Tag: pandemic

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Issue 9

Food Beyond the Mess: Why Campus Outlets are Invaluable to Indian Colleges

Food hasn’t changed much after a year of the pandemic but a sub-culture of Indian eating has: that of campus food. While the cafeteria (known better as the mess) in Indian colleges falls under the purview of private catering enterprises, there are yet other, more loved outlets dotted throughout campuses. They usually aren’t well-known franchises (with the exception of a Subway or a Dominos), but instead smaller restaurants. These places don’t only offer up great food, but also a refuge in the secluded island that an urban university can become. These outlets suffered the same fate as other small Indian restaurants: business faltered more and more with each lockdown. Now with the vaccine as a slim purveyor of hope, and the distant likelihood of universities restarting—it’s time to take stock of what was lost in the past year, and what might still change. 

The charm of any great dining out experience in India, whether it’s a highway dhaba or a high-end restaurant, is found in a deep sense of hospitality. Granted, this is what makes any restaurant go from good to great as delicious food on its own is no longer enough. However, it’s not a bonus but often a thumb of rule here—even more so in most local street food joints. These places run on loyalty, word of mouth, and old friendships as much as they do on relatively meagre earnings. Anthony Bourdain, chef and writer, said of his visit to Punjab for his show ‘Parts Unknown’: “A traveller tip for India is to get used to people being really nice to you, it may take some time.” If this is true for most restaurants, then it’s especially true in the tucked-away corners of private and public universities alike. 

Order Up! From the Kitchen to the Students

For students, their favorite outlets go above and beyond food. It’s about tearing through buttered naan in internal joy and external frustration over some deadline, and about lugging yourself the short walk back to your dorm room in a welcomed food coma. It’s also a source of socialization, of bonding over midday coffee habits or a go-to dinner spot. This is unsurprising given a 2011 study which found that the effects of comfort food as a social surrogate, or a way to fulfill the need to belong, were especially high among the college-aged sample. 

To be fair, going to college can be a moment of pivotal change for many leaving home for the first time. Although comfort food might seem like an obvious resolution, a 2010 study found that dynamic environmental changes can “break habitual cues” prompting consumers to step out of their comfort food zone. As students slowly return to campus, it’s possible that they take similar food risks to when they might’ve first arrived on campus bright-eyed and hungry for more. However, risk-taking can only go so far when the menu is full of student favourites anyway. The aim of campus food is not necessarily to revolutionise or innovate at the cost of student loyalty. 

Standard dhaba fair. Credits: @deepz1207 on Instagram

Depending on the outlet, it also works as an antidote to the classroom. Professor-student relations can stay formal and syllabus driven, but some professors also try to get to know who their students are outside the classroom. Conversations then flow with the same academic rigour, only softened by comfort food and emanating laughter from the other tables. Many students will also eat with the outlet owners, digging through a new repository of stories each time. 

Behind the Scenes and Inside the Kitchen

The outlet is a well-oiled machine with many distinct components. Sandeep Rathee, known better as Sandeep Bhaiya on the Ashoka University campus, talks about what makes an outlet work: 

“A good administration is the main thing for an outlet. Without one, the outlet can make do with a bribe, some money but then the students will face the brunt of that.” 

This is especially true in a pandemic. An outlet is only as good as the way its staff is treated not only when the going is good, but when it comes to a financial standstill. It determines not just the quality of service, but its longevity in the face of constantly volatile circumstances. To this, Sandeep Bhaiya says that based on what he’s heard from others, a good administration and thereby fair access to medical facilities and the fulfillment of staff rights can’t be taken for granted. He went on to add that he finds the administration at Ashoka is “one of the best” in this regard. 

Sandeep Bhaiya at his outlet, Fuelzone. Credits: @_officialhumansofdelhi_ on Instagram

In any restaurant, Bourdain in his book Kitchen Confidential calls cooking a “seriously focused waltz” or a kind of “hard-checking mosh pit slam-dancing”. Coordination is crucial, but so is fun. In my experience, at certain times of the night you can hear loud Bollywood music blaring from the dhaba kitchen. This kind of good cheer follows the food out of the kitchen doors and onto your plate, always bringing you back for more. 

Great outlets have something else in common: they offer great food and coffee, alongside good conversation. Sandeep Bhaiya fondly recalls bonding with the founding batches of Ashoka, when there were less students and more downtime for him. This looks like your standard tired, dark circles-ridden student rushing up to the campus coffee store only to find that the staff already knows their usual order. With every year, student batches get larger and present a precarious balance. While it’s good for business, Sandeep Bhaiya says that interactions now condense down to just a “hello” or a “kaise ho” here and there. 

View from the Dhaba at Ashoka University. Credits: @ishitaasinghh on Instagram

Even so, word of mouth is unfazed by the passage of time as older students traditionally fill in freshmen on where to go for the best coffee or food. When it comes to favorites, Sandeep Bhaiya says that as soon as it’s summertime, students start asking after his famous Mango Shake. In fact, he posted a video of him making it on Facebook so students could follow his recipe from home this time last year. In a 2016 study on the psychology of comfort food, it was found that food items can become associated with people, and so serve as reminders of them. On his recipes, Sandeep Bhaiya says that “you can find food anywhere, you give some money and you can buy it but for our customers, or the students, it’s important that they remember us”. 

Graduating From Campus Outlets

When students are about to graduate, Sandeep Bhaiya invites them into the kitchen to learn how to make their favourite cold coffee or mango shake. That is to say, the influence of something as simple as sugary coffee, butter maggi or aloo parathe transcends the timeline of college, and so remains undeterred by the pandemic. Longlasting success for a campus food outlet is a function of its food, its interactions, loyalty, comfort and the community it creates. This is why a vibrant network of campus outlets is a measure of wellbeing for any university and its students. 

Devika Goswami is a second-year Economics and Media Studies major, an aspiring coffee-snob and always on the hunt for a new addition to her already overflowing to-be-read list.

Picture Credits: Anjana Ramesh

We publish all articles under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivatives license. This means any news organisation, blog, website, newspaper or newsletter can republish our pieces for free, provided they attribute the original source (OpenAxis).

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Issue 9

Democratizing Art: How the Pandemic Has Transformed Art Spaces

While excitingly going through the crown jewels in The Met Museum’s American Wing, I wonder if I could get a look at the souvenirs in the gift shop to take something back with me. I unfortunately cannot. I am met with the same experience while exploring the British Museum and the Van Gogh Museum. The experience of looking at paintings and artefacts from my computer screen in pyjamas rather seems impersonal. The enthusiasm of dressing up to explore the majesty of Art Institutions gets lost when one has to do so sitting on their sofas at home. Things are near and yet so far.

