This phase has reaffirmed our wildest fears, and we all are adapting and making peace with the new normal. One factor rather one endowment that has emerged victorious through these trying times has been the importance and viability of the internet and in fact the whole IT sector. Since a large part of the world is grappling with this unprecedented virus, connectivity has been a great measure of solidarity.

The internet has helped us in staying abreast with the latest developments pertaining to this virus. Even though the information explosion clubbed with significant media coverage has instilled a lot of fears in people, but the overall implication has been positive. Apart from the information people have very judiciously used the internet for staying connected to each other. Social media and all other kinds of web-based handles are rife with motivational and upbeat messages to embolden hope and faith amongst people.

Owing to the virtues of the web, people have been able to retain their jobs and earn their livelihood by working from home. Businesses, all over the world would have plummeted even more had it not been for the internet induced connectivity. I believe that Work from home would become the new normal in the light of these changing circumstances.

The burgeoning impact of the web world was already very immense but with recent developments, our dependency on it would increase even more.

Connectivity is the need of the hour, and there is nothing better than the internet to serve this need. Web connectivity is the only strand that successfully connects us all across various time and geographic dimensions.

It is imperative for businesses in this day and age to harness the power of the web to make their businesses sustainable across various verticals. Information technology clubbed with the miraculous connectivity of the web has the power to revolutionize the business paradigm in an unprecedented manner.

Life as we knew it is about to undergo a significant revamp. The transition has already begun. Human faces clenched in tight face masks, vendors, and doctors in stark PPE kits, the onset has already started.

The ideal thing to do now would be not to imagine how and when normalcy would return but instead making an effort to find our footing, collectively in this shifting spectrum. Information technology is set to take the world by a storm in the coming times. This particular industry has proven its imminence during these testing times, and the future trajectory for this sector looks better than promising. Web-based solutions are going to skyrocket, and the onus rests on companies to get on with this idea as soon as possible.

The best and instead, the only possible way to harness this shift is to understand how the economy might function henceforth. The consumer trends have exhibited themselves quite clearly during this time, and there is no doubt that web-based solutions are going to be sought for even the most mundane and elementary things. Education, transactions and especially the FMCG sector will depend majorly on IT solutions.

The traditional methods of doing business which encompassed a more conventional mode of working will slowly become obsolete, and a new, out of the box approach will become prevalent and also successful.

These are changing times, and we need to get behind this realisation for our survival.

Workaholics, who could not imagine how their life could be if they were not working, were forced to confront their fears when this lockdown brought an onslaught of unprecedence in our lives. Nobody had ever experienced anything like it. Freedom was such an essential part of our lives that we forgot to realise that it was actually a luxury.

Now that we are all cooped up inside our homes, a lot of introspection and realisation has started to prevail. We all had a notion in our mind that only two and two go together. We could not imagine ourselves to be doing it all. But surprisingly, we are capable of doing much more than we can imagine.

For example, chalk and cheese. These two things do not go there. They form an absurd combination, but if some unprecedented situation arises, these two might become a perfect fit. With these evolving definitions of what normalcy entails, we are beginning to rethink our ways of life.

Who knew, something as elementary as buying groceries would become dependent on something as far fetched as online deliveries or maybe even drone deliveries.

Times are changing, and we no longer can be sure of what happens next. All that we know as of now is that these are highly evolving times and a lot of new combinations and inventions are going to be churned out. This is a highly optimistic time, too, as the opportunities are immense and endless. What seemed far fetched or impossible, can now become viable and feasible. People are experiencing and desiring a different set of needs. The market is tur ing raw and volatile. The situation in India is even more vulnerable, then what it was in 1991. The global scenario isn’t any different too.

Amidst all this revolution and evolution, one can safely say that maybe chalk and cheese can go together.

But let alone the fear, humanity is exhibiting a newfound strength which is furious enough to make things work against all the odds. This lockdown and the ensuing quarantine has been a massive jolt to humanity. It will take some time to recover from this, but we have already started our ascend.

