COVID-19: On the Face of It

Before we start, I'd like to make something very clear; I'm not an economist, I'm not a social scientist and I'm definitely not a philosopher, in fact for the content I'd like to present here and even in future too, as and when I state and submit things, I intend to do that only and only at the capacity of some random kid who spends time on reading about the stuff he presents here and has no authority over the concerned subject at all.

With that said, let's begin.

the picture's beautiful, right? Except, it represents something which is extremely deadly and has a reproductive number ranging between 2 and 2.5

What is this "reproductive number" you may ask?
It's basically the number of people an infected person is likely to spread the virus with. If you've done exponential numbers in school, you'd understand that once this "chain-chain" game goes beyond 15 chain joints, there's a chance that no less than (2^15 i.e) 32,768 people have already gotten in contact with the virus.

Enough of the daunting things now; It's scary right?

At first a random Donald thinks it's just Chinese flu, and then you start reading on how things work, you start understanding the dynamic of an epidemic, the News tells you it's now a pandemic; as much as you're now able to fathom how numbers are functioning, you somewhere end up realizing that's where your understanding of things end.

because now  

IT'S BIOLOGY and you don't remember sh*t from what you did in school. It's not physics or computers that you'd understanding how blocking that one prick in your instagram or whatsapp works; or probably, math which'll help you with estimating the number of classmates you have sitting in your optional subject lectures.

that's how British PM Boris Johnson would've felt after he tested positive for the virus just when the epidemiologists were considering the curve to have started flattening

bottom line? a TL;DR?

Corona and anything, literally anything related to it is beyond science and can be wondered as something that's an unknown sorcery.

Now, this post isn't anything closely related with the biology, the spread of the virus, the cause of it, or how Tanishk Bagchi gets to have the same credibility as A.R Rahman having made a mess of Masakali; but is related to the things that haven't necessarily been pointed out by any of the media houses (in my truly limited knowledge);

plus I don't watch television based news channels anymore, so, primarily news websites, their social media handles, etc.:

Covid-19 has put stop to a lot of things, brought a beginning to a set of many other; except, as much as the virus is an adversary indifferently ruthless to everybody, humans and therefore, humanly constructs have only made things worse here and there, and I guess, it's important for you and I to at least, at least have a conversation about these (even if it's one sided, yes) :P

here we  go:

1. Second wave of a population boom, primarily in India

High rates of unemployment have always been an issue in the Indian context; except, considering how strong and rigid the informal credit system is in India and how beautifully Indian government have always failed to offer policy programs to deal with the same, we Indians sure know how to deal with unemployment.

We know we could simply continue with higher studies, or work more man hours in any job, even if it's not in line with our academic field, or probably start a small time business by loaning money from either govt. agencies or a loan shark;

except, we won't.

we think the solution to unemployment is SEX. Day in day out,

and mind you. sex with contraceptives is a apparently a sin here; I mean, why not? in a span of just 73 years, the country saw its population increase from 350 million in 1947 to about 1.35 billion. That's about 4 times growth. 

with that habit of Indians kept in perspective, a second wave of population boom seems to have set to take place, and trust me when I say this, in fact trust BJP politicians when they say this "agar berozgaar aadmi ghar par baithega toh sambhog karega hee na"

(if  an unemployed man sits at home, he's bound to have sex)

least realizing that this attitude and perception about unemployment, and in our case, the imposed lock down, bears another basket filled with millions of babies "gifted" to us by the angels and flying gooses.

2. An exponential increase in incidents of domestic violence:

Men are biological dogs. Especially Indian men, considering one gets no, nada education of the idea of consent, temper control, gender sensitization and grooming likewise as a male born in this unfortunately still largely orthodox and patriarchal in a rather oppressive and female ignorant set up. 

There's absolutely no two ways about the dog thing, and it's the dog in men that so conveniently chooses to physically abuse his wife/woman if and when she says "no". I'm not saying every man, but yes a significant portion will; and like always, this will also be brushed under the rug.

The Protection of Woman from Domestic Violence Act was enacted only in 2005; that's almost 60 years after the independence; which only shows how the whole idea of abuse by husbands have seemingly been normalized in the India marriage systems.

