Society, Pedagogy, Politics: A Multidimensional Approach To Covid 19

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Dr Snehamanju Basu is Registrar at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. Dr Basu completed a Bachelors and a Masters in Geography from the University of Calcutta in 1980 and 1983 respectively. Thereafter, she earned a PhD in population resource management from the same in 1994, and joined the faculty of Lady Brabourne College in Kolkata in 1999. Dr Basu has done considerable post-doctoral research in the field of Population Resource Management. Dr Basu has published 35 journal papers, along with numerous international and national conference papers. She has authored a book on 'Application of Quantitative Techniques in Population Data Analyses, and edited another. She has contributed chapters to two edited books and helmed three major research projects. She has also served as member of the governing bodies of different colleges across West Bengal.

Dr Gupinath Bhandari is Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering and Coordinator of the Centre for Disaster Preparedness & Management at Jadavpur University. Dr Bhandari completed his BE in Civil Engineering from Bengal Engineering College (now IIEST Shibpur), in 1990, a Masters of Civil Engineering in Geotechnical Engineering, and a PhD in Coastal Engineering, both from Jadavpur University, in 1992 and 2003 respectively. Having worked in the industry for a few years, he joined the faculty of the School of Oceanographic Studies at Jadavpur University in 2000. His PhD output has been implemented to protect the coast of Digha, a popular sea resort. Dr Bhandari has worked in the field of disaster management for a long time, primarily addressing socio-physical aspects of disasters, including climate change, using remote sensing, mathematical modeling, and primary field data. He was guest faculty at the Norwegian University of Science and Technical, and visiting scholar at the National University of Singapore, the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Lund University Sweden, the ITC Netherlands, and the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, France. Dr Bhandari has more than 40 journal publications, as well as 30 and 50 national and international conference publications, respectively. He has published five technical reports, co- authored a book titled A Trainers' Manual for Integrated Coastal Management Capacity Development and contributed to ten edited volumes. Jadavpur University established the Centre for Disaster Preparedness & Management (CDPM) at Dr Bhandari's initiative.

There are many challenges to the daily functioning of a university. As administrators, we are able to predict some of them, others come upon us unexpectedly. Perhaps only once in an era does an event so all-encompassing and overwhelming as a global pandemic present itself to us, and throws us in a state of uncertainty.

COVID-19 has become our most concrete reality these last two years. Terms like 'neo-normal', 'lockdown', 'quarantine', and 'social distancing' have entered our everyday language, for better or for worse. A significant part of our collective energies has been devoted to adjusting the functioning of our society to the demands of the pandemic, negotiating terms between our habitual ways of living and the need to protect lives from the devastation wreaked by the virus. The time has now come for us to look back upon these two years that have elapsed since the pandemic began, and to take stock of what has occurred, and how profoundly the actions we have taken to defend against the virus have transformed our society. The changes inflicted by the virus are both large and small, and have affected every aspect of life, from the wider social sphere to neighbourhoods and localities, from the politics of nations to the intimate spaces of our homes.

There is an urgent need for the academic community at large to examine the early impact of COVID-19 holistically. To study, record, and analyse the experiences of ordinary people grappling with an extraordinary crisis, and to suggest ways and means to mitigate the difficulties arising out of such an unforeseen and unprecedented situation. The various case studies presented in this volume could prove to be valuable primary material in the days to come, and have the potential to determine policy decisions at various levels of society.

The editors of this book must be congratulated for taking such a timely step to collect and put together such a fine and varied collection of essays, dealing with the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the authors are to be commended for providing such insightful readings of a crisis that has affected each and every one of us in such profound ways. It is widely predicted that we have not seen the last of such pandemics, and fresh waves of the virus, or its variants, or wholly new and unexpected forms, may well sweep across the world, before too long. These essays thus take on greater significance in their being able to guide us as to how to cope with the coming stages of perhaps the most significant global event in human history since World War II. In these unprecedented times, we need to put all our experience and expertise together to devise a path out of these uncharted waters towards a better world, and to that end, I am confident that this book will make a significant critical contribution to the ongoing debates, discussions, and discourses on COVID-19.

From the early days of civilisation up until the present day, there have been several instances throughout world history where pandemics have transformed not only contemporary life, society, educations, physical and mental health, trade, commerce and economics, but have also reshaped the very future and growth trajectories of humankind. In this regard, the last such major event, the Spanish Influenza contagion of 1918, is considered to be one of the largest and most devastating pandemics to have ever spread through humanity.

The 21st century has marked its glory and triumph in the timeline of human civilisation through the remarkable growth of science and technology. The era is more commonly known as the Information Age, where human attention is primarily focused on communicating, storing and computing information based on knowledge and computer algorithms. In the midst of such an otherwise prolific time for humanity, almost exact a century after the last pandemic, the great pandemic of the modern age broke out in late 2019. The virus responsible for the outbreak was named the novel coronavirus and the disease as COVID-19 by scientists, and traced to its origins, which are supposedly in Wuhan city in the Hubei province of China. Within the period of a few months, the pandemic began to directly or indirectly affect each and every sphere of life throughout the world, irrespective of nationality, caste, creed, religion and social boundaries. The novel coronavirus pandemic has created unprecedented losses and disruptions in all nearly all the countries of the world.

In our present book titled Society, Pedagogy, Politics: A Multidimensional Approach to COVID-19, we have attempted to throw light on some of the important issues of contemporary society, starting from teaching-learning to domestic violence, the problems of migrant labourers, physical and mental health, the economy and world politics, where the impact of this pandemic is especially devastating and/ or noteworthy. Epidemics not only pose public health crises, but afterwards also precipitate economic and social crises. Lockdowns and social distancing measures lead to a drying up of jobs and incomes, while also disrupting agricultural production, transportation systems and supply chains. Besides this economic aspect, the COVID-19 pandemic has also given rise to social situations where the population suffers a risk of anxiety and depression, substance use, loneliness and domestic violence, and where school closures lead to the very real possibility of an epidemic of child abuse. Some of the articles published in this book deal with all these psychological and emotional issues during the COVID-19 outbreak. This book consists of 22 different articles contributed by several authors, comprised of a mix of research scholars, students and teachers from many eminent educational institutions such as Jadavpur University, Lady Brabourne College, Jawaharlal Nehru University and numerous other prestigious institutions.

**Contents and Sample Pages**