Whose Fault it is Anyways?
1 million homeless migrant workers & 1.3 million unsold “ready Homes”!
Many have been thrown into the unknown, most of them recognized that they are “migrant workers” only then (that too in their own country)…slowly slowly realizing as well, it is a polished word for old fashioned expression “refugees”! One has not just lost his job or a shelter or even a place to be attached with, many may have lost their identities!
Is that a fault of no one?
Offline statistics indicate that in India, across metro & semi-metro cities, at this moment, there exists ~1.7 Million finished & ready to occupy “homes” (aka apartments 2/3/4/5BHK’s, houses, villas, penthouses). Of course all of those are for “sale”, in other words yet to find the buyers & then get used as homes for families! Analysts are debating how many “billions” are stagnant owing to Pandemic, how many millions are lost in bank interests, how many millions in the form of appreciations of real estate and so on!
We keep reading authorities announcing intended conversion of old office buildings, NGO homes, school buildings etc. into Shelter Homes for migrant workers (when they return!). Authorities in Kerala went ahead and “occupied” houses where the owners stay abroad or not rented presently, for inhabiting expats who returned through Vande Bharat mission, in other words as “quarantine facilities”!
So we will do everything but not even “seeing” these 1.7 Million ready to occupy homes! If I call that as a “nexus” which is untouchable, whose fault is it anyways?
Pandemic has devastated the economy, life and even deaths of many!
But some are still conveniently omitted from even calling for morality. This is amidst the frantic efforts to keep things together, make people follow some basic safety measures, make arrangements aimed at further catastrophes on the anvil! It is the same common men & women who continue to fight day & night the situation, be it present COVID19 or floods or cyclone or upcoming famine & back to poverty state!
Idea is not to throw open the so called ready homes to everyone who doesn’t have a house, idea is prompt a rethinking to such biases that home is for a class and shelter is what we need now!
Here is also a reminder to the present overly concerned authorities, who were never bothered when close to 1.5 lac people lived in Delhi without any permanent shelters for many decades — idea is to tinker the show-off going on to offer shelters to them after witnessing their “exodus” majestically.
Politically motivated pretexts ensure the “safety & convenience” of the elite class, while the so called refugees search their identities!
We inherit the tradition of Bishnoi villagers and Amrita Devi who hugged the trees from being chopped and were ready to sacrifice their lives — offering to the king of Jodhpur, “a chopped head is cheaper than a felled tree”!
That was in 17th Century, now in 21st, here it looks like the authorities (King?) are hugging to these homes from being taken away for a good cause!
Whose fault it can be?
Careless Vs More Careless!
Sweeping powers for police to enforce norms. This is happening in the state of Kearla, which is proclaimed to be the role model for COVID19 responses within and outside of India, which was also cited by BBC and WHO as commendable efforts. What the police have been asked to put in effected are the quarantine norms, civic rules and social behaviour codes — all designed to halt the spread of the disease.
A solid-proven-enviable Public Health infrastructure, heavily focused Ministry and Leadership, literate and hygienic society, decentralized processes, scientific protocols, committed workforce, early actions — most being facts in the list, what could have lead to this situation remains still debatable. Most critically the extreme step which can been seen as the desperate attempt to retain the role model positioning. It would be really interesting to see if this was part of the Plan B or Plan C as a measure when things were “happening” to flatten the curve.
Is it that one already knew one is careless or one expected someone to be careless or someone anticipated someone else to become careless or even many expected many being careless?
This action happened when there was reversal of trends in the state, it also gave rise to mud slinging and blame games — within the departments or ministries, between the political arch-rivals, across the country and so on. Many of those lead to cite the “complacencies” of the people. Overlooking the relaxations as letting them carefree, undermining the warnings, drawing their own “unscientific” presumptions and more such reasons or possibilities. All of them invariably point to carelessness of individuals in the society! Words were not written or spoken such bluntly as above, but politely, ironically or built with hidden fallacies.
If we examine the other side, were there no lapses from the authorities? Were there no oversights by bureaucrats? Wasn’t there any biased actions by the staff? All was well in the so called daily briefings and war rooms? Wasn’t there any overconfidence by the leadership? Was the intelligence dysfunctional?
Authorities refer negligence by citizen — however the lapses from the ones who could have made differences remain utmost concern. Looking beyond the “lockdown” mantra, focus more on Health Experts as compared to DGPs, ADGs for effecting control measures, meticulous and realistic capacity planning, early involvement of more local influencers, a better devised test strategy and action based on the same and more could have happened. Instead of defensive strategies like, tweaked interpretations to metrics that come up, unsolicited dimensions to signals and noises rather than actions, many of above cited, if done early enough could have made differences. Authorities resorted to have “answers” to everything that came up on the way, attributing the surge to influx from abroad & other states with a presumption of having “convinced” the general public.
