Covid-19: Life is changing, will change further

Is humanity trapped by faith, hit by bad luck for its sins (to paraphrase Gandhi)?

by K Natwar Singh

Human beings are, at the moment, living in acute fear. They are faced with a deadly and catastrophic ailment called coronavirus. This has infected almost the entire globe. No cure has been discovered. On Thursday, 9 April, 799 people died in New York. The city is short of ventilators, medicines, food, doctors, nurses, beds and masks.

One recent survey shows that non-whites are more susceptible to the virus than whites. Were the pandemic to spread in Africa, the continent would become a wasteland, with tens and thousands of men, women and children dying each day. Health and medical facilities are inadequate and primitive or not available. Doctors and nurses are in short supply as are medicines and hospitals.

Is humanity trapped by faith, hit by bad luck for its sins (to paraphrase Mahatma Gandhi)? Can astrologers help? Why have Bhagwan, Christ, and Allah inflicted this health horror on “their children”? Does the Almighty exist? If so, we desperately need him now.

Life is changing, has changed and will change further. We will have to make the unavoidable adjustment. That will be no easy task. What memories will toddlers convey of their childhood? Spending their days in a small room with no friends to play with?

Man has landed on the Moon and returned to Earth. Rockets have photographed Mars; outer space is no longer unapproachable. Yet medical science is unable to find a reliable cure for this sheathing virus. Will we win the race with coronavirus sooner rather than later?

The self-appointed wise men are, each day, offering solutions, suggestions, schemes for controlling the virus. These are well meaning people but panacea eludes them.

India has so far avoided a large number of deaths. We woke up in time. Prime Minister Narendra Modi acted with commendable speed. The nation in lockdown paid dividends. Obviously Shri Modi found his Hanuman. Myths have their uses.

Lockdown cannot last indefinitely. But where is the escape route? It remains elusive. One American doctor, close to the White House establishment, has warned that in the United States alone, two lakh will die. That is a fearsome prediction.

How will existing international and national institutions respond to the post-virus situation? What shape will governments, schools, colleges, air-travel etc., take? Will inequality increase, will work ethics and habits alter? What about unemployment? As of today, 16 million Americans are asking for unemployment relief. With economies taking a beating worldwide, how will the daily-wage workers, orphans and widows make both ends meet? No solutions are in sight, except the arrival of social unrest.

Italy’s Prime Minister said the other day that if the European Union did not come up with a common virus tackling policy, the European Union would disintegrate.

The UN, the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO etc., will need drastic reforms. They are all outdated. Most resemble exhausted volcanoes. All are over-staffed, underemployed and their officials overpaid. Their pensions are tax free.

I spent nearly five years with the permanent mission of India to the UN in the York. That was in the mid 1960s. One day I asked a Mexican friend of mine, “How many people work in the UN Headquarters in New York?” Answer: “About half.”

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To pass time I have started writing a book, Brief Lives. I have selected 31 very prominent Indians; the book will not exceed 100 pages.  Here is the list of the eminences:

1. Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1946); 2. Motilal Nehru (1861-1931); 3. Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902); 4. Gopal Krishna Gokhale (1866-1915); 5. M.K Gandhi (1869-1948); 6. Shri Aurobindo (1872-1950); 7. Sardar Patel (1875-1950); 8. C. Rajagopalachari (1878-1972); 9. Munshi Prem Chand (1880-1936); 10. V.D. Savarkar (1883-1966); 11. Rajendra Prasad (1884-1963); 12. Radhakrishnan (1888-1975); 13. C.V Raman (1888-1970); 14. Maulana Azad (1888-1958); 15. Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964); 16. B.R. Ambedkar (1891-1956); 17. Subhash Chandra Bose (1897-1945); 18. Zakir Husain (1897-1969); 19. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee (1901-1953); 20. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (1900-1990); 21. Jayaprakash Narayan (1902-1979); 22. Charan Singh (1902-1987); 23. Lal Bahadur Shastri (1904-1966); 24. Mulk Raj Anand (1905-2004); 25. R.K. Narayan (1906-2001); 26. Ram Manohar Lohia (1909-1967); 27. Indira Gandhi (1917-1984); 28. P.V Narasimha Rao (1922-2004); 29. E.M.S. Namboodiripad (1909-1998); 30. Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1924-2018); 31. Pranab Mukherjee (1935).