3. People have been laid off all around the world, which not only makes things worse for the now unemployed, but also pursuing graduates like you and me. I mean c'mon, I was already competing with the kid next door, now I've to stand against someone who has a working experience of years possibly more than my age? 

Plus, it;s equally unfair to him/her too, he/she will now have to compete with a kid like me for god's sake.

4. False idea of a recession

A recession is due, there's no two ways about it. Except, it wouldn't necessarily be wrong to say that a lot of economies around the world, especially India were already barreling towards a recession. 

except, this statement^ isn't very clear,right?

Let me give you a recession 101:

1. one year is divided into 12 months

2.we call these years as financial years; 

3.this financial year is divided into 4 quaters, Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4.

4. we do the math, say it with me, "12 divided by 4 equals 3", and therefore every quarter comprises of 3 months each.

5. Every financial quarter, the country's official stats. agencies checks for the size of production made in the said quarter.

6. if 2 consecutive quarters register a negative growth rate, the economy is said to go into recession.

now that we're on the same page, let's continue:

according to bloombergquint.com, in the FY 2019-20, India had registered a growth rate of 4.8% in Q2 and then a reduced 4.2% in Q3. In Q4, as we'd all get to see, the production is anyways bound to see a significant fall considering literally an entire month has already gone down the drain in this quarter. (Q4= 4 months, remember).

Now, why's this something I'm mentioning as misplaced/false?

See, had it been like before, a recession would've been in order for natural, to an extent uncontrollable reasons, yet most importantly, in a calculable and fathomable manner. Keeping the crash course we just did above about recessions in mind, even you could've predicted the same.

except, it's not the what of the whole recession hysteria I'm concerned about, it's the when that I'm trying to bring your attention towards. 

Reader, we, with the implementation of a martial law enforced lock down have officially manufactured a recession in the most simple and rather artificial manner. 

TL;DR? 

"the Indian economy won't be going into a recession once the lock down opens, it already is in a recession; 

we've already dug the pit of recession for us, using our own 2 hands, the moment we'd decided for the lock down". 

and the worst thing about this?

historically, recessions have lasted for 6 months;

except, this time, it's going to be very different;

structural fallacies in the government agencies, misplaced political motivations, and and no government presence since before the recession and even during the recession, sure increases this 6 months time period to at least 9-15 months.

For the policy programs introduced in the first 2014-19 tenure, even I'd agree the short run costs were too high, discounted in relation to the long run benefits the government claimed to have brought back then. Except, the power corruption that came with the victory for the second tenure over shadowed the future of every single beautiful thing those policy programs could've brought to us.

lastly, 

5. COVID-19: need of the hour

Yes, I genuinely think COVID-19, if thought of with an open mind, can be used as a source of re-enforcement to bring about changes in mindsets. Sure, humans are parasitic in their hostile tendency to exploit natural resources to an extent of irrecoverable exploitation of the environment, except, if we already know that the practice of using coal for generating electricity is extremely harmful to the nature, then we might as well use this time for introspection to understand and make do on the fact that it's high time, we switch to cleaner sources of energy generation, including those of solar and hydro-power.

If someone's insensitive and toxic as a person to have a relationship with some one, at whatever capacity, he/she should use this time to understand his/her person more, read on it, understand the limitations and strengths and make amends accordingly.

If a bad (for which we're not even responsible for,) can indifferently put a stop to our "existence" per say so significantly, then I don't think any cheque in the world, how so ever big, can buy me off from not pressing pause, realizing the bull shit I've been up-to and accordingly, try to make amends.

I'm hoping you read till the very end of this article, and if you did really,

I'd appreciate your feedback in the comments section. 

Also, a little update:

if things go well here, I might as well monetize this handle, and use the money thereby made to probably interview people, visit places that I otherwise wouldn't be able to possibly, etc.

There's something I'm working on for the small family of  not economists, not social scientists and definitely not philosophers that I've been blessed with here;

except, these things will only be possible if the handle does well, so I'd really appreciate if you also share the posts, but share only if you liked. Subscribe to the blog, but subscribe only if you like to; and keep learning, even if you don't like to.

with that said,

this is Mayul

signing off :)

P.S : stay hydrated


Socials:

Email: mayul.manav28@gmail.com
Instagram: @mayulmanav