Faced with starvation and separation from families, lakhs of workers started walking or cycling hundreds of kilometres back home. Hundreds perished on the way – of exhaustion, run over by vehicles or after they were assaulted by the police. Many who made it home states faced police action and were stigmatised by local authorities and communities. The restrictions on movement were justified on the grounds that this was necessary to limit the spread of the epidemic. We examine this assumption and, using a case study of Rajasthan and a Primary Health Centre area within it, argue that the reverse holds true: holding migrants back in cities was actually responsible for the spread of the coronavirus in rural areas.
Because the corona crisis has allowed us to experience a very different time, it will be interesting to see whether parts of this new normality, such as home offices and reduced mobility, will remain. But even if it is just an involuntary pause from capitalist times, we should reconsider neoliberalism’s temporal regimes of growth, decline and acceleration that have shaped life on Earth. Our experiences of corona time has given us a training in temporal thought and flexibility. Humanity will weather this crisis, but there are others ahead. Perhaps then, it will be comforting to know that we can, and must, trick time and plan for the future – even when we feel stuck in the present.
Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to “normality”, trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality. Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.
The office as the default way of working is dead. But the office itself isn’t dead. With working from home, what we gain in work-life balance we might lose in innovation and creativity. There are people who could directly challenge that sentence but I suspect they will come from highly mature companies who have fully mastered the remote working learning curve. Many of us are still at the stage of doing what we did in the office , just remotely. The timorous amongst us may use the lack of productivity net gains as a reason to regress rather than push through the ‘pain barrier’ as Matt Mullenweg describes it. We can do so much better, for ourselves, our customers and society if we stop being so frightened or so certain of the future.
The office as the default way of working is dead. But the office itself isn’t dead. With working from home, what we gain in work-life balance we might lose in innovation and creativity. There are people who could directly challenge that sentence but I suspect they will come from highly mature companies who have fully mastered the remote working learning curve. Many of us are still at the stage of doing what we did in the office , just remotely. The timorous amongst us may use the lack of productivity net gains as a reason to regress rather than push through the ‘pain barrier’ as Matt Mullenweg describes it. We can do so much better, for ourselves, our customers and society if we stop being so frightened or so certain of the future.
“Ethnographers can provide accounts that start from first-person experiences of otherwise-global phenomena, like changing rainfall patterns and frequent, high-intensity wildfires, and demonstrate how these layer into other lived encounters with sociality and infrastructure, like supply-chain ruptures, ventilator shortages, vaccine distribution, and digital contact tracing.”
The health and safety of our customers and crew is a priority for Singapore Airlines and SilkAir. In view of the Covid–19 outbreak, we would like to share with you the enhanced cleaning and precautionary measures that we have instituted on board our aircraft.
All SIA and SilkAir aircraft already undergo a thorough cleaning process when on the ground. In addition, all flights arriving from Mainland China undergo disinfectant fogging. Common surfaces such as tray tables, handsets, and inflight entertainment screens are cleaned with disinfectant wipes. We also remove all headsets, headrest covers, pillow covers, bedsheets, and blankets after every flight sector.
The air filtration systems in our aircraft are equipped with High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters, which have a similar performance to those used in hospital operation rooms. Constant airflow also ensures that the cabin air is refreshed every two to three minutes.
During this period, you may also notice that there have been changes to our in-flight services. These include the replacement of the hot towel service with pre-set wet towelettes, cessation of the after take-off drink service, removal of reading materials from seat-back pockets, and suspension of in-flight sales.
Pre-flight temperature screening for all cabin crew and pilots operating out of Singapore has been in place since 29 January 2020. Our crew also know that they should see a doctor immediately if they feel unwell and should not report for work.
Thank you for your support. We wish you good health and look forward to welcoming you on board soon.