Let us examine few more stakeholders. Among all the “effected” parties, Media remain the best beneficiaries. Be it viewership, or ad revenue or online revenues or strategic relationships or more, they indicate nothing to learn except the recognition of an anology like good times in cholera. Why would they need to be more “careful”? If we take the Health Workers, as days progress more lapses, more oversights are getting reported. Fatigue? Now if you see the police force, they seemed to enjoy the “super power” to control things amidst the pandemic, off late they also seem to have lost the vigor. So instead of any positive learning, any constructive improvements, we face backing steps owing the burnouts.
While it is evident that this situation will continue for few more months at the minimum, if no proactive stand is taken to curtail the impacts, consequences and aftermath of the higher number of infections & deaths may happen,
whose fault it is going to be?
Realizing the value & essence of “School Uniform”.
Schools were meant to make students feel “equal”. Without even knowing that essence, students felt they are equal, but,
Virus has now shown how unequal they remain truly!
24 Million students are not likely to return to schools post pandemic — infact they are dropping out due to economic impact — many of these are “youths”!
40% of poorest countries failed to support learners at risk during COVID19 crisis. Socio-economic skills gap could increase more than 30% — above said are from a policy brief by United Nations on Education beyond COVID19.
Learning achievements are going to widen between populations owing to highly “unequal” effects of the pandemic. Parity across gender is going to surge back as 40% of severely affected countries are poorest and hold massive population with cultural nuances.
If we consider only those who continue, be it access & availability to new way of schooling (aka online classes), be it the confusion and disparity exhibited in decisions, be the stand a CBSE or ICSE schools exhibits in conducting classes & admissions compared to a Public School, be it the Zoom Vs WebEx Vs TV Channel modes of online education, be it in the advancements of handling newly learnt cyberbullying stories, be it the contaminations instigated by Private coaching institutes……..all these are dividing the otherwise uniform-ed students wider & wider!
Schools are meant to be “learning spaces & environments” by definition, indicating the importance of the school as “a place to be in”! No one anticipated such an unprecedented situation to be faced when an academic year was ending or even the situation to be continued when the summer vacations got over to reopen the academia.
Parity started to be evident right from the word go, as in postponement of examinations, evaluation of completed exams, decision on pass criteria, reopening of schools and finally into the conduct of online classes.
Inequality in its best display — 360 degrees! — decision making, communications, administration, teaching, teachers, technology, professionalism, students, facilities at houses (be it teacher’s or student’s), syllabus, quality, — almost every aspect of a school education system has been exposed to the communities in true nakedness — we await the “outcomes” eagerly.
While we examine teacher’s needs, be it the demands from online classes like how to adopt to new technologies, modalities, the gap in actions set in from there already. Same cascades to students, student performances, quality concerns on teaching, effeciency & effectiveness of teachers/educational institutions and so on.
If COVID19 has its own attribute of uncertainty, cascading the same to every action we need to take is making the future grim, exposing the vulnerability of our Systems to accommodate unforeseen circumstances! From an academic standpoint, there was enough and more time for every country to decide on restarting the school education process, however barring countries like Singapore, Norway and few more who did control the COVID19 effectively as well, rest were pure disappointments. As compared to the specialists in Education Systems, we ended up being influenced by non experts who throne the political power, motivations and meanness.
Coming days, months and probably the year is going to reflect the inequality such lackluster actions are going to result ultimately in. How badly such actions are going to effect the whole of a generation, future of economies, fate of countries who were making valiant strides to stand in line with developed nations.
A democracy comes up saying “of the people, by the people, for the people” — there needs a similar movement which addresses needs by a generation “of the future, by the society and for the country” — so called typical “disruption” of the system has happened unnoticed owing to obvious parities cited above, what is left is the resurgence.
Who made the mistakes? or Who all made the mistakes? Rather who all didn’t make the mistakes?
Apart from the choice of medium and reduced curriculum, the system need to consider an instructional redesign to make effective results. Along with that, re-imagining teacher’s role and combining both to bridge the inequalities should be the inevitably realistic action plan of each responsible entity — be it the Parents, Teachers, Authorities and Governance. Greater support for institutional financing, addressing skill gaps, conscious and funded capacity risk management is required.
Relentless efforts by Govts, Financial Aid Institutions, International Societies and Communities need to work on the restoration process — for many years in tandem — even if it takes to reset the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) globally and drive things.
If we fail to delink the ruthless “beneficiaries” of Pandemic situation — be it the self-centered politicians, opportunistic business conglomerates, syndicates of the world’s technology infrastructure and many more of them, there by if we fail our children in their educational aspirations and an enviable future,
who is fault is it going to be?