For an industry that thrives on in-person connection and networking, the lockdown has been especially hard-hitting on both Artists and Institutions. Virtual Tours, prior to the lockdown were created by many Institutes to allow better in-person access and experience of the galleries. However, during the lockdown, virtual tours became the only means of experience that people could have access to. Several Institutions designed their own virtual tours, giving a 360° view of the most visited sections of their galleries, while smaller institutions relied upon Google’s Street View, to make their experience available virtually. These tours were considered far more useful than paper maps, during in-person experiences, however, with a worldwide pandemic, can virtual experience and tours replace the experience itself. 

Any analysis of whether the experience of galleries and museums would yield an affirmative response. The exploration of these spaces are sensory experiences that stimulate individuals’ hearing, sight and smell. For when one is exploring New York Botanical Garden’s Spring Bloom, they not only look at the flora but also smell it in the air, while hearing the chatter of the fauna it coexists with. The murmurs of the people make the whole event a collective one. However, with virtual tours in place, it is only the sight that gets to partake in the process, making it terribly one-dimensional. For an experience that was created to help people tackle the isolation of being at home, the Virtual Tours are dreadfully isolating and lonely, due to persisting images of empty halls of the galleries, corridors and gardens available to the visitors. They take away the intimacy of being in a space and experiencing its physicality. Moreover, the paintings, artwork, artefacts in a virtual tour, become mere objects that one gets to see or know about. You do not get to understand the intricacies of each and every artwork, like the purpose of the painting, the placement of it in a particular collection and so on.

The Louvre, Paris, France.

Virtual Tours and Experiences have made Museums and Galleries a more democratic space, opening doors to people all around the globe, to explore the history that they could not have done earlier due to economical, social and cultural gaps. However, simultaneously it has also raised questions about the ‘commodification’ of historical artwork and artefacts. Does art need to be confined to the four walls of the museum? Should some people have to pay to participate in the process of experiencing history, that should be equally accessible to everyone? 

It is rather the ‘fetishization’ of the exhibition that museums and galleries bank upon. The increasing tendency to sell the place, rather than to experience the artwork, has also allowed Institutions to charge a high entry fee. This is also exaggerated through aggressive marketing campaigns about the grandiosity of the collections that the places are exhibiting. With things going virtual, people from all walks of life are getting to participate in the experience, which has raised the question, whether the experience of art should be sold as commodities in exchange for monetary value when the intent behind these creations has never been, financial benefit. Art is considered to be an extension of the self, an expression of one’s emotions, desires and inhibitions. Thus, when these artworks are displayed in exhibitions for consumption especially against a price, they are reduced to mere objects. Most people do not visit the Louvre to learn about the history of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and the mysteries that underlie the process of her creation, but rather to gain bragging rights of having seen and experienced the painting in person.

The attitude of the majority of the people towards artwork is what has given Museums and Galleries a leeway into selling experiences as commodities. This has also facilitated some museums, with resources to climb up the ladder of popularity by conducting annual charity events with celebrities for advertisement. The virtual tours, therefore, are not only a threat to the revenue that these places generate but also to the exclusivity that these places create by including only economically and culturally niche groups of people.

Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Looking at the capitalist approach that Museums, Galleries and Art Institutes are taking, is there any scope for understanding the reason behind it. When analysing the financial position of these Museums during the pandemic, it is revealed that several museums have incurred heavy losses due to the lockdown. The Met Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, The Duomo, to name a few were expected to incur losses of over 150 million dollars in 2020. Money is required by these Institutions not only to maintain the space but also to pay a large number of employees, from restoration artists to museum guides to the general support staff that would otherwise be laid off. Moreover, since each painting and artefact is unique, they require special care and maintenance which require a huge financial investment. However, this cannot justify the expansive commodification of experiences. The need is to create a more inclusive and democratic space so that people get to experience the same things in person that they did sitting at their desktops in pyjamas. Virtual Tours have opened up the field of Art History to the larger population, however, what lies ahead this road is Museums’ efforts in continuing to do so.

Muskaan Kanodia is a junior at Ashoka University, double majoring in English and Sociology. When she is not drowning in books, you can find her drawing and smiling at strangers on the ghats of Banaras.

We publish all articles under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivatives license. This means any news organisation, blog, website, newspaper or newsletter can republish our pieces for free, provided they attribute the original source (OpenAxis).

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Issue 9

India’s Fight Against a Pandemic Leads to an ‘Infodemic’ Targeting Minorities and the Poor

The tackling of the Coronavirus pandemic in India — book-ended by the announcement of a stringent lockdown in March 2020, and now an ambitious nationwide vaccination plan in January 2021 — has laid bare social, economic, religious, and cultural fault-lines across the country. Fears and restrictions compounded pre-existing challenges in a country where an estimated 70 million people live in congested slums with little access to water, sanitation, and healthcare. For half of India’s population, ‘social distancing’ was a luxury they simply couldn’t afford. As a result, rumors and misinformation around their hygiene levels swirled in both real and virtual communities, feeding the vast Indian middle class’s apparent need for an enemy in the ‘war’ against COVID-19. Structural inequalities and institutional, inherent class biases fueled fear and stigma in India’s middle class against an ‘underclass.’

The number of domestic workers in India ranges from official estimates of 4.2 million people to unofficial figures of over 50 million, most of whom are women and girls. Largely illiterate, uneducated, and unskilled, domestic workers are completely dependent upon their employers and have no legal protections as workers under India’s labor laws. The National Domestic Workers Trust estimated that approximately 24 percent of Mumbai’s domestic workers lost their jobs permanently due to middle class India’s paranoia around their congested living conditions and assumptions around both hygiene standards and the rate of infection in their neighborhoods.   

Under quarantine, as fears of COVID-19 skyrocketed, Mumbai’s sky-high apartment complexes and Delhi’s bungalowed neighborhoods shut their gates. Messages circulated in such wealthier communities on WhatsApp groups, questioning hygiene levels of domestic workers living in such slums – many of which were declared ‘containment zones’ and COVID-19 hotspots. Even kitchen appliance manufacturers added to the fear mongering. One such firm advertised a dough kneading machine on Instagram, suggesting that it could replace domestic workers who typically do this manually since their hands ‘may be infected.’ Public pressure forced the manufacturer to pull down the advertisement and apologize.

In the first serological surveys conducted to assess the spread of the Coronavirus in India, two facts emerged. First, even though COVID-19 arrived in India by airplane via wealthier Indians who could travel abroad, those who worked for them suffered the most. The second was that nearly 60% of slum populations had developed antibodies, and that most of the infected were younger, had little or no symptoms, and suffered significantly fewer fatalities than their wealthier employers. This actually brought down overall death rates from COVID-19 in cities like Mumbai.

