The less spoken side of 2020

 

 “All great changes are preceded by chaos.”

-        Deepak Chopra

In the era which has the ideology of Humans greater than God, there came a huge blow of fatal incidents that shook the equilibrium of the system of the whole world. Starting from Australia’s Bushfire to the Coronavirus and  many other mankind or natural disasters like the Bangalore riots or Locust attack, 2020 is considered to be the “death spell of the Death Eaters.”

But as “change is the only constant”, human beings have not yet given up in making things normal or adapting the “new normal.” There have been constant efforts to prepare vaccines against Covid-19 throughout the world and I am sure that we will get through these hindrances very soon.

Stating the phrase of “new normal”, the changes adopted in 2020 paves a new way of life for 2021 which is characterized not by traditional long cuts but modern solutions that would give a new color to everyone’s lives.

Starting with our education culture! A drastic change has been witnessed in the education sector, wherein the relationship between a teacher and a student has been widened to a relationship of a teacher, student, and technology! This pandemic situation has made the schools leave the traditional way of lethargic textbook teaching and made them inculcate a practical way of teaching by using web cameras, advanced e-books, PowerPoint, presentations and MCQ based questions, making the students use their brains, not for mugging up long answers but to look for the logic behind every concept. Thus, such a system makes the students less dependent on various post-school tuitions.

Speaking of dependency, our Prime Minister has been seeking to make our country Aatmanirbhar or self-reliant by implementing various schemes and strategies to help the country to lift its archaic barriers.

By injecting 20 lakh crore in the Indian economy, providing tax benefits, e-market linkage, and other benefits, it has given impetus to the young potential sectors, especially Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises to spread their networks not only in the domestic arena but also globally.

By strengthening the backbone of the Indian Economy (MSME), not only the employment opportunities in the country would increase, but also it would be able to interact with the foreign powerful firms by bonding with advanced technologies, methods, and strategies.

2020 has made most of the business to choose the digital way for removing the hindrance of social distancing! Young startups have started adopting digital marketing which helps them to shoot up their business by connecting to people nationally as well as internationally at a minimal cost.

Not only marketing but also “Cash is no more the king” since the lockdown. As the transfer of cash from one hand to another carries a risk of transmitting the coronavirus, digital payment has come to the economy as a superhero to rescue the cash flow in the economy. The benefit not only stops here! Digital payment makes the transactions transparent with the help of digital records of each payment and also there are fewer chances in losing a huge amount of cash during the transit.

Finland is planning to become a cashless society by 2029 as envisaged by the Bank of Finland, in the UK, six out of 10 transactions were in cash 10 years back, and now it has reduced to three in 10. It is expected to fall to one in 10 in the next 15 years.

The current all-time peak levels of digital transactions confirm that consumers are moving faster towards digital payments which are expected to reach $1 trillion by 2023.

The agenda of being Self- reliant is not only seen in India but also in other countries but in a different manner! Since the birth of COVID-19, well-named companies like Dell, Apple and Nintendo have moved away from their manufacturing units from China. Countries like India, the USA, South Korea, and Australia have started collaborating with each other to substitute the help which used to come from China.

Japan has also announced an initiative to set up a fund of $2.2 billion to encourage companies to move out of China.

This initiative might cause a problem in the initial period, but this step would be of definite help to encourage the economy to strive for excellence and practice healthy trade affairs.

During the past few months, Law has also witnessed a new makeover in its system and culture! UK, Canada, Australia, and even India have shifted the court to a virtual platform during the period of a pandemic.

Though E-courts are difficult to function if the technology and network are weak, yet online platforms are of great help as it requires less time to file cases, less time to spell out decisions in petty cases, the documents and electronic evidences can be stored with total security and most importantly it makes litigation much more personalized as opposed to theatrics involving public-speech based system.

Such promptness in decisions can be helpful to countries especially India, which is drowned with 59,867 pending cases in the Supreme Court, 44.75 lakh cases in various high courts, and 3.14 crore cases in district and subordinate court levels.

2020 has not only given  new space to the material life but also to our personal lives and health!

The requirement of Work from Home has brought a balance between personal life and professional life. Families work together, eat together, worship together, and sleep together. During this period of lack of help from medications, people have associated themselves to traditional practices of Namaste and Yoga, to keep themselves safe from human contact and diseases. Such practices have helped people to keep their mental and physical health intact and understand the value of age-old practices’ powers.

It is the nature of the world to evolve and so is of human beings! Humans have fought against various perils throughout their lives and Covid-19 is one of them.

Thus, rather than sobbing over the tough situations, it is time to work not only for ourselves but for the world!

Author -

Prarthana Markod (New Law College, Pune)