Working from Home — the Zoom effects!
A most recent survey indicates close to 60% of the participants in Zoom as part of Work from Home, are either doing something else or zoned out, rest are paying attention, however non committal, except the 20% who state that they actively participate and contribute — while this is no difference from an in-person office space, many end up with “Zoom Fatigue” or the Video call fatigue! Is that a fault of anyone?Jeff Bezoz forgot many times to “unmute” during the US Congress hearing over Video Conference last week! Whose fault that can be?
Each individual will process the information differently during a Video call — each pays different scales of attention as cited from the Survey above — each focuses on different verbal indicators as non-verbal is almost nil in Video calls — each has a different prejudice for a delay in response or silence or an expression made — each uses own methods of confirmations and ratifications. While there are possibilities of most of the above as well within a boardroom discussion, the magnitude of dependence on just the words/voice/tone (many times “networked”) is too high in Video calls. And hence people drain higher energies during such calls, especially when those happen day long or back to back with small breaks.
Connectivity related confusions, and interruptions attribute to mostly half of the said energy drain. Be it familiarization of controls (mute/unmute, share screen etc.), setting some ground rules, how to avoid crisscrossing talks and so on. After all those circus we get going & then someone’s connection becomes poor, however we still hear some words. Now this makes all our senses and nerves hyperactive to focus and concentrate (may be closing the eyes even) to recover those lost words — we do a frantic jigsaw puzzle matching the words such that we are able to guess things almost correctly & avoid the person to repeat things again & again. Post the call, a wrong guess can lead to further indifferences between the sides, this again exerts the brain to redo the jigsaw. In a face to face meeting, it is only the “intend” we keep guessing, which too a supporting body language can help us stop guessing!
An unexpected sound, an unnatural interruption, an annoying background etc. invoke an involuntary “response” from our brains — be it a whistle from an oven or pressure cooker, be it a dog bark, be it a simple humming sound from a ceiling fan. While we try to focus on the conversation & its topic, this involuntary response from brain to the unexpected sound makes us multi-tasking. There is almost a zero possibility for such strain inside the office meetings! Many a times for the meeting to set rolling with some thumb rules like, all connections confirmed as good, participants settle down to speak one after the other & not together, we would have passed through such extra energy consumptions but none to match the objective of the meeting. A participant who joined a few minutes late — while these 100% a possibility in the office room meetings as well, in the VC the challenge is to interpret an answer given as delay — if it is related to connectivity, the 1st 10 minutes of the schedule goes into ensuring such things won’t hamper the call now or later.
Conventional group dynamics, motivational speech, ice-breakers, retaining the attention span etc. are all becoming unorthodox in VCs. Similarly the typical non offensive complaints (which used to sound like suggestions or even appreciations many times), excuses for delayed completions, reasons for interrupts, seeking a repeat explanation after 15 min of original narration, out of context doubts or queries etc. are all annoyance, stress inducers and lead to cascaded fatigue.
A missing whiteboard (or rather an effective technology to replace the white board) is a major hurdle to brainstorming sessions. Being at home, sitting 15 feet from my kids the typical analogy I end up saying as well becomes awkward at times. COVID19, the pandemic, the lockdown, the economy, fear of jobs or fear of business loss — all these are equally influencing the WFH fatigues. To be transparent or not to be, to commit now or later, to contradict now or never — all these dilemma’s end up as multi-tasks in our brains.
A team who have been thinking alike and performing well might have always been kinesthetic (high fives, hugs, fists and so on). Absence of these leads to lack of harmony or rather dissonance. Thus the conflicts, non-alignment to objectives may arise — compounding to this is the home isolation (not necessarily the COVID19 term), no hangouts with colleagues, no joint-breaks etc. All these makes us exhaust without any significant physical efforts, drained off and moody.
It is important for all to learn a few of the Video Call or Remote Working etiquettes, not only from the IT or WFH professionals. Students, teachers, politicians, public workers, healthcare professionals and more — all of us are going through this phase of fatigue and hence would need to unlearn and relearn few things.
We are emulating as many virtual rooms inside our brains literally to be productive or even fully attentive — many times our kids unenticingly walks into the exact scene, while that remains a welcome distraction to all, it remains in our brains & stresses us — the kid never intended to be part of it, she just felt like telling you something and walked in unaware of the nuances of WFH, stressful Video calls and son — now that arises the questions on work-life balances. Being at home used to be like celebration for whole family — now being on WFH is posing challenges of stress, exhaustion, fully drained when done & results in severe domestic disturbances too.
A convenience which otherwise longed for now looks not so welcomed option — whose fault can it be?