The worst effects of COVID-19 were suffered by three specific layers of the population. Urban migrant workers were forced out of the city with the imposition of one of the world’s most stringent lockdowns, sprayed with disinfectant as they tried to return home. Domestic workers – cleaners, cooks, and drivers living in congested urban slums who form the backbone of the informal employment sector – fell victim to community paranoia. Worst of all, deliberately crafted disinformation campaigns targeted India’s Muslim minorities, an already vulnerable group targeted by bigoted discourse on many levels in the state and community. Predominantly Hindu, upper caste, and upper class groups were largely insulated from these dynamics and able to take the necessary pandemic precautions without the same kinds of damage.

Referring to the residents of an upper middle class South Delhi neighborhood, Guddi, a domestic worker from Uttar Pradesh’s Kasganj district, says “They are being careless themselves. They are going out, traveling around the country; they are calling guests home.” Taking in the capital city’s warm winter sun after a morning of cooking and cleaning, she says, “That’s how the disease is spreading.” Lifelong victims of class and caste-based oppression in Indian society, street cleaners hired by the local government, who are also considered essential workers, were made to stand outside the gates during the summer’s blazing heat, even though the government began easing the March 2020 lockdown in stages. Rinku, who sweeps the streets for a daily wage, says things have improved slowly since 2020’s harsh summer, but the discrimination still continues. “They say they will get the disease [COVID-19] because of us. Everyone in the neighborhood said this.” Several Residents Associations banned all ‘outsiders’ – e-commerce delivery agents, vendors, and domestic workers – from entering their communities. Yet, these restrictions did not apply to those driving through the gates in a car, a ubiquitous symbol of wealth and upward mobility. In spite of eased restrictions that allowed people to return to work in the first phase of India’s re-opening, such associations formalized their own layer of controls. Private security guards, usually empowered to record visitor details, unleashed their newfound authority upon a host of workers coming to earn a day’s wages. “The guards told me I am not allowed to walk down the streets here because I may spread disease. I pleaded with them, but they didn’t listen. Finally, I was forced to call my employer from her home to come and talk to them, and allow me to go back to work,” says Anita, another domestic worker from Karimganj in Uttar Pradesh who works in Delhi.

The worst hit, however, have been those who lie at the intersection of caste, class, and creed – the Indian Muslim community. While insidious caste and class divides dominated rumors and restrictions, there was an ‘infodemic’ accusing Muslims of deliberately spreading a ‘corona jihad’. The Delhi government’s decision to segregate COVID-19 cases in the general public from ones directly linked to a gathering of the Tablighi Jamaat (a proselytizing Muslim religious group) in Delhi in early March 2020 fueled biased media coverage. It emerged that foreign participants from South East Asia were coronavirus carriers, and several other Indian delegates became infected and returned to their hometowns as carriers, unknowingly. Defying data, logic, and empathy all at once, right wing social media rhetoric and reportage around the so-called ‘super spreader’ event amplified the bigotry. Although the meeting had taken place with the knowledge of government and local law enforcement, Islamophobia fed generalizations blaming a single community for the spread of COVID-19.

Yasmin, from Uttar Pradesh’s Badayun district who cleans homes in Delhi, says even though her employers agreed to keep her on, her landlord protested when her poorer relatives came to live with her as the lockdown began. “He said there was no need for them to return. That they were spreading disease,” she says, lowering her voice. Similarly, Mohammed Shamim, a vegetable vendor in Uttar Pradesh’s Mahoba district, was forced to return money to his customers and flee after a group of men threatened him and accused him of deliberately spreading COVID-19 through the goods on his vegetable cart. In Uttar Pradesh, the north Indian state governed by one of the Hindu Nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party’s most strident leaders, the pandemic exacerbated everyday bigotry against Muslims. 

Police officers who tackle everyday misinformation have limited tools at their disposal. Senior Indian Police Services (IPS) officer Rema Rajeswhari in her district of Mahbubnagar in the southern state of Telangana has made a name for herself by actively conducting ‘awareness’ campaigns through ‘town criers’ who debunk myths and rumors, digital literacy workshops to help citizens question what they receive and share on messaging platforms like WhatsApp, and enabling her team of officers to intervene where they feel it will make a difference. People like her, as well as journalists who run fact checking websites, did their best to address misinformation from unrelated or manipulated videos about Muslim vendors spitting on their wares, which spread quickly on social media. Prominent news networks, members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s ‘IT Cell’ – which has often been accused of designing coordinated disinformation campaigns to target its critics – and many social media users were all complicit in the spread of such misinformation. Rajeshwari says her officers had no choice but to make their own videos to create awareness. Fuzail Ayubi, the Tablighi Jamaat’s lawyer, says things have improved since the summer, but the damage inflicted upon a community already under pressure to prove their patriotism and secularism is irreparable. Cases against hateful media reporting are being heard in India’s Supreme Court.

It would be easy to argue that much of the discrimination was a result of rumors and misinformation that exacerbated the existing wedges within Indian society. Yet, if there is one thing 2020 has taught us, it is this: the prevalence and virality of misinformation is not just about the algorithm that may amplify it, but also the fear and division within society. Addressing the technology that fuels misinformation, without actively improving inter-communal relations and public messaging on the pandemic, is not even half a battle won.

Maya Mirchandani is a journalist, a Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation and Assistant Professor of Media Studies at Ashoka University.

Picture Credits: Maya Mirchandani

This piece was republished from The Soufan Center with permission of the author. 

We publish all articles under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivatives license. This means any news organisation, blog, website, newspaper or newsletter can republish our pieces for free, provided they attribute the original source (OpenAxis).

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Issue 9

Where Fashion Trends Come from and Why You Should Care

My father, a physicist, once proudly told me that he doesn’t care about fashion. “I don’t think about these unimportant things,” he said. “My focus is on my work.” On most days he wears t-shirts or button downs with neutral tone pants, and he might add a jacket for special occasions. While not the most unusual, he still has a distinct sense of style and it has evolved over the years. I asked him why he didn’t wear the same thing all the time, or just throw on a potato sack and call it a day. He said, “Oh, because I like my clothes. I think they look nice.” Several others like him see fashion as a waste of time, but are involved in the fashion process nonetheless. No matter how far we may try to stay from fashion, due to the nature of the world we live in most of us are forced to make choices regarding clothing everyday. It is simply these choices that make us active participants in the fashion process, knowingly or not. 

Many choose to follow trends in order to fit in and feel a sense of belonging. While some may go out of their way to dress in un-trendy ways, and distance themselves from those they see as ‘imitators’, philosopher Georg Simmel saw these people as engaging in an inverse form of imitation, ultimately becoming part of a group of others like them. Then there are people like my dad, who don’t see themselves as part of the fashion world at all. Unfortunately for him, as a modern consumer he is just as affected by fashion trends as anyone else. Since all clothes retailers are influenced by the fashion world, when he buys their clothes he is adopting their interpretation of any given trend. 

