Daily Post 1520
BACK TO SQUARE ONE!
Back to square one is the operational model we are working on, whatever might be the euphemistic philosophy we intend to propagate. The shelf life of our plans and projects gives a clear indication of the lack sincerity behind it. No sooner than it crashes, we are out there with another earth shattering plan. This rigmarole we have been accustomed with but the heart says this time it would be something different and we go for our heart, only to be fooled once again. Had it been a case of repeated failures, one would still have been accepted it, but if our destination is failure itself, though not declared, then where is question of being successful.
Life teaches its lessons but we are not ready to learn. If we see the world around us, how many instances do we find of doing the same mistake over and over again. Conversely, not only it becomes the order of the day, it becomes the new normal, doing anything different would end up in both organisational and societal wrath. Society also responds as if nothing has happened. Might be mentally they had not moved even an inch. For us it might mean that we are back to square one over and over again, for the vast majority, they are hit by the state of timelessness.
The COVID-19 story will go down in the annals of history precisely for the same reason. Initially, because of lack of experience or any precious encounter with pandemic, it was dealt the way it was. With the smokescreen getting cleared, the approach remained exactly the same. As in everything else, things started moving in a manner as if pandemic is subject to administrative control. The timelines, the activities, gatherings, movements, quarantine etc seemed to moving ahead as per administrative convenience. We did not even bother to look at the last known pandemic, the example of Spanish Plague, and started celebrating success even before it actually began.
An advertisement of Delhi Govt is still propagating the sane method of celebrating festivals while the city in throes of disaster. What an irony! It is happening all across the country at different times in different ways. The result being exactly the same. The explanations and defences in the media has its own story. Health crisis has an objectivity and empirical science behind it. Can we ignore? Requesting for sanity to a population which has not believed in one and an ad hoc enforcement in crisis, is what this crisis is made of Hit and trial is our DNA and that is what we trying even in the midst of the worst health emergency of a century. Are we back to square one or worse!
ONE STEP FORWARD AND TWO STEPS BACKWARD CANNOT BE TERMED A JOURNEY.
Sanjay Sahay