We Will Prevail !

In our life time , we all face unprecedented situations , sometimes.

As a community , Society or as a Country also , many times we go through the rare occasions of extraordinary adversaries.

But , for the entire humanity an event of such magnitude , complexity , unpredictability and helplessness rarely comes . While humanity keeps on struggling with some of the long term and very complex situations like environmental issues , rising fanaticism and radicalization of our societies , growing inequalities and sub-human conditions of large section of poor people etc. ; something of this sort which is very sudden and unpredictable caught all of us inept and unprepared.

I was even thinking what would be an apt description of the situation – an extremely sensitizing , cautionary , overtly spelt out ground situations of health conditions, depiction of worldwide underpreparedness coupled with inevitable economic fall outs ; or , hey wait don’t panic , In past also we have seen extreme hard times of Epidemics, Wars , Famine , Nuclear Holocaust , Genocides and many more and good news is that we survived and survived better !

I faintly remember having read soewhere that in the human history , mankind has spent more time fighting each other than anything else . Today those direct frontal Wars have been taken over by Nation's rivalry for supremacy , greater influence in  global arena and economic expansionism . Today’s wars may be less fatal the on face of it but more implcit , indirect and cryptic.

In a book called “Factfulness” , Hans Rosling outlines “why things are better than we think . He explains across board we have made significant progress and we are better than the past . So , we can say that this is also a passing by phase and things will eventually normalise . Human ingenuity will eventually be triumphant.

In the similar line thinker , writer Steven Pinker in his Book “ Enlightment Now “ he explains so convincing that appernatly , amidst overshadoiwng headlines of Chaos , Hatred , Irrationality , Conflicts , Inequalities and Deprivation , our lives have become longer , healthier , Safer , Happier and even more prosporus . I am not saying that we are living in an ideal world , but things may be better than as it appears.

Albert Camus had portrayed the extreme grim side of an pemdemic in the accliamed novel “ The Plague” . It was a story of a pandemic , plague sweeping the city of Oran and raised the question about nature of destinty and human conditions . It described how a city was decimated .

The Spanish Flu which happened in 1918 was a deadly Influenza pandemic lasted from January 1918 to December 1920 and apperanty infected 500 million people worldwide , alomost one third of the population of the world at the time.The death toll was estimated to be anywhere from 17 million to 50 million and may and possibly as high as 100 million, making it one of the deadliest pandemicswere  in human history. It is estimated that in India itself 17 to 18 Mn people died .

There were many such tragic events and tremendous loss to humanity over centuires . But at the end , always the great endurance , resilience of human spirit prevailed .

Today , medical science has made enormous strides of progess . We are sure that scientific community with their untiring efforts and grit will be able to come out with proven vaccines and therapeutic drugs soon . We just need to cling on and buy that time for ourselves .

In an interconnected and truly Global society now , countires still need to administer and tackle issues locally even for those problems which do not obey the boundaries . Nations are still behaving with a tribal mentality .What is needed is a more concerted , empathetic and collaborative efforts to overcome the situation . Unfortunately no credible ledaership has emerged so far to lead the crisis in a cencerted manner at a global stage . The global agencies like WHO could have been more assertive and decisive and shoud have mobilised more collaborative efforts to combat the crisis .

Even though I am not a big fan of conspiracy theroies , I have reasons to believe that China could have been more transparent , forthcoming in the whole affairs and alerted other countries much before . They conspired to keep things under the carpet for a long time , many believs that they have under reported the casualities .

Dr Li Wenliang, who raised the alarm about the coronavirus in the early days of the outbreak has died out of the infection from the disease itself. Media reported that he was never taken seriously , in fact he was apperantly taunted for spreading a rumour . This reminds me of the great play “An Enemy of the People” by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen . "An Enemy of the People" tells the story of a man who dares to speak an unpalatable truth, and is punished for it.

At the end , in spite of all the short comings , limitations and selfish agenda of certain groups and even not been able to work as one at the time of crisis ; still human endeavour will prevail . Not because of Governmental and Intitutional organised efforts alone , but because of those thousnads of faceless , nameless , silent medical workers , care givers , scientists and researchers who are putting their unwavering efforts to end this drakness . In the time of human crisis , I get inspired by the name of a great novel “ Love in the Time of Cholera” by Colombian Nobel prize winning author  Gabriel Garcia Marquez . Even during Cholrea , Human compassion , love and goodness will sprout in our hearts , the human siprit will rise. Adversaries will come , they will try to crush us but human compassion , love , endurance , resilience , spirit will eventually find out the path of glory and will stay on course eternally!