At the end of each passing year and at the start of the New Year, I get down to writing down my thoughts and sometimes I do publish on my blog or just let it go. This unprecedented time around, while trying some introspection, I decreed myself as someone quite optimistic, resilient and hopeful. At the same time, I also know quite definitely that I am an introvert, even though I consciously work hard every time to come out of that tag. In the pandemic and during the two rounds of painful lockdowns in the country, I took up two online courses, that was generously provided free of cost by Coursera. One of this was on ‘Speaking to Inform’. I am yet to do a self-appraisal to see if the five weeks long course has brought home any significant impact on my mildly reticent nature.
Year 2020 was a very
rough ride for the entire world. In this short write up I will not be able to
give the full account of the distress this tiny invisible demon brought to the
world. Loss of dear and near ones, pain and sufferings among millions of people
throughout the world – indiscriminately among rich, poor, developed and
developing countries with not a single nation spared, this is indeed a deadly
virus. Many say this is one most contagious global pandemic in nearly hundred
years, even though many more localized contagions had been causing often miraculous
diseases in different pockets of the world throughout the past century. Again,
it is beyond the scope of this short personal account of mine to justifiably speak
about the scale of its negative effect on the lives and livelihoods of people, local
and global economy, psychology and the emotions of affected overall.
Back home, Bhutan had
been, as always, blessed by the leadership of His Majesty the King, who in this
unparalleled pandemic, personally supervised and directed the Government of the
day in handling the pandemic most efficiently even if that were at the cost of
the country’s small and vulnerable economy. Life is given the topmost priority here
and that has mostly paid off. Even though there has been at least two major
lockdowns and most recently a community outbreak, we did not lose a life
because of this deadly virus nor has the suffering of the people been as acute and
widespread as in most other countries of the world. In Bhutan, people who lost
their jobs benefited from the benevolence of the King and continued receiving
the Kidu (relief financial support) throughout the period of this difficult time. Even those on the higher ups of the economic strata, a lot of them
benefited from bank interest waiver and deferment of the loan payments. I do
not know if there is any other nation in the world with such compassionate social security
and welfare schemes that provides such care and support at times of critical needs such
as the one that the world is going through.
As our country, just like most others in the world, awaits the arrival of a vaccine, the stress and
pain caused by this virus continues to prevail and in many parts of the world
it has reappeared in a bigger wave and with mutated virulence. But the quick
and record turnaround time of the vaccine (because of today’s scientific
advancements) has also brought a lot of hope to the melancholic world. Bhutan
is also hopeful of getting out of this terrible state of affairs latest by the
middle of 2021, if not earlier.
At a very personal
front, I have not suffered anything at all. Neither I lost my job nor have even
one of my institutional colleagues. We collectively learnt to live and work
with resilience and adaptability. The academic year got concluded successively
and all of us together learnt many new lessons. Learning never stops,
especially in a dynamic academic institution and today there are plenty of newer ways
to make learning meaningful, vibrant and exciting even in the worst of times. But
as of now it is a lean academic season and in normal times I would be on my vacation
somewhere in a warmer location. Curse the virus, this time after nearly 5
decades, I am stranded at my workplace (still working online but leisurely) and
lost that privilege of a yearly mental renaissance I enjoyed working as a teacher and
an academic administrator all my life. Feeling somewhat hopeless, I have
settled down at my cold residence in Thimphu to spend the so-called winter
vacation, and it is very likely that we will burn more wood inside the bhukhari
this winter. I feel sorry about this increased ecological footprint I am going
to leave behind.
Biggest consolation in
the ongoing lockdown is that the weather is extremely beautiful, with blue sky
and sunny warm days. As expected the nights are chilly but with bright waxing
and waning moon, and full of beautiful perpetual stars (you could count all of
them from your lawn, only if you could stand the chill). It seems in this
pandemic the happiest entity on the planet is the Mother Nature. This is obviously
a clear warning from her to the world that the time is still not fully lost and
she can regain and rejuvenate if enough restraint is exercised by the human inhabitants.
If not, either you suffer from her devastation or be prepared to face another
natural calamity such as the COVID-19!
