COVID-19 : The Revolution?. “Revolution” seems a pretty big word…
By: Advait Shetye
Tags: Coronavirus, Corona, Technology, Covid 19, Revolution

“Revolution” seems a pretty big word huh! World has seen many revolutions in modern history namely The French revolution , The Industrial revolution which were caused due to different factors.But has any disease caused such a great impact ? Throughout history, nothing has killed more human beings than the virus, bacteria and parasites that lead to diseases. Not natural disasters like earthquakes or volcanoes. Not war — not even close.The outbreak of measles caused a political issue against the anti-vaxxers back in 2015 which involved President Barack Obama , Hillary Clinton and many more. But then what is different in COVID-19 outbreak than the previously occurred outbreaks?Why would it lead to revolution?

The simple answer to this is the era so called the “technology driven era” it happened in. Yes! you read it right “Technology” might prove to be the most important factor in this process.Let me explain why this answer..

“Technology is useful servant but a dangerous master” -Cristian Lous Lange

WHY BLAMING TECHNOLOGY?

Let’s have a look at the background before jumping at any conclusions. In India,this outbreak started in late January precisely on 30th January in Kerala and later It slowly got into many states. People until then were getting aware about the disease through various Technology resources ,which is the good part of it,which we all know. But then the news channels started their full day corona news policy, yeah you guessed the reason right (TRP).

News channels were so engrossed in casting the same repeated corona news,that they even failed to deliver some other big news which were less interesting though were equally important but not shown by a single news channel .And then came another player in the race “social media”. Facebook ,Instagram feeds were flooded with various so-called “facts” about the corona virus outbreak ,among which some didn’t even have a remote possibility of being a fact.

This was the point where the fear-factor for the corona virus was strongly installed in people which is now almost unerasable. Having a belief that like some European countries complete “lockdown” might be imposed,people started panicking .Migrants started flooding the trains to go back home. Not surprisingly many people got infected in this situation of panic which was caused due to embedded fear-factor in people’s mind quite nicely.People started over-stocking their households with necessary food items considering that the lockdown will close even the sale of necessary items,obviously through some fake forwards.This created a chaos at markets with social distancing at it’s best .

After some countries like NewZealand started getting negligible cases per day, Internet was overloaded with memes and news , many of which stated “If they can,why can’t we?”. Considering the positive side of this statement was just not perfect for those useless gossips. Obviously Netizens took the negatives from it and thus started the comparison between these nations and India. Like Seriously ?Wait and Think ! How can you just compare a country with a population of 5 Million with other country which has 1.38 Billions living in it.

What happens after the “flattening of the curve”?

Due to the outbreak of COVID-19 ,many technical companies started implementing the concept of work-from-home quite rigorously, which proved efficient for them. This made many big-shots realize that this can be continued, why to pay extra office rents?As the CEO of a company anyone would do that right ! Some big Tech Giants like Twitter prefer their employees to work from home forever.Most of the Employees are actually happy with this thinking that they can work as well as earn both by just staying at home.

But is it really that good a deal?

“Technology was supposed to be a human’s helping hand but it’s slowly becoming human’s only hand.”

Microsoft CEO Mr Satya Nadella recently said that making remote work permanent can have serious issues on the mental health of the employees.

You can face :

Flexible hours for work from home sounds good at first but this may include working almost anytime of the day, which can disturb your daily schedule or maybe you won’t have any schedule. Isn’t it bad?

Having less interaction with people at work, your mind might start feeling lonely as most of the young population now-a days does,leading to mental imbalance.

Your comfy bed where you now feel relaxed from all the stress in the world,might not remain the same as most probably you will be working on the same bed the whole day with the same stress.

Would you like your most special place to be converted into the workplace?

At work, you’re constantly involved in discussions, meetings, scrum or just getting overall feedback from your employers and colleagues. All of this is essential to working with more

productivity and producing better results at the end of the day.Work from home too allows interaction to some extent but then you really can not exactly replace it with actual human conversation.

Will this lead to speeding in development of fully automation processes?Well ,something like that is not happening that fast.And even if it happens too fast this will create another large set of problems.

Will this permanent Work From Home only affect the employees of these MNCs? Answer is a big NO! The part of the population which is totally dependent on these employees have no jobs now. To whom will now the World famous Mumbai Dabba valas will deliver tiffins to? All the cabies out there , the small shops around the office campus, all these sets of people will face a huge loss even if their businesses are not fully closed!

“Technology should only develop at the pace which we can handle”

Having talked about the technical employees ,now lets talk about that part of the population which doesn’t work at one place for earning, namely the daily wage workers, carpenters, electricians ,housemaids and many more. Do you think the world would be the same for them on getting back to work? NO! People have developed the fear factor of anyone from outside coming and infecting them to such an extent that most of the people working at numerous households can lose their jobs even after this has been brought under control. Seeing this, many labours who went back home earlier choose to stay there

itself leading to shortage of laborers in the big cities Mumbai, Delhi etc. This caused the growth in the unemployment rate of the country reaching an all time high of 23.50 percent in April of 2020.

This was all about the earning population, but how can we forget the students ! Education has suddenly switched to online mode,which does not seem to come back to normal mode in near future. Is “network issue” the only issue in online education? Nope!

Let me explain the situation, what would you do if you are sitting in front of some system with full Internet access with some boring lecture going on 3–4 hrs daily? I am sure a regular person would just switch the tabs and tune on to some Youtube video or start scrolling your Social Media. Exactly the same is done by these kids, and hence getting exposed to things which they aren’t supposed to see. Eye problems in these kids is another big issue.

Are we gonna see the first fully online virtual academic year in the history of modern education ?!

Will there be a semester shift for the students pursuing professional courses due to delay in first year admissions ?!

Will Wearing masks and other safety equipment continue even after this?Are we headed towards a faceless future? Lots of development would be needed for all those face detecting cameras out there. Development already started in China?! :p

COVID-19 was an epidemic ,is currently a pandemic and most probably will be an endemic.Lots of similar words?Let me simplify the sentence:COVID-19 was first “accidently” spread in China ,is currently infecting people around the globe and will remain with us for a very long time.

In countries like India “Managing the curve is more important than the flattening of the curve”

But not to worry,Humans have always tackled all the difficulties that came in front of them.This will also have some solution or might lead to a complete new way of living life with new Normal .Hence the possible “Revolution”.