Coronavirus outbreak will test moral strength of the Indian society

What do you do when everything you touch, smell and probably eat has the potential to capture your internal ecosystem and make you fall ill. A story which looked exotic and confined to the Eastern corner of the world has come home to roost. It cannot be seen yet. There are no huge camps or extensive lockdown, but its presence can still be felt deeply. It is like lingering anxiety which refuses to let go of you. It just stays with you.

The presence of it can be felt in empty streets and stuff running off the counters at superstores and medical shops. The virus can be felt in reduced opportunities to travel. Nations are in a lockdown mode and states in India have passed circulars saying that tourists will not be allowed. Even ASI-managed sites have been locked including wildlife sanctuaries.

The reduced movement of people can be felt in the streets where roads suddenly look bigger and silent. It is an eerie feeling reminding me of all the end of the world films I consumed with great relish at home. The shops have a few people. Eateries look well behaved and people on roads are sober and silent.

Then there are those who are unaffected by the calamity. Children are having the best of their timesin residential societies. The fact is that I see more children than adults, completely untouched by the horror the world is undergoing. They are the ones who make the day look better and brighter. Even the sky looks cleaner, but with a cost which is unbearable and unwanted.

Office is another deal altogether. As a journalist, I feel that over-consumption of information induce its own form of work panic where journalists feed on each other’s anxiety.

Despite measures in place, everyone knows that it cannot be sufficient as quantification of people who can be infected is impossible to guess. India unlike other nations too has not gone for wide-ranging community testing. Nonetheless, exceptions remain. Mass outings continue to be organised through the country as if the crowd out there gives a damnto the coronavirus.

As the world comes increasingly close to natural habitats of animals, the more outbreaks are expected to happen. AIDS, H5N1, Ebola, Coronavirus and many other major outbreaks are of zoonotic origin. Even now, the government has not taken the initiativeto sensitise people about the larger issue as talks remain obviously focused on prevention, isolation and detection of the disease.

The onset of the outbreak has also induced changes in the behaviour of people around. People now do not appreciate the idea of touch for obvious reasons. The conversation around an impending shortage dominates household conversation and medicines are being kept aside in case the supply chain breaks down.

The virus will also challenge and test the moral strength of the society. Great tragedies have seen people either rising to meet the challenge or falling aside as mere spectators. The outbreak can only be prevented by collaboration at the community level. People will need to share resources, sacrifice a little of what they possess and even face difficulty in the case ofcomplete isolation. India has not come to the stage that of China or Italy but if it does, it will definitely test us at the level of individual, community and the state. It will test the moral stamina of the nation once again.

(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL)