Covid-19 has caused many loss of lives and has been an imminent risk for decades. It has come as a heavy blow to the world economy and a shock to society, health systems, and governments worldwide. Pandemic has rendered and will continue to render maybe more damaging than the disease itself.
Everyone worldwide is facing extraordinary challenges, uncertainty and countless tragedies. It has been unprecedented in an era of global peace. It is has been realized that the impact of this pandemic on business, economy and our lives will be continued for long period. The liquidity and operations of economy will remain tight. Its impact and repercussions are felt by everyone and people are changing the way of work and lives they use to live. Different sectors and various business segments have accepted this and have converted this threat into potential challenges, opportunity and are becoming self-reliant.
It has become a new normal of living with social distancing and using masks in public places. Demand of food, internet facilities, and home care have massive increase. Consumption of healthier, trustworthy, environment friendly with accelerating substantial products have increased. The boundaries between home and workplace has been reduced.
People are updating and learning new skills using digital medium. Two artists from Thane and Pune, who lost their jobs due to the Covid-19 lockdown, as they were running out of clients. They have come up with positivity and put their idea together to use their talents for environmental causes and have started to sculpt eco-friendly Ganesh idols using cow dung, rose water and sandalwood. They did lot of research when the idols were not strong enough and found that powdered cow dung is used to make products which are eco-friendly. Then they sourced powered cow dung from Nagpur, Nasik, and Madhya Pradesh. They made more then 100 idols using a mixture of powered cow dung, rose water and sandalwood. Buyers receives a tulsi sapling with each idol. After immersion of the idol in a bucket of water at home, it would dissolve completely and turn into manures, which can be used for tulsi sapling.
Our railway sector is also not behind. Indian Railway have cleared the backlog of 200 projects which were pending for several years of critical importance in key sections. Services of railways was suspended on March 25 and taking this opportunity they completed all the pending work which includes maintenance, yards remodeling, repairing and regrinding of old. According to the Railway Ministry, these projects were pending for several years and often presented as bottlenecks. These maintenance works also required a long stoppage of traffic. “Such projects were take up during the lockdown, considering it once in a lifetime opportunity to execute them without affecting the train service,” the Ministry said. The works included the rebuilding of 82 bridges, building 48 limited height road under bridges to replace level crossing gates, construction or strengthening of 16-foot overbridges, dismantling of 14 old foot overbridges (FOBs), launching of 7 road overbridges, 5-yard remodeling, commissioning of doubling of one project and 26 other projects.
In 2018 for India, online education market was at Rs 39 billion and now it is expected to reach Rs 360.3 billion by 2024. The supremacy of online education for institutes have given a great transformation during this pandemic. India is the second-largest market in world with over 560 million internet users, ranked only behind China. With the current situations students, teachers and even parents are learning and using online tech stack such as Google Classroom, Google Meet, Zoom, Blackboard and Microsoft Teams etc. Flotation of several EdTech start-ups in India have also started about e-courses, e-books, e-library, e-classes, etc. Government is also trying to catch the pace of their projects in remote locations and provides required mediums for better telecom networks with faster internet speed. Online Education has a huge scope for learning and this has been a silver line in this pandemic.
Way of work has been changed especially for organized sectors as IT sector is familiar with this concept. Various stuff are enabled effectively at home. Work from home(WFH) is attractive to professionals as it saves a lot of time and money which are spend on the daily commute, even people are getting home-cooked meals and many are staying close to their loved ones. Carbon footprint of company is also being reduced with WFH and real estate are getting possibilities of savings. WFH includes video calls, webinars, conferences, updating or changing brands, publishing, blogging, online marketing and collaborating with clients, online posts, proofreading, transcribing, website updating or creating new one, getting published and marketing efforts etc. People are even mediating, exercising bodies and minds, some are taking photos and self-portraits, re-editing re-imagining old work.
Covid-19 have turned pandemic into opportunity in nationwide lockdown. Everything can be done or accessed from home whether it’s work, entertainment or relaxation. It has intensified the level of focus on mental and physical health of individuals, their family and friends. Multiple challenges are being faced by people. It is a turning point which is making India self-reliant and challenges are turned into opportunities. For transforming these challenges all we need to do is to recognize that we have the ability to make an immediate impact in our society amidst this crises. Another thing is we have to think about networks that we need to build in our community that can provide complementary services and also to recognized there is a light at the end of a tunnel, these difficulties and challenges that we are facing today are not easy, but if we can adapt and survive in this crises then we are going to come out much stronger because we have strong faith.