As a multibillion dollar industry, fashion phenomena have attracted attention from sociologists, philosophers and market scientists. However, there is still no formalized theory of fashion, both due to a lack of research as well as the sheer volume of data and variables. After all, everyone wears clothes. Runway shows put on by designers provide an excellent jumping off point for learning about fashion, as the themes espoused by top brands both reflect and inform the choices of the larger fashion industry. 

September and February are usually the months where brands and fashion houses host fashion shows portraying their spring/summer and autumn/winter collections respectively, for the upcoming seasons. These shows take place in various “fashion weeks” around the world (one week per city), with London, Milan, Paris, and New York attracting the most attention. However, like everything else since last March, the Autumn/Winter 2021 shows were different this time. Most designers showcased their collections virtually, while some chose not to show at all. 

While discussing their Menswear Autumn/Winter 21 collection, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons of Prada insisted that they wanted the collection to feel like an emotional response to everything the world has been through in the past year. Each look was built off the foundation of a bodysuit, to represent the body and symbolize vulnerability and a need for intimacy. Fashion has often been seen as a response to the events shaping society and the world outside. This ‘response’ attitude was evident in many of the fall/winter collections shown in February as well as the spring/summer shows from last September, when the mood was perhaps even more subdued. On the other hand the Prada womenswear collection that came out a month after the menswear show struck a more optimistic note, perhaps reflecting a turning point in the pandemic with the launch of vaccines and the tangible hope in the air. 

Prada and Simons’ descriptions of their collections would fit into the external or exogenous model of the fashion process presented by sociologists, which says that changes in clothing simply reflect changes in the cultural values of society at large. While designers might well be inspired by the world around them as well as their lived experience, this model falls short when discussing the adoption of certain trends by different social groups. Cultural changes might affect the popularity of certain trends, but they cannot explain the different times at which trends are adopted by different groups, thus failing to predict future trends. Internal models can address these questions while looking at the fashion process as a self-contained phenomenon, influenced more by internal changes than external, cultural events. Simmel suggests that changes in clothing styles are the result of a ‘trickle down effect’, with trends being steadily adopted by successive social classes, starting with the upper class. 

According to William Reynolds, a marketing professor from Chicago, trends may be either horizontal or vertical. A horizontal trend is one which spreads far, but does not change much during this time, while vertical trends remain restricted to a small group but change rapidly. Most fashion trends embody both these attributes to some degree. For example, low rise jeans in the 2000s became more popular as the waists got lower. When fashion trends die out or reach a turning point, it could be due to functional or cultural barriers to further movement in the same direction. In the late nineteenth century, hoop-skirts or crinolines were extremely popular and were made wider and wider until movement became virtually impossible. They then gave way to the smaller crinolette or bustle. 

Within a small time period trends also often show a strong resurgence, exemplified by the wild popularity of nineties trends in the past few years. Rachel Green from the nineties show Friends was a cultural icon then and still is to this day, with her style recently becoming the focus of dozens of fashion articles and blogs. Trends may exhibit this cyclical nature due to the same technological and cultural barriers, becoming more and more extreme in one direction, ultimately reaching a peak and moving to the other extreme. For example, the long ‘tunic’ tops that were popular in the late 2000s and the short crop tops that they were replaced by soon after.

In an eighteenth century essay on fashion, philosopher Christian Garve cited the innate human desire for change as one of the reasons for changing fashion trends. In all aspects of life, humans seek novelty and variation, sometimes even if it worsens their position. Whether fashion trends come from influential designers or cultural revolutions, or trickle down from the rich, they feed our desire for change and our craving for aesthetic beauty. Fashion remains an important way for human beings to define and express their identity, and to relate to those around them. 

Rujuta Singh is a student of political science, international relations and media studies at Ashoka University. Some of her other interests are fashion, music and writing. 

We publish all articles under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivatives license. This means any news organisation, blog, website, newspaper or newsletter can republish our pieces for free, provided they attribute the original source (OpenAxis).

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Issue 9

All Bets Are Off: Trust and Antitrust Among Large-Scale Corporations

Despite the economic turmoil caused by the pandemic, large companies such as Amazon and Facebook have managed to make sizable profits despite ordinary employees having undergone immense financial suffering. These circumstances have increased public interest in the manner of operation of large firms – and the mechanisms by which they become so large in the first place. Emergent questions pertaining to monopoly problems within economic systems are not new – rather point towards a set of laws that lie at the core of the issue – called Antitrust Laws. What are Antitrust Laws – and why are they so important? 

Antitrust Laws were first introduced by the US Congress legislation in 1890 to reduce artificial barriers in economic competition. The idea behind the laws was to make monopolization of power illegal and to ensure free and open markets for trade. It serves to protect the country’s consumers and smaller companies, ensuring a level playing field for all without the dominance of a few or singular businesses in the market share. This is achieved by regulating how companies manage their operations, and preventing large scale profits being made by a handful firms. 

At its core, the enforcement  of  antitrust laws determines the agency that consumers and small businesses possess within an economic system . The stricter the laws, the more difficult will it be for a giant firm to merge and buy over smaller companies or purchase their  competition. Antitrust  laws, hence,  push companies  to depend on earning profits on the basis of their merit, which can only be done by offering consumers quality products at competitive prices. It changes the focus from a single firm dominating the market to research and development on creating better products and services which ultimately will benefit the economy for the whole. 

From the perspective of small companies, the absence of these laws can have three large scale impacts. Firstly, the large firms interfere in the competitive market by suppressing potential businesses by replicating their ideas. For example, Instagram’s integration of Snapchat’s stories and filters has pushed Snapchat to become a secondary app. Secondly, there is no market stability as the control of the industry becomes concentrated in the hands of a few. Thirdly, the smaller company has two ultimate ends: being bought over by the large firm or having no scope for individuality in the project. There is a loss of the patent ownership, which gave the company a creative edge in the market. But once they can no longer compete with the giant, they have to succumb to being bought over due to the losses or eventually die out. 

On the other hand for consumers, there are three major impacts. Firstly, there is a lack of choice. The parent company owning each and every type of brand presents a false sense of choice to the consumers. Secondly, if a single company controls most of the different avenues of the market, chances are that it also has information over the consumers’ data and creating advertising models that are specifically curated, leaving no room for the privacy of data. Thirdly, these companies have the potential of becoming a means for political agendas to be carried out. As the company becomes powerful  due to the concentration of wealth it has accumulated from every sector, it becomes a potential foundation contributing to the country’s Gross Domestic Product. This can lead to the company wielding political influence over crucial policies, which have a considerable impact on the nation’s progress and development. Extending the previous point of privacy, governments can also feel incentivized to involve private firms within its functioning in a manner that allows the use of this data of its citizens.

