Opinion

The future generations must be viewing this as a biggest psychological experiment, worst case scenario and the inhumane practice to save humanity and much more. This is COVID-19 lockdown.

Lockdown was imposed on March 25^th 2020. Being a social animal, we went through a lot. The ill effects of lockdown ranges from anxiety induced due to potential job loss - historic unemployment rate, potential downturn of investments in coming years, struggling to keep up with daily work-from-home with it’s own challenges.

My SO asked a curious question. I froze, like a Windows XP machine, couldn’t answer then. After the incident, for several nights, the question ran through in my head to decipher the answer.

Let’s start with little about me . I like to read books. As of today, reading is one of the hobby for me. For her, reading is a boring chore, like majority around me.

The question was simple and on to the point.

The outbreak is here. Turned into Pandemic, spreading across geographies without much of obstacles. The impact is felt in so many domains, from hospitals to hospitality, from tourism industry to ride-sharing. Governments are scrambling to slow down its spread. The corporates are equipping employees with work-from-home options. Unorganized sector is going for a toss. So, how could the COVID-19 affect the governing bodies?

Late 2010s and the raise of Nationalists The Nationalists or Conservatives or Right wingers are in raise in the 2^nd half of 2010s, across the world.

Last July marks the Quadrennial year working in an MNC. These years had taught me several valuable lessons. Learnt either from first-hand experience or learning from others action. What I learnt is that our fundamentals are flawed as several important things are not taught at young age.

There are 2 important things that must be included in curriculum.

Career vs. Job : In earlier generation, its pride to be working with an employer for long duration (say, in terms years or decades). I have part of several farewells where in people will be treated well for part of the establishment and retiring is like a big event. That was the day in past. I don’t come across those celebration in recent times. One of my team mate, recently joined states that this is his 5th employer in 8 years. In this 8-year-long career he has been working with several domain and several tools.

Waking up at the morning, after finishing morning-activities I noticed there was no water. I should have checked the water can in the night. Duh!! Should have called the water can vendor if I reached home came earlier. He did delivered the cans after a call and waiting for a hour.

Breakfast time. Rushed out to road-side eatery. While waiting for dishes to be prepared, had conversation with the owner-cum-server, came to know that the continuous rain for 3 days the last week has affected their business. And, things went worse as they couldn’t repay the debt on that week. Still waiting for the dishes to get prepared, hunger made it the longest 10 minutes. Finally, it got ready. Then came another obstacle – traffic cop. He was questioning the owner, on whose permission they are running the stall on the road-side.

The generation born between 1985-95 has more or less seen the technology evolution from the fron seat. The advent of internet, landline giving up its place to mobile phones, more desk jobs than the labour intensive work. Through this journey, the lifestyle got altered to a large extent. Some of the changes are just an improvemnt to our life, while some or controversial in nature. I call them controversial as harmful effects are neither proved nor denied by scientific community.

We all know the Climate change is real and happening now. This is a threat to the Human species. Yes, it’s a threat to the species not the entire planet. Why not we as a species cannot survive this? The nature will adapt to the changes. But, the new earth will no way close to the one we have now. Also, we got deviated from the natural evolution. Our life became sophisticated, without the necessary infrastructure we will kill ourself in the name of depression. So, we have to fight the Climatic changes.

As a country, 1990’s are changing times for India. The nation saw some of the interesting transformations, which would be an unimaginable tale even a decade earlier for Geo-political experts. The changes ranges from Economic stance of the country to opening up to private cable channels to introduction of Internet to the masses (the snail-paced dial-ups).

The election commission too hopped into the transformation train. From the conventional paper based ballot, the Electronic Voting Machines were introduced. As like any other new stuff, this was unwelcomed by many, especially every losing party started blaming on the foul play surrounding the EVM. To mitigate the foul play, as a 2nd level defense, the EC introduced VVPAT system. Here, a paper trail is maintained alongside the digital recording of voting.

Sarcasm, according to Google is “ the use of irony to mock or convey contempt”. Interpreting it could be final frontier for AI.

Understanding Sarcastic line is a complex process. Depends on lots of variables — context, body language, tone modulation and so on. To be fair there is not proper/scientific way to decode sarcasm. To add to it, degree of closeness is (kinda) proportional to complexity of sarcasm.

In one of the scene Deadpool 2 movie, the lead actor was questioned who he is. Responding, he says, “I’m Batman”. The whole theater erupts in laughter. You can understand this if you’re aware of Batman and his punchlines.

Occupation (for-profit) or welfare/charity (non-profit)?

This is the question which started a long conversation with my friend over Whatsapp.

Why does it matter? Everything depends on the answer. If it’s Occupation, you can tax them for the revenue, likewise you can insure them so they can land safe in times of tragedy. Or if its a welfare, government can take it or some NGOs can chip in with funding from benevolent sponsors.