. Although such narratives are yet not mainstream, they are highly popular. Moreover, the popularity of such thoughts seems to be growing exponentially, by the day.

At the risk of being called an idealist, I would like to suggest that the pandemic is nothing more than a special, multi-dimensional challenge for the world and for human kind; a challenge that we can and that we shall overcome. This in not to downplay either the scale of the present crisis or the sufferings of the people affected by the pandemic, but to tame a health crisis that could potentially script the end of the world as we know it.

My imagination of the pandemic, as nothing more than a kink in the popular perceptions of life, has been shaped by my understanding of the capabilities of humankind and by my trust in our ability to overcome any challenge. I know a world that survived the cold war and I live in a country that survived more than 200 years of British exploitation. The COVID-19 pandemic is certainly an unknown development and our overstretched struggle with the virus are strong enough reasons to push us in a hole of hopelessness. However, we need to remind ourselves that we have overcome equally endangering, if not far worse, crises in the past.

A special mention must be made of all the people who are fighting this war head on. While our doctors and paramedics, sanitation workers, police and our security forces are fighting the insurgents on the front-lines, there is an army of patriots who have waged a war against the pandemic from unknown and unpopular quarters. For instance, Mr. Pradeep Singh, a CSR professional from Lucknow, and his team of change makers, designed and delivered online vocational training to participants from rural India and they did this for 6 weeks, without any incentive. What drove them was their determination to not give up.

Our valiant display of resistance against the present-day insurgents is laudable and exemplary. However, we must not stop even after winning the pandemic battle because a far more real threat to our existence is climate change / global warming and it is hovering extremely close to us.

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