I call it Rat year because we were caged in lockdown, we were hiding from social lives. And many people were running towards their states just like the rats of sinking ships. Many got killed without getting hour of death or final rituals. This year we lived like rats, we ate whatever was possible and we lived confined. Entire this year we mostly stayed at home, many youngsters lost their jobs, small ventures got closed, the savings drained, salary cuts and layoffs this year gave us many challenges for survival. Lot of people come on road; their life also changed. Street vendor, businessmen industries, Farmer, etc. had worst time. Farmers didn’t get labor due to pandemic. India’s and other countries’ (those face to this lockdown) GDP declined, economic clashed. The COVID-19 pandemic that infected almost millions of people and killed nearly lakh worldwide till the filing of this story. Economies around the world collapsed, job losses are at a peak and several sectors witnessed a doom. Natural disasters followed in different parts of the globe, leading to further bloodbath. India, for example, witnessed floods, cyclones, earthquakes, and a bloody border confrontation all in the past eight months. India, for example, witnessed floods, cyclones, earthquakes, and a bloody border confrontation all in the past eight months. This rat year is a uniquely bizarre year. The biggest thing that we’ve experienced in this present 21st century is the routine changes. Normally there would be new movie releases every week or month in the cinemas, but those moments are being stopped until these days. The daily routines are also changed; people are forced to wear a mask every time if they go out. Tourism industry, one of the most suffered industry ever in terms of economy.
2020 will most definitely go down in history as it is the year where the whole world is suffering from one pandemic known as Covid-19. The virus has claimed almost 3.4 million lives out of 5.43 million reported cases leading to governments taking control measures like curfews and lockdowns to contain the virus. Still, in the same year, it is seen that 500 million animals die due to bush fire in Australia. To many, this may seem like the most disastrous year, but after in-depth research, it is clear that the world has experienced worse cases before. Conditions like smallpox in (1520) and the Spanish Flu (1920) that claimed about 100 million lives are just but an example of dark days that the world has experienced in the past. Each showed how unprepared the world is to face severe virus attacks and expose negligence by various governments in equipping hospitals with enough tools to test and cure viruses as they surface.
Approaching the end of this troublesome of a year, the Coronavirus was an awful pandemic and it ruined and changed the lives of millions. We are into the closing day of a year that must go down as the worst since Independence, mostly but not only because of Covid-19. India is better placed now than it was half a century ago to deal with multiple simultaneous crises. So while the issues confronting the country go beyond the extreme privations caused by the lockdown, and beyond also the vaccination challenge to tame a deadly virus that has taken a massive toll, the economic damage can be substantially repaired in the next couple of years — the sharp shrinking of the economy for the first time in four decades, the large-scale loss of jobs, the impact on government finances, and the ballooning of public debt. But, to repeat, the blight on the year wasn’t just on account of Covid.
In fact Covid brought to a halt the sustained agitation against a new citizenship law by people who feared the horrors of potential statelessness. As the year draws to a close, farmers in north India have laid siege to Delhi in protest against three new laws to do with agriculture (produce marketing, contract farming, and application of the Essential Commodities Act). In between, there were the first large-scale riots in Delhi after the post-Partition mayhem (1984 was a pogrom, not a riot). The Test cricket team’s performance does not lift the mood, but there is more than cricket on the mind of anyone who values the liberal heart of the Constitution and its guarantees of individual freedoms. The continuing erosion of civil liberty bulwarks comes along with partisan state laws for largely imagined social problems, high-handed executive action at state and central level, and prosecutorial targeting. One could add the messages implicit in the Supreme Court judgment last year in the Ramjanma Bhoomi case, followed this year by the “not guilty” verdict for everyone accused of conspiring to pull down the Babri Masjid. As the country enters the third decade of the century, one thing is clear: Its institutions and instincts, resources and reserves will face tough stress tests. The government can argue with reason that it has dealt proactively with issues and pushed economic reform in the midst of crisis. But the violence in a Karnataka factory by unpaid workers reminds everyone that capitalism functions best with effective regulation and oversight. Meanwhile, the uncompromising stance of agitating farmers who fear the loss of a safety net is reminiscent of the anti-corruption agitation of 2011. The underlying problem was and is lack of trust between the rulers and the ruled. So, it is time the most powerful government of the past three decades reminded itself of the promises it made: Good days, good governance, and progress for everyone.