When it comes to examining the domestic field, India’s first antitrust law, called the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Act (MRTP), was established in 1969. It came into frequent use after the economy’s liberalisation in 1991 and has been amended since, being replaced by consolidated legislation known as the Competition Act (2002). There is also an established committee to oversee and enforce the Antitrust Laws known as the Competition Committee of India (CCI)  but it has been extremely ineffective since its inception.

Taking a look at India’s industries, a contemporary case in point is that of Reliance Industries Limited. Business Today states that the company has bought major stakes in almost every single avenue. From purchasing the stakes in the Rs. 27,000 crore valued Future Group, it has also invested in Urban Ladder, Milk Basket, Netmeds and Zivame, to name a few. With the coronavirus pandemic crossing bigger numbers everyday, smaller businesses in India have had to succumb to the economic damage due to lack of stability in the market. Moreover, consumption patterns in retail, technology, household products have been changing, making the consumers more reliant on the services provided by a few large scale companies. 

Reliance is planning on rebranding itself from a petrochemical and refining company to a technological consumer based brand. Having sold over 49% shares from its oil section to a British oil giant Petroleum Company, it plans on building a stronger hold in the digital world. This has been clear from its mammoth telecom project, Jio which launched in 2016. Moreover, the company is also planning on becoming a singular social media platform for India, including the functions of Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google and Zoom. This is quite similar to Jack Ma’s Alibaba, which does the same for China. 

Reliance is acquiring additional companies on top of having several footholds in retail, social media, groceries, furniture, medicine, telecommunication, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, to name a few. This could be the final red flag for India’s laws regarding Antitrust since the company now holds interests virtually in every sector, leading to the creation of an ultimate monopoly in India. In addition, its political alignments have also been working in the background. When Jio was initially launched in 2016, it was endorsed by the Prime Minister, which played a role in its quick rise to 200 million subscribers. Moreover, the chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, who was appointed by the government, changed the rules of what market power entailed when telecom companies objected against the competitive pricing. 

The Indian government with its recent ‘Atmanirbhar’ or ‘self-reliance’ policy is seeking to make Indian firms global players. But in the process of doing so, it should not neglect the rise of domestic monopolies being created. This will only have a negative impact on consumers and smaller firms, leading to a negative impact on long term economic development in the country. Ultimately, amendments to India’s Antitrust laws will determine whether the country’s consumers and small businesses will be protected. 

Gauri Bhawkar is a second year Economics and Finance student at Ashoka University.

We publish all articles under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivatives license. This means any news organisation, blog, website, newspaper or newsletter can republish our pieces for free, provided they attribute the original source (OpenAxis).

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Issue 8

Digital Detox in Isolation

I used to joke with a friend: if you want to feel time slow down,  either be on a treadmill or lose your phone for a day. This is more true than ever in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic. From weddings, birthday parties and even funerals shifting online, there aren’t several options but to make peace with being relegated to a small square on Zoom. However, it’s not just Zoom that’s the culprit but also our escalating usage of social media that has increased our screen time. A study of 4500 individuals showed that the majority of respondents acknowledged that their social media consumption (72%) and posting (43%) has peaked during the pandemic. 

In the process of reflecting more critically on my relationship with technology, I started researching more about how social media affects us. A few hours later, I come across a purportedly ‘random’  advertisement asking me, no, almost accusing me of being a ‘social media addict’, “Are you a social media addict? Take this quiz to find out!” As much as I felt called-out by the advertisement, it was hard to avoid. The next thing I knew, I took the quiz. A few hours later, I was watching a rabbit video and had already stalked a friend’s boyfriend’s mother’s sister. How I landed there, I wasn’t sure of that myself either. However, by the end of the day, I knew I was a social media addict!

Social media addiction, according to Addiction Centre is defined as, “a behavioral addiction that is characterized as being overly concerned about social media, driven by an uncontrollable urge to log on to or use social media, and devoting so much time and effort to it such that it impairs other important life areas.” In the previous issue for OpenAxis, Rujuta Singh argued that “in many ways, the addictive nature of social media is a feature, not a design flaw.” Studies indicate that notifications from retweets, likes and shares trigger the release of dopamine within the brain — producing effects similar to that of consuming cocaine. 

A lot of people are increasingly becoming aware of how social media rewires the brain and affects our interaction, yet a few are willing to make a change. I would confess I am one of those who haven’t been willing to make a lasting change for long. Every now and then, I would delete Instagram after either getting bored, disgusted or both, however, my Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) would compel me to be back before the end of the day. This time though, I decided to try something new and radical — a digital detox in complete isolation. 

Digital Detox in Isolation

In 1654, the philosopher and mathematician, Blaise Pascal wrote, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” I didn’t quite imagine how tough it is to sit still when I made the decision to quit social media for a week in complete isolation.

Usually, I would wake up to be reminded of my FOMO through Instagram stories of my friends being out. However, the decision of giving up my social media gave me another kind of depressing FOMO. Will I be okay with missing out on posting a cute #couplegoal picture on Valentine’s Day? Are my friends sending me memes that I am not able to see? I didn’t just intensely desire those mundane interactions but craved them. I found myself thinking about whether my friends and family might just forget my presence.

This wasn’t what I imagined when I decided on a “digital detox.” I imagined a calmer, more composed and mindful person. I expected myself to be someone who would want to exercise, be more productive and spend time reading books and doing yoga. Isn’t this how they usually portray people who do a digital detox?  Instead, I found myself getting agitated, bored and just re-reading the same emails — basically utterly unproductive.

I didn’t have the urge to pick up a novel when I knew I couldn’t post a picture or I didn’t quite enjoy my isolation meals as much as I would have. Neither did it lead to a decluttering of my mind, the way I anticipated it would. In fact, being away from social media during complete isolation made me feel bored at best, and lonely and depressed at worst.  Why was I experiencing what I was experiencing, and is digital detox even possible and a worthwhile endeavour to undertake in today’s age? 

Impossibility of a Digital Detox 

“I don’t think digital detoxes are realistic anymore” writes Dr. Doreen Dodgen-Magee, author of Deviced!: Balancing Life and Technology in a Digital World. She further writes “We can’t live a connected and informed life that we really need to now, without some form of tech.” At a time especially when one is isolating, alone or quarantined, is it really a wise decision to do a digital detox then? While some wellness experts and articles strongly suggest that digital detox is good for your wellbeing, I personally found that in my experience, it made me more agitated.

A study by  Lancaster University found that as previously postulated, there is no direct ‘proven’ correlation between poor mental health and social media. Even in studies that claim a connection between the two, fail to answer whether poor mental health leads to more social media usage or vice versa. In fact, the same study by Lancaster University posits that worrying about our smartphone use is likelier to cause more depression and anxiety than using the tech. 

