By Isaac Harold Gomes
Kolkata, March 17, 2020: Many a time bad events in our lives open up new opportunities. They also teach us life-changing lessons.
The dreaded Coronavirus, which the United Nations has declared a worldwide pandemic, has opened up for India at least two distinct opportunities:
(1) To spread Online Education
(2) To go in for Digital Economy
Since the virus threat has forced the government to issue preemptive health advisory to the states and the union territories to shut down the educational institutions in the country, it has impacted completion of the curriculum. This can be achieved by on-line education. Students can easily make up the theoretical portion for missed classes, if their institutions offer them on-line facilities. Even many practical classes can be done online through videography.
Presentation High School, a private all-girls school in California, USA, where the doors will shut for the immediate future, the teachers are taking all of their classes online. Students will attend video classes using school-provided equipment, keeping their same schedule and completing all their assignments and tests online. Even dance classes will continue in videochat. “They’ll be dancing in their bedrooms,” said Katherine Georgiev, the school’s principal.
As schools around the Bay Area rushed to shut down, forcing hundreds of thousands of students to stay home for weeks, the region is poised to experience a huge explosion in online learning.
For the schools offering online classes, the shutdown poses a huge test for the burgeoning online education industry.
However, “No one should have the delusion that this is going to be a full substitute for in-person schooling,” said Salman Khan, the founder of Khan Academy, a popular free online teaching platform based in Mountain View. “But this is the moment that online education has to step up to the plate.”
Many students, who went to study medicine in China and have been forced to come back to India, are doing their course on-line from their homes. I know one such case in Dhapa, Tangra, Kolkata.
Even in the medical field on-line diagnosis and treatment can be done and this process is on the rise.
Regarding going in for Digital Economy, hard currency is one of the biggest carriers of disease. Coronavirus gives governments an opportunity to go digital to a greater extent. Digital economy will reduce the enormous expenses incurred on import of specialty paper for printing of notes. It will also drastically reduce the overall expenses on the currency mints.
India prints 15 billion pieces of currency annually, of which up to 12 billion are printed on foreign-made paper. The paper used for the currency is cotton-based, and has the advantage that it cannot be easily replicated, yet has the touch and feel of paper. The ink, on the other hand, is imported from a Swiss company SICPA (Société Industrielle et Commerciale de Produits Alimentaires or Industrial and Commercial Company of Food Products) which supplies most countries with ink for printing currency.
At present, besides the paper and the ink, even the printing machines are imported. While the paper is imported after floating global tenders from countries such as Germany and England, the printing machines are imported from Japan and Switzerland. Import costs of paper, ink and printing machines account for about 80 percent of the cost of printing the notes in India.
Coronavirus has also given us an opportunity to explore ways and means of import substitution and `Made-in-India’ slogan more meaningful, especially by enhanced printing of currency notes in our country.
Coronavirus has been a great eye-opener about the shortcomings and frailties of globalization, in particular busting the myth of Super Powers. The tumbling of the arrogant Chinese juggernaut on its face, is a case in point.
It is also teaching us a hard lesson on understanding our true friends and fair weather friends. Beautiful faces with soft voices need not necessarily guarantee trustworthiness.