Standing at the intersection of a very painful and an utmost hopeful Year

     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 21^st 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.