Homo sapiens
are most evolved and intellectually most advanced and perhaps “civilized” of
all the species, at least in human’s own interpretations. But as the acclaimed
author of Sapiens Yuval Noah Harari puts it in his book, this species is
the most unsettling and destructive organism today. The year of 2020 was no
different from most past years in terms of human conflicts. Brexit, US-China bitter
exchanges of words over trade balances and more recently on the genesis of the Virus
itself, US-Iran never ending acrimonious debates, the spillover effect of the
conflicts in Africa and middle-east, etc., are some of the ongoing incidences
continued in 2020. Think of Syria where a powerful nation just bombards it and
another more powerful is just a bystander since it has nothing to lose or gain;
conflicts have never ended in Sudan,
Yemen or Libya and most recently new ethnic strife arose in Ethiopia causing a
huge refugee crisis in Africa. At the same time the recent so called Nagorno-Karabakh
war, was a deadly armed conflict between Azerbaijan (supported by Turkey), and
the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh together with Armenia. There is no end
to human sufferings be it due to these destructive and selfish international groupisms
(some openly and some stabbing from the back) and distrust. Fascism and
unilateralism is raising its egoistic head again and again in many countries
including the so called very democratic and developed nations, and there is no
end to the contemptuous thought of expansionism and fear of wars even in the
twenty first century.
One brighter side of
the pandemic is the development of the idea of work from home. While the
technology is constantly promulgating and refining to support these efforts,
for many the accessibility and affordability is still a far cry. One of the
most affected sector in the pandemic is the education – especially the primary
and the secondary schools. In Bhutan, the government early on asked teachers to
begin online teaching and most schools started using free e-learning platforms.
While the higher education sector was more successful in this regards since the
adult learners have better access and adaptability to the new normal, the most
impacted were the children from rural areas. We still do not know how many
young kids will be fully derailed for good from the track of education. A thorough
study and rectification measure needs to be put in place before we lose a
generation of citizens to illiteracy and lack of a better career. On the
hindsight choices for self-learning, inexpensive ways of organizing of the
seminars and conferences (webinars) boomed overnight and a lot of people unexpected
to meet in normal times got connected through platforms like skype, zoom, meet
and bigbluebutton, etc.,
Personally, I was busy
picking up threads from various sources and was engaged in knowing about how
the online teaching-learning could be made most effective and real experience for
the learners. I was able to monitor the progress made by the students along
with improved efforts from the esteemed faculty colleagues. The online
resources were gathered in plenty and were made available to the learners
making them take responsibility of their own learning – an institutional vision
that was long awaited to be fulfilled. Similarly, students had to exercise, in
auto-regulated mode, the much desired academic honesty as there was no one to
supervise and correct the bad behavior. Most importantly they understand that
it is their own learning. No one should be just happy with a piece of paper at
the end of their university education, afterall the purpose of education is to gain
some authentic knowledge and skill in the discipline that you have chosen to
serve yourself in your entire life. Digital education and blended learning is
the future and this realization has to come to all the educators, education
managers as well as the learners, and there is no going back – pandemic or no
pandemic.
I, not only learned
some of these new sources of education, but also took up online courses and
used my time in reading a couple of books. Of all three that I know of, the
third book of Harari, the 21 Lessons for the 21st Century
turn out to be most engaging and delightful. This book is a mixture of
arguments and commentaries, philosophical yet realistic, pessimistic yet
forward looking, and full of anecdotes, often judgmental and egoistic. The author
seems to be a great believer of technology which is expected to replace human
skills and endeavors. He seem to have rejected the exclusiveness of ‘isms’, yet
he ends the book with his strong inclination towards the concept of mindfulness
and meditation (specifically Vipassana). There is a lot to reflect and write
about this book which I would not do in this short narrative on the occasion of
a New Year, that the whole world is looking towards with a big HOPE. One other
useful discipline that I imbibed and wish to retain in my life is the practice
of Yoga. I am grateful to one of our international students, Irene de Jager for
taking me through, along with senior management of the college, a 45 minutes
daily session for nearly six months that should become a habit now on.
Finally on Vaccine: Someone
had said that ‘when Bangladesh sneezes, Bhutan oranges catch cold’. Similar analogy
can be applied when it comes to vaccination against COVID 19. I would say if India
gets vaccinated Bhutan is very close to getting immunized. Our porous border
can operate with some ease and we can put our economy back on track. As the
year 2020 is closing, there are daily news of countries beginning to vaccinate
their populace or at least acquiring or making attempts to acquire doses of
vaccines as soon as these are made available by the manufacturers. There are
welcome competitions among the makers of the vaccines and with enough choices
to make, we will have a kind that will suit each country and the pockets to go with
it. Hopefully each country will be able to immunize enough population so that
the infection is curbed down, if not fully eradicated. As WHO has said no one
is safe from infection unless all the countries are safe. This is a typical
character of what is called as a global village that we live in today.
Optimistic as I am, by midyear of 2021, we will be almost close to normal activities.
However the lessons learnt must never be forgotten and the skills and new
knowledge gained must be preserved, promoted and further enhanced to keep
ourselves prepared for such or similar paralyzing mishaps – whatever may be the
scale and geography of the future natural calamities.
