Pukar Bam
Political Activist
In my observation, despite the many hardships and crisis faced, people seem to have embraced the art of slowing down the pace of life and increasing their ability to self reflect on the important things – their relationship with their inner self, family, friends and society at large.
To some extent, this Covid crisis has taught and changed the perspective of people towards their ways of living, value of quality time with close ones, value of life not to be taken for granted as many of us lost near and dear ones. The bitter but truth is that people might soon forget all these hard learnt life lessons with time and again join the never ending rat race of life.
Rajib Upadhya
Author and Columnist
I think it would be a bit too premature to talk about a post-Covid 19 period just yet. That said, despite the many unfortunate deaths, disruptions and dislocations, the pandemic shone a bright spotlight on the glaring inequities prevalent in our society. I don’t think we, as a nation and a society, can ever go back to a development model that disregards this reality as a measure of progress. Moreover, Covid 19 has taught us how important it is to judiciously invest in public health and insurance. We now know it costs as little as US$30 per person per year to help tide us through the next inevitable pandemic. We must make this a national priority.
The pandemic also helped accelerate many technological innovations. Take, for example, digitisation. Not only does it improve economic efficiencies, it also helps control administrative corruption, a big drain for countries like ours. This must be expanded. And who would have thought that remote working actually helps improve productivity until Covid 19 forced us to experiment. But again, I recognise that this applies only to a fraction of our workforce.
There are also darker aspects. The biggest threat I see is to globalisation. Because Covid 19 almost instantaneously disrupted global supply chains there are now greater calls for localisation. For all the talk about international solidarity, vaccine nationalism reminded us how little progress we have actually made.
Lastly, I would say Covid 19 gave us a rare opportunity to rethink, rebalance and reset our priorities in life.
Raymon Das Shrestha
Actor & Presenter
Covid 19 brought turmoil to our lives and we are still looking for ways to cope with it. Although it created havoc in all of our lives, it made us think in many ways. Things that have gotten better after Covid is that many people have understood how important it is to have a healthy and clean environment. There was a huge decrease in pollution at that time. People started being more aware about hygiene, and there is a strong realisation of spending time with family. It has also encouraged smart online innovations and use of payment gateways.
Dr. Garima Shrestha
Founder, She Nepal
The second wave of Covid 19 was a tough call on our attempt to fight against this odd which often led us to despair. We toiled inside PPE gear in the heat, working and hoping that this shall pass. Life is precious but a simple act of negligence can cost us everything. This period taught us to be cautious. Prevention is definitely better than cure. We saw people die, we saw people grieve, and we also saw that in face of such a crisis, money could do nothing. This world emergency taught us about the value of family, the miracle a team can achieve when they work together, self-care is not self-indulgence, saving for the future is important, technology is a boon, you can work from anywhere, and the importance of nature.
New viruses are evolving and new medications are being researched. But we must focus on awareness and prevention.