It raises the question of whether our brains have adopted technology to the extent that social media has become indispensable and unavoidable? If so, will just accepting that lead to more mental peace? Dr Doreen certainly believes so. She compares our relationship with technology to that of an essential item like food, and in that light, a digital detox is an equivalent of extreme diet. What we could and should strive for then is a mindful, purposeful use of social media instead of a drastic step like a digital detox. This would not just help cultivate a more meaningful relationship with technology but also renegotiate the terms of technology to our terms.

Oh wait, brb, let me quickly share this idea on Facebook! See ya! 

Ridhima Manocha is a final year English and Media Studies student at Ashoka University and has authored the book, The Sun and Shadow.

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Issue 6

Rethinking Productivity: A necessary reappraisal after 2020

Not only has the pandemic changed the very nature of how things work in the world, it has also challenged what we knew about ourselves. Perhaps whoever professed that human beings are social beings wasn’t prescient enough to tell us how to survive isolation in a pandemic. Within this time, we have had many conversations about the metamorphosis we all can agree we have been through because to say one has come out of being stuck at home unchanged would have to be something exceptional and largely contentious. As we navigate the next stage of the pandemic in which vaccines are made available throughout the world and the inevitable resumption happens, we need to keep the following pertinent ideas in mind. 

Many people might have cherished the thought of having time to themselves when lockdowns were announced. From making dalgona coffee to diving into a ‘to be read’ pile of books, many people did engage in trends and rekindled hobbies. On the flipside, many have had it difficult to be productive in terms of hobbies or in terms of work.

An article published in The Conversation elucidated how isolation provides us opportunities for deep self-introspection. The maxims presented in the piece tell us how many philosophers affirmed solitude to be a panacea. While these maxims do push one to turn the gaze inwards, the situation we find ourselves in doesn’t allow much room for nonchalance. We are constantly connected to the internet and there is always something going on in the world that we cannot ignore. 

Additionally, our personal disposition is also shown to have an effect on how we process what is happening through the pandemic. A research conducted by The Greater Divide, a consultancy in Virginia, found that introverts might be suffering more than extroverts in the pandemic. One of the reasons that study found extroverts to have a generally better sense of well-being was that they had larger social networks compared to introverts. Therefore, they were able to adapt to isolation with more resilience by still being connected.

It is not that the philosophers were completely wrong. Spending time alone can sometimes really favour one’s state of mind. But what we need to do is to evaluate the new meanings the pandemic has given to “isolation” and the need to reflect. In today’s hyperconnected world, can we really afford to disconnect? We all have commitments that may inhibit the state of freedom found in isolation that philosophers like Montaigne mused about. 

A study conducted by the University of Essex shows that productivity while working from home had declined for those in less privileged socioeconomic groups, particularly those whose occupation were less suited for working from homes. These groups consisted of low earners, self-employed professionals who had never worked from a home setting before, and women with children. According to Adams-Prassl et al. (2020), in the United Kingdom and the United States, women are more likely to lose jobs. The study also explains how these groups are also more vulnerable to experiencing a decline in their well-being. Such cases of unemployment and scarcity, especially when there are others dependent on the individual, could lead to a vicious cycle of mental stress and unproductivity as it also affects dependent family members. 

The world’s understanding of productivity required a reappraisal when the COVID-19 pandemic took over the world because little is known about whether we are navigating it right, but it is evident that it does not feel like we are doing okay.  

In the nine months since WHO declared a pandemic, most educational institutions have found a way to complete their syllabi. While the effort is exemplary, the situation hasn’t been equally conducive to learning for all.  As a response to the pandemic, the government of India postponed exams as it declared a country wide lockdown. Due to the pandemic, it is estimated that the education of more than 320 million students in India was disrupted. The Ministry of Human Resource Development also made available several e-learning resources to students. For secondary education, portals like Diksha and e-Pathshala housed resources for classes 1 to 12 whereas for higher education there would be portals like Swayam and Swayam Prabha (TV channels transmitting educational content). But can these initiatives be thought of as successful when 27% of students do not have access to smartphones or laptops, barring them from attending online classes?

The pandemic has necessitated staying indoors, hence, we access almost all our information from our devices. While there is no other option, the lack of consciousness towards how deeply learning has been affected, how many people were bereft of pivotal experiences while their lives continue on as if things were normal, is astounding. In addition, how all of this requires students and teachers to lead a sedentary lifestyle makes this a well-being quagmire. 

A study examining the effects of increased screen time on children found that more time spent reading on screens would increase chances of myopia in children. In addition, the study stated that physical exercise and outdoor activities are of paramount importance to prevent the development of myopia on children. Another study also linked increased screen time to higher risks of developing conditions such as obesity and hypertension; these effects were more observable amongst adults. Online education, for those who can access it, has increased screen time while outdoor activities have been limited for children for months now.

All of these things show that through the course of the pandemic, many of us have been put in vulnerable positions. Across social strata, there is a shared semblance of the struggle that everyone has been through. The pandemic has shown that our perception of productivity and well-being needs to be reassessed, at least till we emulate the world we knew before COVID-19, as closely as possible. And even if we may move on to a “new normal” in the new year, perhaps some of these ideas so crucial to our day-to-day lives, normalised overtime, do need to be put under a critical lens.

Nirvik Thapa is a student of Sociology/Anthropology, Media Studies and International Relations at Ashoka University. Some of his other interests include music, pop culture and urbanism.

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Issue 6

Back to the Future: “Seamlessly” transitioning to a ‘Post-Covid World’

“It’s just a small gathering.”

News outlets globally reported a significant spike in Covid-19 cases in November 2020, owing to a festive season coinciding with lower temperatures and greater pollution levels. Following Diwali celebrations, daily Covid cases rose by nearly 50% in India, while the United States witnessed higher daily mortality post Thanksgiving, than in the beginning of the pandemic. Even as people rush to justify those one-two-three outings with a single sentence, we all wonder how long we will be forced to live like this. After months of speculation and great uncertainty, the concluding weeks of November brought good tidings, with two major pharma companies announcing the success of their vaccine trials. At once, the thick fog hanging over the “future” seemed to lift a little. With the UK being the first nation to approve imminent mass vaccination, a “post-Covid world” may soon become a reality.

So what is this ‘post-Covid world?’ 

In thinking about a ‘post-Covid world,’ we are participating in an act of imagination. That many of us have already begun actualising these imaginations, despite the very real threat of infection, leaves us with a crucial question: is a ‘post-covid world’ one where we live alongside the disease, or one where it is eradicated? Many reports suggest that the coronavirus is here to stay. If indeed, this turns out to be true, what might a transition – a seamless transition – into such a world look like?