Humankind won’t remain wounded or broken forever. When a piece of our heart or soul breaks, it starts a journey of its own to mend itself. That journey is called life. We are all meant to become whole. Having said that, this severe injury which has been endured by all of us well be mended and things will go back to a new normal.

The industries, all over the world have started their operation despite low demand and less workforce. The migrants are being helped by the government to reach their native places, without walking through scorching heat and covering unimaginable distances on foot. People who could not be sent back to their homes are finding shelter in big factories and government shelter homes.

After the dust settles, things will start taking a turn for the better. With renewed vigour, we will create a better world. Each sector is vulnerable at the moment. This vulnerability will give rise to so many new opportunities. The demand for goods and services, which has been dormant as yet, will emerge again, and the economy will ring in a higher GDP.

Though, unclear at the moment, but things are looking up.

While this might not be true to a great extent for developed nations, yet the developing nations are struggling to widen the reach of the Internet. India saw an onset of a campaign called Digital India, where in the Prime Minister of the country took it upon himself and his cabinet to bolster the use of the Internet. Now, we might not be able to correctly reckon the disparity between the technologically advanced and naive sections of our society, but the divide is apparently immense.

Recently there was a very gut-wrenching report in the newspaper, which stated that a young boy from India had committed suicide as he could not access the online classes which were being recorded by his school. The sheer frustration and helplessness of not being able to get on the Internet prompted this young boy to take his own life. Upon closer introspection, we realize that a deeper dependency on the web without focusing on the extent of its reach is fatal and futile.

Before we start placing a lot of bets on the web world, we must focus on its penetration into all sections of society. If a section is kept aloof from the awards of the Internet, while another section is just becoming more and more capable of consuming the fruits of the web world, we are only creating a very nasty gap in the society.

As we can already witness that a vast majority of people are working from home while an even more massive chunk of people is being laid off. The nature of the job definitely plays a major role in deciding the fate of a person in these testing times. Still, the scope of opportunities immensely varies for people depending upon their accessibility to the Internet.

I firmly believe that the IT sector needs to think about enhancing their reach in order to allow a more extensive section of society to avail the benefits of the web.

Hospitality, tourism, aviation etc. were regarded as blue-chip investments at one time because the amount of travel people were indulging in, was unprecedented. Hospitality was emerging as one of the most promising sectors, and the prospects of growth looked immense. But the situation has flipped in no time.

A myopic vision might point out the doom of these sectors, but normalcy is one thing that we can all place our bets on. People will definitely try to go back to their regular routines very soon and owing to that fact, and all these sectors will resurrect. This seems like wishful thinking at the moment, but it is the truth.

Though everything would lay low for a while, but humanity has been conditioned to ricochet from the worst of circumstances. But then again, another thing that needs to be taken into consideration is the fact that the manner in which all these industries we’re executing their services, will definitely be changed.

A contactless execution will be aimed and desired. To achieve this state, the IT sector will have to step in to mitigate some form of physical contact. Though the practices will be revamped and a new kind of normalcy will ensue, but things will definitely get back to how they were again.

We need to wait and hope for this wave of chaos to pass soon.

As a majority of the global population, makes its way across an abyss of insecurity, uncertainty, and chaos, our place in the new world is a point of great contention too. As the world, sneers in China, the future of each sector is questionable.

Over the years, China has developed quite a reputation for itself. It is not just one or two countries but a lot of nations who depend upon China for stating their manufacturing needs. The manufacturing units in China have been severely hit and have either stopped or are under-functioning. This will have serious ramifications as so many businesses depend on China for various reasons.

Tech giants like Apple and Samsung have kept each other at tenterhooks for having in the upper hand when it comes to the latest technology. Where the prevailing unprecedented situation muddles the fate of iPhone 12, Samsung has already dissipated 5g smartphones in a few if their variants. Apple is yet to follow suit.

