coronavirus

Click Reset. Restart.

Putting the word together again after Coronavirus is going to be a mammoth task, given that the crisis has challenged us over various levels—medical, economic, social and psychological, to list a few broad parameters. Hopefully, the learning lessons will help us move to a better world.

Examining a few possible scenarios, Down To Earth has featured an article by Simon Mair by arrangement with The Conversation. Among the scenarios explored, the author mentions “mutual aid” wherein individual and small groups begin to organise support and care within their communities.

The report mentions: “The risks with this future is that small groups are unable to rapidly mobilise the kind of resources needed to effectively increase healthcare capacity, for instance. But mutual aid could enable more effective transmission prevention, by building community support networks that protect the vulnerable and police isolation rules. The most ambitious form of this future sees new democratic structures arise. Groupings of communities that are able to mobilise substantial resources with relative speed. People coming together to plan regional responses to stop disease spread and (if they have the skills) to treat patients.”

At the micro level, mutual aid programmes, based on pragmatic approaches and compassion help to reach out timely aid. It is the proactive approaches of the robust and alert communities and resident welfare associations (RWAs) that have ensured some success in enforcing quarantine measures at the street and gated community living levels. Reaching out aid in forms of food packets and water to vulnerable sections and frontline workers is the kind of help that can be chipped in by all. Each nimble, small step will go a long way in battling Covid, even as the governments examine the breadth and the scope of political and administrative, long-term measures.

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