Conventional minds the world knew to be creative have mostly flopped. They enjoyed success with 'one size fits all' tricks until November 2019. Their answers to fear of life and livelihood uncertainty prove to be as flawed as 'crisis within crisis', once the masses have to hide their faces from the outside world.
All of a sudden, new questions are being asked about modes of doing office, trading, selling foods, providing education, or offering medicare services. After the outbreak of coronavirus disease in December 2019 (Covid-19),the bubbles of living in the forms of travel and tourism, sports, cinema and other entertainment, luxury shopping, eating out, partying and gambling, or opportunities derived from man's whims and restlessness have been reduced close to zero.
Are the proud stars and self-proclaimed change-makers of societies resigned to the fate? Theirs was an act of imitation, misperceived as creativity. They had copied and pasted works of scientists and social thinkers before they showed their bankruptcy at a critical moment.
Thus, the trendy globalisation of monopolistic culture and trade, monotonous cuisine, hegemony of platforms, controlled migration, superimposed cities, and ugly spread of diseases is failing not just its protagonists; more sufferers are the victims of 'collateral damages' caused by predators, and now pandemic.
Beneficiaries of establishments in various countries are obsessed with quest for respite, while their masters use old methods like pumping taxpayers' money into influential players' pockets. They never thought the powerful people, be it Boris Johnson, faced with disease could be so weak and the filthy rich would endure empty-handedness amid lockdowns!
At least in times of emergencies, well-wishers of the incumbent may wonder, why a section of office-bearers embezzle relief materials, that too foods. What else can be expected of a domestic setup where ideas are borrowed but corruption flourishes? The world is so hypocritical that people can't know from where the novel coronavirus has originated!
Commoners are rather asking direct questions- when and if at all, vaccines to stop coronavirus protecting human lives would come to market and when they would be able to return to normal life.
Not so creative, some 'old school boys' still brave the virus outbreak to support others. A few 'naïve' ones try to solve problems of today. Together, these are the people who have risen to the occasion with no uniformed solution to the Covid-19.crisis at hand.
Despite the lockdown, a teacher at a Rajshahi girls' high school has taken written examinations of his students at their homes to keep them active. Faruk Hossain assigned the guardians of examinees to act as invigilators, leaving it as a test of honesty.
Clever people have reasons to dismiss the attempt of the teacher from outside the capital city as an analogue process in the digital age.
Interestingly, some online services have evolved but all cannot be termed excellent due to lack of creative application of technology and ideas. Exercises like working from home and virtual classes at urban schools and universities, are based on conventional contents and bookish answers.
A made-in Bangladesh system is yet to be developed, where a worker at any echelon would be self-motivated to perform with integrity and a student wouldn't contemplate cheating in exams even if a supervisor is absent from the scene.
Had children been asked to give answer to a question depending on their understanding of texts and social reading, physical supervision could have been irrelevant. An open-book exam can help build creative and honest youths. If such minds are in public service, intellect, sophistication, conscience and humility may guide them.
The Covid-19 crisis warrants the importance of a kind of teachers, researchers, role models and social workers who can lead people to a new path of liberty, human dignity, and social justice for various affairs of life.