Cascading COVID Effects: How the Pandemic Altered India’s Future

Cascading Effects of COVID on the future

While the whole world is still yet to get hold of the coronavirus, here we are discussing the cascading effects of COVID-19 and the decisions taken during this crucial period. When we say cascading effects of corona what we actually mean is the effect of lack of important decisions on the general public, including children of tender age, the immunization program, the economic decisions, the health conditions of various patients suffering with chronic ailments etc. it is said that as you sow will you reap, and in this article we shall see what we are sowing today and what shall we reap shortly.

Let us see in a phase-wise manner what problems we are going to face in the long run, partly due to a lackadaisical approach to making decisions. The famous case of policy paralysis has already been discussed in the previous articles, not to mention the excellent judicial disposition of the cases across the courtrooms in India.

Newborns and children below 5

Children who are born amid the pandemic are mostly affected psychologically. Firstly, they are born in a world where everyone wears masks and there is less and less interaction among people, let alone roaming and playing outside.

·         The learning process and social skills of children below 5 are very high during the initial years, and it is important for them to get exposed to the outside environment to learn, play, and build physical as well as mental well-being. This process is hindered due to the ongoing lockdown and pandemic.

·         There are cases where the children are not able to learn social etiquette while in their growing years. Initially, when the kids are 3 or 4 years old, they are sent to kindergarten to learn how to be disciplined and how to sit and behave in a class and around classmates. Kindergarten is all about being in a classroom and focusing on learning; with this, the kids are always around their parents. Due to this, they are never exposed to unknown circumstances and hence do not learn much.

·         The initial learning years affect the child so much that they may have an effect on their confidence level in later years.

The Immunization Programs

While we are all getting inoculated against the coronavirus. Kids have to get inoculated and immunized for various diseases.

National Immunization Schedule
Vaccine	When to give	Dose	Route	Site
For Infants
BCG	At birth or as early as possible till one year of age	0.1ml  (0.05ml until 1 month of age)	Intradermal	Left Upper Arm
Hepatitis B Birth Dose	At birth or as early as possible within 24 hours	0.5 ml	Intramuscular	Anterolateral side of mid thigh-LEFT
OPV Birth dose	At birth or as early as possible within the first 15 days	2 drops	Oral	-
OPV 1,2 & 3	At 6 weeks, 10 weeks & 14 weeks	2 drops	Oral	-
IPV (inactivated Polio Vaccine)	14 weeks	0.5 ml	Intramuscular	Anterolateral side of mid thigh-RIGHT
Pentavelant  1,2 & 3	At 6 weeks, 10 weeks & 14 weeks	0.5 ml	Intramuscular	Anterolateral side of mid thigh-LEFT
Rotavirus Vaccine	At 6 weeks, 10 weeks & 14 weeks	5 drops	Oral	-
Measles 1st Dose	9 completed months-12 months. (give up to 5 years if not received at 9-12 months after ge)	0.5 ml	Subcutaneous	Right Upper Arm
Vitamin A, 1st Dose	At 9 months with measles	1 ml  (1 lakh IU)	Oral	-
For children
DPT 1st  booster	16-24 months	0.5 ml	Intramuscular	Anterolateral side of mid thigh-LEFT
OPV Booster	16-24 months	2 drops	Oral
Measles 2nd  dose	16-24 Months	0.5 ml	Subcutaneous	Right Upper Arm
Vitamin A  (2nd to 9th dose)	16 months with DPT/OPV booster, then one dose every 6 months up to the age of 5 years)	2 ml  (2 lakh IU)	Oral	-
DPT 2nd Booster	5-6 years	0.5 ml.	Intramuscular	Left Upper Arm
TT	10 years & 16 years	0.5 ml	Intramuscular	Upper Arm

Table credit: nrhmhp.gov.in

 As seen above, there are near about 15 vaccinations that are to be administered to children to protect them from various diseases.

·         Apart from the vaccination, the ayurvedic scriptures say that the children’s body learns through exposure for about 12 years.s.By not allowing the kids to roam and play outside, we are stopping the kids to learn about the viruses and dangers that are right outside their protected houses.

Remember the story of the warfare that was discussed in our previous articles, and let us apply it to the case of kids. Kids, while growing, introduce themselves to various disease-causing bacteria and other harmful things, but due to their high immunity and learning nature of the body, their body quickly adapts and makes a strategy to fight the bacteria that have entered. This says they become more and more immune to various ailments.

Introspection

·         Have you ever seen a kid from your locality who plays in mud and gets dirty, getting sick very often?

·         Have you ever met a person who spent their childhood and fell sick very easily?

·         Have you ever met a person who was very active in his childhood and has a good physique?

In all of the above questions, you will see that the people who have had a childhood full of dirty mud play are much stronger than their urban contemporaries. I wondered why it is so?

