Covid -19 crisis is an opportunity

 

Since Jan 2020 this pandemic is testing human capabilities. It is wreaking havoc all over the world. World over lockdown has been imposed. Military has been called. Job, businesses, human life have lost. There is a blind race in the world to grab maximum vaccine. Every media is discussing, deliberating the covid. More or less no other pandemic has taken so much space in the media in govt briefing than this covid.

So what is next? Can we keep deliberating about this? I have a different take and would like to draw some lesson from this pandemic and considering this disaster as an opportunity for future.

Since ages we are exploiting the nature for our greed. Everyone wants more so time has come to give the pause to our greed .As per the data india stands 3^rd in CO2 emissions. We need to stop this practice. Government’s world over trying hard to minimize the emission but this pandemic has given us an opportunity to expedite the whole process. When we wake up to till we go to the bed we keep fighting with the nature. We never care the  nature. This pandemic has reminded us to mend our ways and start obeying to Mother Nature.

We keep listening about world as one market, liberalization, world trade and so on. But when tornado of covid started moving around, all market, supply chains just collapsed. Everyone tried to secure the material in its geographical boundary. All the advocate of open market turned protectionist. Country like china tried to exploit the situation. Suddenly we started sending SOS to the whole world for medicine, raw materials, oxygen. From stocking to the distribution this pandemic started testing our limitation and we failed miserably. So we need to learn from this and need to be self reliant. It is true that for growing as a nation we need to be part of world supply chain but it is the right time to expand our capacity. Indigenous industry needs to be promoted like never before. From raw material to the final product, from production to the storage and distribution all needs to be strategize.

This pandemic has taught us that we should start investing heavily in our health infrastructure. Right now our expenditure is not more than 3 % of our GDP where as US spend more than 17 of its GDP.In this pandemic our whole health infrastructure has got exposed. Our primary health couldn’t handle the rush and so people got pushed to the hospitals for reactive treatment and then they couldn’t handle the rush at normal level so people got pushed into ICU. Due to the lack of health infrastructure, normal patient got pushed to the next level and the whole system got overwhelmed. So need  of the hour is to strengthen our health infrastructure. As per human development report India has 5 bed on every ten thousand people where as china has 43.Out of 167 countries we are ranked 155^th on bed availability. We have just 8.6 doctors on per thousand populations. Bed availability is the key indicator to understand the health infrastructure. So we can sense that how much distance we need to cover as soon as possible.

In this pandemic need of science was felt like never before. India`s national gross expenditure on research and development (GERD) is less than the 1% of GDP.It is far less than the developed countries and even less than that of some developing countries .  So learning of this pandemic should be to invest heavily in R&D.

When hospitals are refusing to accept the patients due to non availability of the beds, people were dying due to the lack of oxygen,all govt machineries were over stretched and almost collapsed then our civil society stood firm. Volunteers  in different pockets tried helping to the needy. From arranging an oxygen to providing home cooked food it was like parallel arrangement is being made. By every passing day this got bigger and bigger. So moral of the story is we should always have faith in civil society. Whenever time has come civil societies, volunteers have come to the rescue .Their efforts needs to be acknowledged and appreciated.

Darker side of the pandemic is there are people who try to exploit the situation. Unfortunately they are not a fringe element. There are many examples. People/institutions try to book profit. Due to this, cost of living/treatment gets increased exponentially. So we need to strengthen our legal system such a way that cost of living/treatment should not increase beyond a point.

At last it is the time to mourn for the suffering of fellow country men.It is the time to understand the pain of medical fraternity and frontline workers.It is the time to understand that millions of people have lost the job due to the pandemic. Effects of this pandemic will be felt in years to come. So how we will understand all these suffering. We will have to start working in the direction where this kind of pandemic will be fought more effectively.

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