Looking Back and Looking Forward 2021-2022

​In April of 2020, an unusual World War started. Strangely, the enemy was invisible. Never before in the war, the enemy was of size less than half a micron and cannot be detected by the naked eye. That unprecedented war is still on. The enemy, capable to change its avatar, is not yet fully conquered. Mighty humanity, which boasts of artificial intelligence and the giant space station to explore the universe is clearly humbled by the puny virus.

At around the same time, curiously, the new iPhone version was on its way from Apple. No, it was not new weaponry developed to end the war. I recalled the 'Manhattan Project' of allied forces in World War II. 'Little Boy', the nickname of the atom bomb, was dropped on Hiroshima and ' Fat Man', the nickname of the second atom bomb dropped on Nagasaki ended World War II. The enemy was Japan.

I curiously called Apple's new iPhone 'Fat Little Boy' and wondered if there would be any humanity left to buy it in 2020.

Today I realised that my thinking was archaic. I do belong to the army of technology students. But I never ever understood the behaviour of humanity towards tech-savvy products, even after they were bombed. Technology does its job, humanity does its own.

Now read this: Yes, the people did buy new iPhones even during the waves of COVID19. In fact, Apple by end of 2021 closed on a USD 3 trillion market cap. Facebook's profits have gone up along with its number of apps. Amazon has become so massively popular and sought after that even in the middle of COVID19, its holiday sales kept rising. Google is giggling with the advertising market. Microsoft is in 'cloud 9' with its skyrocketing revenues from cloud computing products. The world has Zoomed and Netflixed in 2020 and 2021.

The sale of digital hardware including the latest version of PCs soared. Not only vaccines but there was even a short supply of digital hardware. The media was full of articles on the short supply of accessories for appliances that depended on digital technologies.

Those of my friends who work in investment management told me that the world printed so much money into the economy that we ended up buying digital and durable goods, not saving them.

Recently opened Higher Educational Institutes which are registered with Smart Campus Cloud Network ( sccnhub.com) invited me to speak on 'new norms of the educational narratives in 2021'. After describing the status of SCCN in 2020-2021 and how the massive transformation taking place due to COVID19, I decided to provoke all young students by asking them: 'What do you feel about the fact that all these Apples and Googles of the world minted profits when our dear and near friends and relatives were fighting with COVID19 on death bed?'. I further poked them, 'And listen, many of those near and dear ones died fighting, but none of these Amazons and Microsofts suffered ….they in fact profited. How do you view this painful contrast that some profit at the cost of sufferings of others?'

Sharp came the reply from students, 'Sir, just imagine. Had these Googles and Facebooks not existed how the world would have dealt with the COVID19 pandemic? What we all had done if their Apps did not help us in finding the hospitals and getting all the health-related information that we needed urgently for our dear and near ones during locked down? On vaccines, oxygen, ventilators, food? And above all, sir, what we youngsters would have done sitting at home without online classes? Without Google Meet, Microsoft Team and Zooming how would have continued to learn and dream about our future? Who else could have taken care of our future?"

Rajendra Shende

Chairman, TERRE Policy Centre

Former Director, UNEP 

IIT Alumnus