The simple answer to the above question is exposure. Like exposure to the outer world makes a person sharper and more intelligent in the same way, exposure to many impurities and bacteria builds immunity. In other words, to build a body, you need to exercise in the same way that the immune system also needs exercise.

Children with special needs

While we have seen the adverse effects on normal children, viz. a children, we tend to ignore the kids with special needs, kids with special needs,, or the kids who need constant medical attention, like Down syndrome are the most affected. These children are already in need of special care, and due to the scarcity of medical care, they will lack the basic medication as well as the assistance needed, let alone the educational care they need

This crack in the system will on individually level effect the kids both physically as well as intellectually, under Samagra Shiksha scheme under the MHRD, will be effected as teaching these kids online is a bigger challenge, due to lack of digital literacy as well as lack of access to good devices and proper internet connection.

The effect oa f lack of education and proper access to classes will make the special kids completely dependent on their families and the government. Due to a lack of proper education, the government in the future will have to come up with various schemes to settle these individuals. Which will cost govt in terms of both money and manpower.

The bigger question before the government is to get proper revenue sources to give steady and proper funding to these schemes, which in the future may increase. And during the pandemic, the source of revenue,i.e., tax, has been affected, small businesses have shut down, and the big corporate houses have been made to pay more taxes.s. As a result, many companies have shut their operation in India and have gone abroad. The amendment in the Companies Act also has a major role to play in the whole scenario.

The education effects

While most of the kids have been promoted by government schools and new evaluation schemes are being formulated to tackle the once-in-a-lifetime crisis. We might have ignored the future or the t-be-future generation, which is 1^st to 8^th standard students.

·         Children from kindergarten to 8^th class are said to be promoted without taking a proper exam or even a proper viva test (oral test). As a result, the student who is lacking or doesn’t have a clear understanding of the subject will have to struggle in the later years of their academia, and this can add to the frustration levels of an individual.

·         This frustration, when carried on, can lead to higher dissatisfaction and suicidal rates among the youth when they grow up, because they are not at fault.

·         The kids have never faced failure in their lives, and duringthe pandemic, they grew up having no harsh condition,s bt, in real lif,it'sts not all good things that you face, and when they face the real world of competition, their inability to handle failure will cause more harm to them.

·         The level of education will surely drop in the coming years, and as a result, we will have a less skilled generation in comparison with the previous generation, which was highly educated and skilled, creating a disparity among the working class and the efficacy of the overall majority. This may lead to an economic slowdown in the future.

·         Here, there might be an argument that there will be some excellent students in these years who might have enhanced their skills to a different level. Yes! But hmany ow many more in number will they be? A few hundred or thousands? Or let’s be a little liberal, will they be in lakhs? Even if they are in lakhs, will they be sufficient to handle the economy of a 135+ crore nation?

·         Accounting for brain-drain, entrepreneurs, IP, and other offers, fewer and fewer people will be left with the choice to join and run the Indian economy. In the long run, the economy will be affected.

·         On a larger level of governance and holistic development of a nation, it will be a loss, and even on the individual level, the personal growth can be stagnated.

Not just the economy, but the future workforce of the nation might not be as efficient as it is today. The pandemic has taken India 20 years back in the true sense.

Health condition of the general public

While we have already discussed a part of this in our previous article, where we have in detail discussed the effect of lockdown and medicine latency in case of Tuberculosis, we might have left some other ailments, although the message is the same, but the conditions are not.

·         According to a report published in the online news portal of The Mint there are about 20% of Indians are affected by non-communicable diseases. This was a report published in the year 2016, and it has been 5 years since then. Being liberal and accounting for there is an increase of 0.01 % every year, which is about 135,000 in figures, it makes the total new communicable disease patients add up to 675,000, which is a huge number.

·         While the number might not have much significance to us but they will make sense when we look at them from an economic perspective.

·         The non-communicable diseases included diabetes, hypertension, thyroid, obesity, etc., and as we are well aware that India is the diabetic capital of the world. In such a case, the burden on these patients and getting medicine, even if all of them are well capable of buying the medication they need to survive, becomes a problem.

·         In such cases, governments' plans to eradicate certain diseases like tuberculosis become more difficult, and the numbers tend to rise amid the pandemic, lockdown, and unhealthy practices during home stay and work from home regimes.

·         The added problem of eye stress due to long hours of screen time usage will increase the need for spectacles and reduce the healthy people in the economy, which in later years might affect the recruitment of armed forces as they need perfectly good eyes.

The way ahead

Now, the whole burden of being healthy and getting a good education lies on every individual and on a family level, and in the case of children, it is completely dependent on their parents and other educators. While the government has less hand in these issues amid the pandemic, every individual needs to step up and take proper initiatives, as it is extremely important. Though the govt has less role to play but it will be the most affected in the future if any of the listed things go wrong, as the policy framers will have to struggle more and more to get these people on board.