With Great Power comes Great Responsibility

Spread of misinformation and fake news is rampant today. On one hand, social media platforms are becoming mainstay as a source of news and announcements from political leaders and on the other they are (inadvertently?) acting as sources of unverified and ill-researched opinion that tend to be construed as news/facts.

In the aftermath of the 2016 USA Presidential elections, alleged Russian interference by means of Twitter and Facebook triggered multiple Congressional hearings on the issue of the companies’ platforms being used as a means to spread misinformation.

The not-so-noticeable side of the covid epidemic

A set of phrases are commonplace today, you see it in the news, the print media, social networks, everywhere: unprecedented crisis, mounting death toll, economic impact and accelerated vaccine development to name a few.

With this “unprecedented crisis”, we, as a global community are advised to follow some guidelines. The most important of which is to avoid contact as far as possible. Given the characteristics of the virus, this is a no brainer.

While the battle against the virus rages in the world under the spotlight of global media, there is an undertone to the whole exercise: the”unprecedented” increase in hours spent in front of digital screens.

Envisioning a Post Pandemic Nation

A recent article in the Guardian raises important questions about how governments across the globe re-imagine the post SARS-CoV2 Without a definitive treatment and hopes of vaccines still at least a year away, we need to acclimatize to the virus; lockdowns cannot span months together. The debilitating effects of shutting down the economy, especially in a country like India where there are crores of daily wage workers and an even higher number in the informal sector, is a glaring reason why we need to start thinking about how to "live with the virus".

While the article focuses on issues that seem to be endemic to the developed world, there are big parallels for India. With the 20 lakh crore economic package announcements underway by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, the parallels are thrust right in the spotlight.