Today, with the onset of the New Year-2021, I remember very well the opening line of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem Past and Future, where she wants to see the future as completely different from the past. This very desire of a poet is reflected in the minds of people all over the world today. Today, another new year has started with the dawn of a new morning in the fog of winter. Our world could not get out of the death pit of the Corona pandemic, although the last date on the last page of the calendar also said goodbye to us. 2020 was undoubtedly more frustrating, sad, difficult and wailing for us than any other year. Although new dreams, new hopes and new possibilities are desirable for the New Year, today, on the first day of 2021, like many other years, we are very lifeless and dull. Still the world is not free from Covid-19.
This time, at 12:01 pm on December 31, there is an exception for the enthusiasm with which millions of people around the world welcome the English New Year through various colorful events. Corona is clinging to this earth in fear and uncertainty. Still, there is hope in our minds, dreams may peek, and may be, this earth will get back a new life free from the deathblow. We will not look for the accounts of gains and losses in 2020 today. Let’s take a look at what Covid-19 in 2020 has taught us and what it has hinted.
Nine months after the Corona pandemic, new realizations have come to our economic, social, political and cultural life. Large business firms, banks including government have had to incur unimaginable losses. Millions of people have been laid off and unemployed. Our beloved motherland is also lagging behind with other countries of the world. Many people of the country are passing sleepless nights trying to overcome the economic recession. Educated unemployed are on the rise due to the postponement of recruitment exams. Meanwhile, the closure of educational institutions for more than 9 months has caused irreparable damage to the education sector. Students are passing classes without exams. Thus, they are being slipped off their main trend. No one can say when the educational institution will reopen. That is, we are lagging behind in education, research and intellect-based thinking.
For maintaining hygiene, we are becoming socially isolated from our relatives. Corona stands on the way of our social interactions. It is as if we have become an alien from a different planet, not Earth. We have lost important personalities including politicians, writers, poets, journalists, industrialists, ministers, artists and academics only due to this Covid-19. We have suffered these kinds of losses helplessly because we had no control over them. But the things that have plagued us more than this are our dishonesty, perverted tastes, injustice, deceit and corruption. Corona has shown us how inhuman and unscrupulous we still are. We have seen the mismanagement and corruption of the health department during the pandemic. Our mothers and sisters were not spared from such heinous acts as rape. The fear of the Covid-19 did not frighten them. Although child marriage has been discouraged in the society, it has increased at a significant rate during this period. Divorce, murder and suicide have increased. Besides, the prices of daily necessaries have gone up. The prices of potatoes, onions and vegetables were unbridled. Markets were pregnant with adulterated food and medicine. Transport owners have increased fares several times in the name of complying with hygiene rules. Even in the pandemic, we have had to agitate to ensure the rigorous punishment for rapists. We had to write to reduce the bus fare and keep the price within the purchase limit. In general, everyone advised us to be humane in our behavior, but in true sense we could not be so humane and disciplined.
Although there is good news of receiving the highest remittance during pandemic last year, we could not send those remittance fighters abroad smoothly after their coming to the country for spending the holidays. The sky became heavy with their movement and tears at the airport. Corona has also shown how poor we are in computer and ICT knowledge.
After all, the year 2020 has brought more misfortune for us than good. Even then, success in some areas has been seen in 2020. The much-anticipated Padma Bridge became visible in the late 2020. The government has provided safe accommodation to the Rohingya by rehabilitating and relocating them to Bhasanchar. Political violence is not as visible in 2020 as in other years. Corona infections and the deaths have been relatively small in our country, as in Europe-America or neighboring India. Although the population density is high, our immunity seems to be high. Although many lost their jobs in the private sectors in the middle of 2020, most of them have returned to the workplace by the end of 2020. The trend of saving among the middle class and the lower middle class is being noticed lately.
Tackling corona through vaccine is a big challenge in 2021. It may take another year and a half to meet this challenge. Therefore, experts need to rethink whether there is any other alternative way to compensate for the loss of education. In the light of the experience of 2020, it has become the responsibility of the individual, the society and the state to create an outline according to the plan to make 2021 a livable time. At the beginning of the New Year, we have to be more sincere in following the hygiene rules. The expectation of all of us in the early hours of 2021 is to bring about the desired change of human values through self-realization. Let the New Year-2021 bring us an environment of cooperation instead of enmity. A pandemic-free along with corruption-free Bangladesh is our first thirst at the very inception of 2021.
(Mr. Badrul is Assistant Professor, Department of English, Ishakha International University. E-mail: [email protected])