Here, the word “seamless” is of consequence. What exactly is “seamless?” And for whom is such a transition “seamless?” One of the newest buzzwords, buzzphrases this year was “Work from Home.” White-collar employees readily embraced working from the comfort of their living rooms and balconies while wearing formal shirts with shorts underneath. Sometimes, a mischievous child or a rowdy pet made an appearance to break the monotony of Zoom meetings. Most encouragingly, persons with disabilities, who had previously been excluded from employment, were now assimilated into the workforce, owing to the many accommodations and adjustments companies introduced in order to ease working from home. 

But working from home was also not a universal reality. If the lockdown was an extended vacation for those sitting comfortably at the upper crust of society, it was also a period of extreme struggle – confronting the virus on a daily basis was a matter of putting food on the table for thousands. Delivery persons continued to visit houses, probably even more than usual. Doctors, nurses, and healthcare systems faced unimaginable amounts of pressure. Government support for these services in several countries was negligible, if any existed at all. 

Globally, the long months of the pandemic have also been accented by some of the largest protests tackling racism, abortion rights, and agricultural inequalities, all while unemployment and sickness rates were skyrocketing. The pandemic also brought to light numerous social fractures that were previously invisible, or cleverly concealed. Namely, identity-based discrimination was accentuated by the biased identification of specific social vectors of transmission; Muslims and the poor in India, immigrants in the USA, and East Asians globally all became ‘Covid bodies’. As an “ideology of transmission,” this is deeply controversial. Alongside this, increased domestic violence, stark social disparities in the access to education and technology, and the inherent violence of working in a system that is obsessed with productivity under any condition became immediately apparent.

‘Liminality,’ in anthropology, is defined as a transition between two relatively stable conditions, and is characterized by ambiguity and disorientation. One is tempted to think of these lockdowns as liminal, then, for with the vaccine on the horizon, surely we’re at the end of this period of uncertainty. It provides a convenient vacuum within which to locate the many social fractures that came to light, and allows us to think – rather naively, perhaps – that along with the disease, these undesirable “social symptoms” of increased classism and racism, too, will be eradicated. While jobs for healthcare professionals and delivery persons became even riskier during the pandemic, one is also compelled to think about whether accommodations in other forms of employment will be retained in a “post-covid” situation.

In fact, this ‘post-covid world’ that we are now venturing into bears eerie resemblance to the world before the coronavirus made an appearance. In other words, could we possibly be returning to an “old” normal, rather than a new one? It is clear that a transition into a “post-covid” world has already begun. However, it is also irrefutable that it is not “seamless,” and can never be. Even as we have these realisations about the eroded state of our social fabric, we are left with few answers on the nature and possibility of change. Where does this knowledge leave us? In the face of economic recession, messy politics, heightened surveillance, and deteriorating ecologies, a return to an innocent-sounding “normalcy” is probably the most harmful way forward. Perhaps now is the time to return to the drawing board instead, to investigate the live wires, loose screws, and rusted cogs in our systems that reduce us to categories and the statistics that mete out and endure violence. 
Looking back at the past, different pandemics have been remembered differently. While the black death was forever etched into the world’s collective memory, the Spanish Flu of 1918 is termed the ‘forgotten pandemic’. It was eclipsed by a backdrop of massive global political shifts, despite it infecting a third of the world’s population. Who is allowed to forget a pandemic, really? More importantly, when are we allowed to do so? In the same way that nations’ adaptation to a world with the coronavirus was deeply varied, and the transition to a “post-Covid world” appears far from seamless, the ending of the pandemic too, will certainly be staggered. Many feverishly hope that the end of 2020 brings with it the final days of the pandemic. Given the speed at which we are ploughing ahead, foregrounded by the socio-political unrest, ecological damage, and economic crises, will Covid-19 too, become a “forgotten pandemic?”

Picture Credit: Shutterstock

The writers, Reeva Dani, Tanvi Gupta, Teesta Rawal, Trisha Nagpal, and Vinay Chandnani, are students of the sociology course ‘The Plague Town: Politics of Pandemic’ at Ashoka University.

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Issue 5

A case for caution: India’s path to economic recovery

India, as with most of the world has been impacted severely by the coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent lockdown imposed by the government. While we are in the process of reopening the economy, many of us hope for a quick return to normalcy. However, According to the production and inflation data, normalcy might be a far cry for the Indian economy. 

The headline figure of a decline of 23.9% in the GDP for the first quarter of financial year 2020-21 released in July showed the depth of the shock to the economy. Index of Industrial Production (IIP) shows a sharp decline in manufacturing across all sectors. Labour intensive sectors such as textiles (-37.3%), leather (-32.7%) and primary products such as basic metals (-21.6%) have been hit hard by the lockdown(Source- IIP Data and author’s calculations). As more workers get laid off, consumption declines which leads to low demand for manufactured goods, which leads to even more workers getting laid off thus creating a vicious cycle. Many pundits point to the increase in expenditure around the festive season and gradually increasing industrial production as signalling economic recovery. However, as the adage  goes,  one swallow doesn’t make summer, India’s economic recovery may not come easily. It faces more challenges than just production numbers as other core sectors dip significantly. 

Source – IIP Data and author’s calculations

India’s economy is heavily dependent on the services and agricultural sector. The agricultural sector employs more than 50% of the entire workforce while services contributes to 50% of India’s GDP. The services sector has seen a decline of 20.6% in Q1 of FY21 in gross value added (GVA) while the trade, hotels, communication and transport sub sector is facing a decline of 47.0%. 

The only sector that has shown growth is agriculture with an increase of 3.3%. This is expected as the government has imposed the least restrictions on this sector.  A copious monsoon has also led to a good harvest. However since the pandemic has now spread to rural areas it could cause a reduction in the agricultural sector. 

According to SBI research, manufacturing has seen a decline of 38% in gross value added. Net taxes (the difference between GDP and GVA) has declined to 1.36 lakh crore, the lowest in 7 years. The decrease in tax payments also limits the government’s willingness to spend as it increases the fiscal deficit.

The problem facing the Indian economy is threefold- demand has dipped significantly, inflation is rising and the supply chain has been disrupted. In the past year where the economy has seen a slowdown due to disruptions in the credit market, private consumption has been a significant pillar which has stood strong. In 2019, it contributed to about 57% of the total GDP. With private and public investment unlikely to increase due to underutilized capacity, private consumption will be a significant contributor to GDP this year as well. According to an SBI report the private consumption is set to decline by 14% due to the decrease in spending during the pandemic. The expenditure side of the GDP also shows a decline of 22% in demand impulses. Until the government intervenes directly to stimulate demand, we are unlikely to see a quick recovery. 