Apart from tech, telehealth care services will also get a significant boost in the post-Corona era. Though the plausibility of the same, seems quite vague at the moment but breakthrough will be made to achieve this unthinkable feat as humanity won’t be able to find a way around this predicament any time soon.

Every sector will develop novel ways of tackling this problem. So many businesses have already started functioning cautiously, but the risk still lingers.

All the external toxicity that is fed to our minds in the form of so much information is synthesised in diverse ways by each human being. Though this fact is known and acknowledged, but the status quo is such that it is very difficult to relegate from the situation we are in right now.

But there are always two sides to the same coin. The endowments of technology cannot be ignored. We cannot turn a blind eye towards the exposure which we have been blessed with by virtue of the Internet. The research and literature available to us clearly point out that a lot of people have been exposed to an increased chance of earning a livelihood or accessing information or even education in a more prudent and less far fetched manner.

But what really needs attention at this point of time is that, when an industry or a sector, in general, is undergoing this massive boom, what all actually deserves attention, investment and research. It is no secret that the IT industry is a highly lucrative sector but not every aspect of it is worth milking for money.

When we talk about socialisation, the reliability of physical interaction is imperative. When a revamp to it is given under the garb of anonymity and ease, the results can be devastating from a mental standpoint. When technology starts to virtualize reality beyond a certain threshold, a new dynamic emerges wherein the consequences and repercussions can be quantified because the said paradigm is totally unprecedented.

What is desperately needed right now is a little more responsibility and compassionate approach to steer our future development.

Another essential practice which has garnered a lot of importance recently is meditation. Meditation is not a new practice. It is an age-old technique which was observed by our ancestors for mental, physical, and emotional well being. But then, in light of all the development and progress, this technique was lost in the sands of time.

But recently, since the past few years, meditation has found a newfound refurbishment. While the practice typified the elderly population in the past, but now, meditation and spirituality have found their way in the younger generation as well.

So many youngsters have adopted this beautiful practice of meditation either by following suit or maybe because of the fact that they have been oriented about the virtues of this practice by their friends and family.

It is a very healthy thing. Technology can play a significant role in propagating the importance and spread of meditation and spirituality in society. With the advent, accessibility, and permeability of the internet, it has become relatively easy to involve and inform more people about the benefits of this practice.

So much research and inferences have been made available to the public about various sound frequencies, and it impacts on the human mind. It is all a part of mediation.

Anything that helps us center our thoughts and harness the power of our minds is meditation. Theta waves, music, symphonies, anything and everything that helps us in becoming focussed is like meditation.

The focus right now is directed entirely towards advancement, but an equal emphasis should be focused on getting back to our roots too.

A few undergraduate students from the University of Virginia and the University of Notre dam have come together to design an application called the TraceX.

This application relies on anonymity and is focused on informing the user about his proximity or contact with a COVID infected person.

One of the developers of this application, Rohan Taneja told the UVA about this application and was quoted as saying “TraceX is a privacy-preserving contact tracing platform that enables users to play an active role in containing the spread of COVID-19 within their communities. It is currently an iOS-based app that uses Bluetooth signals to determine when someone has been in close proximity to an individual who has COVID-19 symptoms or has recently tested positive for COVID-19. These low-energy Bluetooth signals provide a way for users to anonymously notify all of their recent close contacts if they test positive. The app does not use any location data, so TraceX users remain completely anonymous to each other and are not required to input any other information.”

This application makes use of mild Bluetooth waves to detect proximity or contact, and minimum information is solicited from the user.

Apart from Rohan Taneja, the other developers are Emerson Berlik and Matthew Jennings. TraceX is available for use now.

As the educational institutions plan on resuming their operations, utmost I’m precaution needs to be observed in order to mitigate the risk of transmission.

Though the times are tough, but it is heartening to see that mankind is finding its way around it, and that is the right spirit.