Back to the future
Many people say that after the Covid-19 pandemic, our lives will change. Unquestionably so. But if you think about it, how different will life in India be from what it was, say, in 1970? If you can remember that far back, you will recall that we used to buy groceries from nearby shops. Fruit and vegetable vendors used to criss-cross our neighborhoods with hand carts or a basket on their head; we could pick and choose whatever we wanted. There was no home delivery- at best, you could buy some products from vendors who traveled on their bicycles or scooters hawking products like pickles, papads etc from house to house. There were restaurants, but eating out was rare, even among middle class families. There were some brands, and most of them related to personal and home-care products such as soaps, shampoos, toothpaste, detergents etc. There were brands of cigarettes, confectionery and soft drinks as well. All of these products were “made in India”. Imported chocolates or liquor was for the handful who went abroad- and back then, customs duty rates were much higher. The scenario now is much the same. The difference, of course, is that there are many more brands (both Indian and foreign) in retail stores. Also, there is some home-delivery- but these days, it is sporadic, because e-commerce companies are finding it hard to get delivery crew. But what if Covid-19 spurs countries to adopt more nationalistic policies and dump globalization?
In the pre-internet era, people would go to their respective offices, do their work and get back home by 6:30 or 7:00 p m (depending on how long the scooter or bus ride took). No conference calls or emails after that. All that has changed, because these days, employees are expected to be “always on”. Back then, unless you lived in Delhi or perhaps Mumbai, there was no TV either- and till the early 1990s, no cable TV either; AIR’s Vividh Bharati provided entertainment from 6:00 a m to 11:00 p m in the form of 30- or 60- minute slots devoted to classical music, radio skits, talks, Hindi (and regional language) film songs, interviews with well-known people and so on. Watching films meant going to a movie theater and standing in line to buy tickets (unless you had bought them a day or two in advance). There were no malls or multiplexes, so if you did not get tickets, you risked “buying them in black” or went home disappointed. Today radio is regaining popularity. Of course, there are a myriad OTT streaming options also available- which can all be viewed from virtually anywhere there is stable internet connectivity. Back then, children played outdoors with friends; one had to take one’s siblings along, no matter how much they cramped your style. The absence of the www meant that news was delivered either in the baritone of Surajit Sen, Barun Haldar or Lotika Rathnam (hope I’ve got the names right!) on AIR’s news bulletins or via the newspapers the next day. Now, though, hundreds of websites deliver news; and if that is not enough, social media platforms are available to propagate facts, opinions and plenty of fake news.
Today, we have digital technologies that enable so many things from the relative comfort- and safety- of our own homes. To that extent, life has changed, because “instant gratification” is being enabled and encouraged like never before. But in other ways? Maybe in the post-Covid-19 world, we will all just go back to what life was like fifty years ago. Getting used to this shift will not be easy, though, because as a society, we have lost the ability to trust (and in some cases, acquired the ability to trust blindly).