India is also facing a problem of stagflation (high inflation, low growth, high unemployment) as we take a look at the latest inflation numbers released by the RBI. CPI has gone up by 11.07%, 10.68%, 9.05% in the past three months. In India, inflation is measured using two indices. The Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures the prices the retail customer gets, and the  Wholesale Price Index (WPI) which measures the wholesale price of goods and services. 

 The WPI came into positive territory only in August. Over the past three months, it has been 0.41%, 1.32% and 1.48%. The numbers show a clear divergence between consumer prices and wholesale prices. While one might point out this divergence may be due to hoarding/overcharging by wholesalers, this is unlikely to be the case. What these numbers point to is a supply chain disruption, wholesalers are unable to supply goods consistently to retailers leading to short term supply drops and increasing prices. This is due to the uncoordinated unlocking between states. As states continue to unlock/impose restrictions on their economies with respect to the number of cases, this trend of disruption seems to continue until next year. 


Source – IIP Data and author’s calculations

Policy Proposals

The Indian establishment faces a unique challenge as the biggest shock of its existence comes to fruition. The RBI has already lowered the repo rates (the rates at which RBI lends money to commercial banks) by 125 basis points this year. By decreasing the repo rates, RBI has made it easier for banks to obtain more money which can be used for loans to the populace.  The finance ministry has announced a slew of measures focusing on emergency credit lines, loan restructuring and providing support to distressed sectors such as housing under the brand name Atmanirbhar Bharat. However, as we see private consumption and investment collapsing, now is the time for even more radical measures to support the rural and urban lower class. 

One way the government can find immediate impact is to increase the outlay towards the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). NREGS guarantees 100 days of unskilled work to all households for a fixed wage rate. This can be increased to 150 days to support many migrant workers who have been laid off. The wage rate can also be increased to provide further support to households. Another way of directly stimulating demand is to implement something like stimulus payments like the USA. This would directly put money in the hands of the people helping shore up demand quickly. In the longer term, a Universal Basic Income (UBI) could help mitigate these shocks. While we expect economic recovery to be quick in the coming months looking at festive demand spending and increase in industrial production. The data shows us that the path to recovery requires a lot more proactive measures from the government.  

Rochak Jain is a fourth year student of economics at Ashoka University.

Image Credit: pexels.com

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Issue 5

A Stymied Transition: How the Class of 2023 is adapting to ‘college life’ online

2020 has been rough for students everywhere. With the disruption of regular classes, being stuck either away from home or at home for months, and with some being directly affected by the coronavirus infection, the year has been challenging. College students had it harder than others because they also lost jobs and higher studies opportunities in addition to difficulties with assessment. While there has been some acknowledgement of the hardships faced by the class of 2020, very little has been said about the students who passed out from school this year and were college-bound right in the middle of the pandemic. They are now nearing the end of the first semester, but the journey till here has been full of stress.

The roller coaster of uncertainty started off when a nation-wide lockdown was imposed in the month of March–when high school students were taking their final Board examinations. The remaining exams were postponed. Board results got delayed until finally average scores were awarded to those who couldn’t take the exams. But this initial postponement led to further delays in admission processes that rely on the Board examination marks. For instance, many students aspiring to get into prestigious colleges like those under the Delhi University had to either gamble losing a semester and wait till November for admission lists, or let go of their plan and settle for a different college.

Most country-wide entrance examinations are conducted physically in person. Therefore, students who had to take tests like the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test and Joint Entrance Examination (NEET-JEE), or the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT), etc., were left hanging as the entrances were delayed for several months. It was not clear how, or whether at all, they would be conducted, given the pandemic rampaging across the country. Such circumstances affected students’ performance too.

Many students’ college plans that they had worked on for years were upturned and students were forced to settle for choices they had never even considered. Students had to consider completely new rubrics like the possibility of travel and online learning when choosing their college. And most unfortunately, several young people were not able to enrol in colleges at all. A major reason was because COVID-19 tanked an already plummeting economy, another was the economic loss due to floods in different parts of the country, thus increasing the financial burden on many sections of the population in India.

Since all learning was to be online for a while, parents might fail to see the merit in such an education. This has also been the reason for many students to not go to their college of choice, but just attend a less expensive program at a college that is in the city where they already live. Parents were afraid of the risk involved in travelling and living in a different city as the pandemic continues. Many students plan to get a transfer to a college with better opportunities in their second year, when the pandemic hopefully would have mitigated too.

After going through a rough time getting into college, perhaps the major part of uncertainty is over for the students. Most of the big decisions have been made and now they are focussed on their studies and other college activities. In fact, having gone through such a gruelling experience together, they already share something as a batch. College is a completely new chapter in one’s life, one that comes with the promise of freedom and excitement. For the class of 2023, all of ‘college-life’ has only been available online. They got Zoom instead of lecture halls full of chatter and group chats instead of college canteens bustling with groups of friends.

And yet, while the rest of us have been figuring out how to maintain relationships in a physically distant world, these students have been building new relationships from scratch, online.

Kavya, studying at a private college in Jabalpur, says that online classes are a bit dull, and she isn’t surprised that she often sleeps off during lectures and misses assignment deadlines. What she is finding unexpected, though, is how fun her online college life has turned out to be. Social media is the only space where they can hangout, and yet, it is not exactly a bad compromise. She and her friends sometimes skip classes together, have lengthy conversations on group chats and celebrate birthdays on video calls.

Being stuck at home may be an impediment to making new friends, but it might also be an important driver for the same. Young people who have probably not seen anyone other than their family members for months must feel a stronger urge to connect with others their own age.

Amaysi, a student at Sophia College, says that she has always been a people person and loves meeting new people. She was not expecting to have to make good connections this way. “I now know way more people than I might have been able to interact with physically.” says Amaysi. She has been busy helping organise her college’s annual intercollege fest, which is online this year. 

Online interactions are certainly very different from ones in real life. While that may be an annoying reality for most of us now, it is perhaps a better one for some. Individuals with social anxiety, who might experience stress being amongst people and hence behave unlike their usual selves, can find online interactions more easier. For such people, online college might actually be a space where they get to be themselves without much difficulty.

These students have not seen the actual buildings and cities that make their colleges come alive. For them college is just virtual interaction so far. The people behind the screen – their friends and professors – are the only familiar aspects of their college lives. And thus, finding these people behind the screen everyday is a blessing rather than an impediment, in a way. Of course, they hope to physically be together, and look forward to how much more real things will be for them. But for now, they are doing everything to make the best out of current circumstances. Online interactions with our loved ones, friends, family, colleagues, may not seem to be enough, but for the class of 2023, that is all they have to make do with, at least for now.

Mansi is a student of philosophy and environmental studies at Ashoka University. Her other interests include performing arts, politics and octopuses.

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