We all suffered a lot due Covid pandemic in the last over two years with frequent lockdowns. Our lives have been disrupted since March 2020, due to abrupt lockdowns and Section 144s etc. We have endured a prolonged suffering for over two months, as all shops were shut, transport banned and public movement closed. Things were bad until our migrant labour defied the orders and marched on foot to their villages in July.
The loss to us all is immeasurable as we lost jobs (mostly in private), salaries slashed and small and medium businesses were shut, schools and colleges closed, hospitals for all other non-Covid patients were denied and our livelihoods were damaged. The mode of lockdown was invented and introduced by China, whose Wuhan city reported the first Covid case.
All other countries blindly followed China by imposing harsh lockdowns. We don’t know any other method to deal with this pandemic which visited us after a century or so. Many economists have termed the cure of lockdowns as worse than the disease of Covid. We were helpless and silently suffered and put up with whatever was given to us.
I am a victim of these shutdowns. We at Excel India wanted to conduct some seminars in Telangana and in Hyderabad city, but we couldn’t as frequent shutdowns forced us to postpone our events. So, finally we lost our revenues and our livelihoods were affected too. Many of my friends too shared similar experiences with me.
After Alpha and Delta, Delta Plus, now we are passing through the Omicron variant of the SARS Cov-2 virus. We don’t know how long it will last or what new variants are coming in future. One thing is sure that our governments know only one thing to control the pandemic – to shut schools and impose night or weekend curfews. Be ready for more hardships in future too.
So, also be ready for a digital standby mode to deal with these tough times. Besides continuing your offline activities, also develop online skills and platforms to carry on your businesses or vocation. If you are a student, please get a good tab or smart mobile phone and learn to listen to online classes, if you are a businessman, know how to run your business online.
If you are a doctor, develop a telemedicine venture, if you are an accountant; try to interact with your clients online. Film industry people are making use of WhatsApp to discuss stories or Okay music tunes. If you are cab driver, know how to operate smartphone for your business. There’s no escape from opening a new channel for our survival – that’s online mode.
