Soon after the coronavirus struck India, the term “COVID warriors” started doing rounds. It referred to all the healthcare workers and security forces forming the frontline defence in the country against the disease, and rightly so. The doctors, paramedics, and the entire healthcare system has been put under immense pressure due to the pandemic, and the healthcare workers in the country have left no stone unturned to ensure that the recovery curve in India was steep. This has led to India having been witnessing more daily recoveries than daily new infections for over a month, a trend which would signal towards the beginning of the end of the epidemic if it continues for another couple of weeks.
Meanwhile, the security forces have been out on the road trying to make people understand the importance of adhering to the regulatory norms in order to curtail the spread of the pandemic. Apart from that, the security forces have also been out on the streets providing state-run meal services to those in need, a role which especially made a lot of difference when the lockdown was in full force.
While discharging their duties, several healthcare workers and security force personnel have also contracted the disease, with quite a lot of them also, unfortunately, succumbing to it. Therefore, any appreciation shown towards doctors, nurses, paramedics, and the security forces is less than what they deserve.
However, I do believe that the term COVID Warriors should be expanded to include two other groups of workers – the bankers and the teachers.
Bankers
While the country went into lockdown, banks remained open – to assist in any kind of services people might need, especially considering the financial hit the pandemic brought with itself. Not only that, banks were also working relentlessly to ensure that the money due to people under Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) schemes, like gas subsidy and money due under PM-KISAN scheme among others, continued to reach the beneficiaries without any hiccups.
According to the data available on the website of Ministry of Finance’s Public Financial Management System (PFMS) division, the number of transactions made from the Centre towards DBT schemes in FY 2020-21 as on November 11 is nearly 88 crore. Through these transactions, the amount transferred stands at over 17.85 lakh crore. It is important to note that the entire elapsed portion of FY 2020-21 has been under some level of lockdown restrictions.
During the entire lockdown, bankers at various levels have been interacting with the public and with each other to keep the banking system up and running. As a result of this, about 200 bankers in SBI alone have passed away due to COVID-19 infection. Yet, the contribution of bankers has largely gone unnoticed and underappreciated.
Teachers
The lockdown caused all companies to switch to a work from home mode of functioning. For most companies, the transition was smooth, thanks to the dedicated IT teams all organisations now have.
However, not just organisations, schools also shifted to a model of virtual teaching. Well, if all organisations could switch to work from home situations easily, virtual classes would have been no big deal, right? Wrong.
Schools rarely have a dedicated IT department, just a computer teacher and a computer curriculum that basically teaches next to nothing about the practical applications of the brilliant machine.
Thus, switching to a virtual teaching model required teachers to learn new technologies seemingly overnight. Not only that, they also had to teach their students alongside how to work with these technologies. Learning how to manage classes via Zoom or Google Meet, dealing with the security issues that cropped up with Zoom in the initial days, learning how to make tests on platforms like Google Forms, looking for substitutes for blackboards, all of this had to be learnt within a week, and no scope of mistake because the knowledge also had to be passed on to students.
More than any of this, however, they had to unlearn all they knew about how to teach a class of 40-50 students physically and relearn how to do that in a digital space.
A lot of how teachers teach is based on the body language of the students. Without such visual cues, the teachers’ jobs become hard. Some might argue that keeping the video on would help, but that brings a whole different set of issues. If the videos are on, students are highly likely to compare their houses and casual clothes with that of their peers, causing distress among some, and a sense of superiority among others. Thus, making the option of keeping video on an unsuitable one.
So while every company switched to a work from home model, not everyone had to unlearn and relearn everything so quickly. Nor is everyone’s work as sensitive as shaping students’ future.
Even more important is the fact that while the teachers kept working on adding to their knowledge to make students’ experience better, parents kept questioning why they should pay fees since “online classes do not mean teaching”. A teacher who spent days and nights trying to learn everything new to ensure that the students did not lose out on their studies had to face pay cuts because parents refused to pay for the service that they continued to avail.
Several people stood up on social media in the favour of parents, and questioned why they should pay if schools were shut, but no one thought of teachers who were putting in double the effort and still had to struggle to make ends meet because parents and consequently schools refused to pay them for their work.
If teachers wanted convenience, they would have been better off if schools were to reopen, since then their work hours would be defined. With the way things now stand, teachers are working throughout the day to compensate for the lack of traditional school settings. They have had to go to schools to complete the Board registration process for students of classes 9 to 12 so that they would be able to sit for the Board examinations. And if due to this, any classes are cancelled, parents are ready to raise questions, causing teachers to take compensatory classes in the evening or over the weekend. This essentially means that they have to do double the work, because parents refuse to understand that teachers also have families and work outside of school.
While facing all of these struggles, teachers still have been encouraging and informing students about the dangers of the pandemic, about the ways they must protect themselves and their families from this virus and the severity of the issue.
The doctors have been tackling the pandemic and the security staff has been enforcing the guidelines, which is highly important during these tough situations. But at the same time, bankers have been ensuring that in these times of uncertainty, everyone receives the money that is due to them because a small sum can make a big difference in someone’s life. And teachers have been raising awareness at the micro level, driving home the precautions, the protocol and the various aspects of this situation, so that the students as well as the parents are aware of how to tackle this virus at their own level.
As per me, this brings both bankers and teachers into the category of COVID Warriors.
Bulbul Dhawan 