The Elephant in the Room
The second wave of COVID-19 in April 2021 created a month-long horror show of people dying due to a shortage of medical oxygen and hospital beds, dead bodies floating in the river Ganga, and rampant black-marketing of lifesaving drugs. Come June 2021, the season had yet to change, and a sea of tourists flocked to Himachal Pradesh. Escaping soaring summer temperatures, scores of affluent people, in their fancy cars, made a run for Manali, Shimla, Kufri and Dalhousie. Within a month’s time, about a million ‘tourists’ made a mockery of corona-appropriate behavior, as if in vengeance.
When I hear experts sweating out every evening on TV, discussing variants and further waves of coronavirus, none of them speak the naked truth, that is, that the virus, by itself, has no ability to mutate and create a wave. An infected person must intermingle with other people to transmit it. If this transmission from one person to another stops, the game of the virus will be over – there will be no mutation and no further wave. So, who is responsible for the waves? Crowding! That was what happened during the recent religious congregation, election rallies and cricket matches. Moreover, if one goes to any vegetable market in any town, one will find a total absence of pandemic-appropriate behavior. There has been a disdain for science among Indian people in general, and it is not fading, but rather ‘mutating’ into haughtiness, to use virus terminology.
It is a pity that instead of addressing this issue, we either discuss topics such as whether the virus was a bioweapon, which of the two Indian vaccines is better, whether the third wave will affect children more severely, or make statements such as, “I will wait for an ‘imported’ vaccine to arrive.” We see radiating curiosity take in details of everything in the room, except the elephant standing quietly there. Sagacious wisdom watching the meaningless chatter is like a lighthouse in the turbulent sea. Dr Amartya Sen, in his book ‘The Argumentative Indian’, mentions the ability of Indian people to discuss any topic at length, “Prolixity is not alien to us in India. We are able to talk at some length.”
“The elephant in the room” is a metaphorical idiom. So, instead of chatting about never-ending details of our likes and dislikes, political storms in teacups, and games we have never ourselves played, let us look at the elephant. What is one big truth of our times? One can see how the modern world has been hijacked by few large corporations. They have been extracting natural resources – oil, iron ore, and so on – as spoils of the two World Wars in the last century. Now, in the 21st century, they own whatever is manufactured and grown on earth. Every small business that your eye can see is owned by corporations – directly or through banks – as part of their global supply chains. When a popular brand portrays its logo as an arrow from ‘a’ to ‘z’, it blatantly declares that they indeed own everything that is bought and sold in this world. It is a fact as conspicuous as the elephant that can appear to be overlooked.
Or, the fact that more than twenty-one hundred billionaires globally own more of the world’s wealth than the five billion people at the bottom of the wealth pyramid; that the richest one percent have accumulated twice as much wealth as 90 percent of the global population. The elephant knows that the Wuhan Institute of Virology has been working on the coronavirus, receiving funding from the United States. As has been the case of all other major issues in the history of mankind, the powers that control the world at a certain point of time decide ‘the official narrative’ of what is accepted as the ‘truth’ and recorded as a ‘fact’ for posterity.
Or, the fact that governments can only collect taxes and spend them without any real control on the business of the world. COVID-19 would not have become a pandemic had it not spread by the heavy air traffic of millions of people shuttling between continents daily, most of them affluent Chinese tourists celebrating their new year. Online retail has led to global supply chains and industrial production of food. Are not people in India eating fruits from New Zealand and almonds from California? Are not antibiotics and growth hormones injected into animals in poultry and dairy farms?
Finally, urbanization has been forced upon people across the world as their only way out of rural poverty. Who were those people, helpless and scared out of their lives, walking on the roads during the lockdown last year? Why have they all returned quietly even after suffering such an ordeal? Thomas Friedman, in his book on global warming and clean energy, published in 2007, called the modern world ‘hot, flat and crowded.’ It has been made so by large corporations so that they own everything possible on the planet and make a profit out of every activity of mankind.
The root cause of COVID-19, which earlier was SARS-CoV, even earlier was H1N1, and will be something else in future, is the overpopulated and unequal world. The fact is that when billions of people faced the hardships of lockdowns, including loss of their livelihoods, a handful of billionaires made merry. In April 2021, when President Joe Biden informed the U.S. Congress that at a time when twenty million Americans lost their jobs in the pandemic, roughly 650 billionaires in America saw their net worth increase by more than $1 trillion and that they were now worth more than $4 trillion, he was at least acknowledging the elephant in the room.
Know that wherever there are marginalized people, whose lives are entwined with the wild, where animals are slaughtered for their meat, local butcher shops and fish markets, the zoonotic viruses are getting transmitted into human bodies. These slow-motion snippets must be captured and pruned to avoid them later becoming an apocalyptic feature-length film. As Lord Buddha said, “That is because that is, if this stops that stops.” What happened in Wuhan can happen anywhere, anytime, if business as usual goes on. And it is going on. American novelist Ellen Wittlinger (b. 1948) put it plainly when she said, “When there is an elephant in the room, you can’t pretend it isn’t there and just discuss the ants.”
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A thought provoking blog on the prevailing situation penned with your inimitable style Prof Tiwariji !
Your efforts to enlighten the intelligentsia to focus on the metaphorical Elephant in the Room go a long way towards transforming the mindset of modern society !!
Arun, you have nailed the elephant in the room It was intellectual stimulating to read through your blog. recently i was reading a book titled “Civilised to Death” by Christopher Ryan, which also brought out many of the wrongs of so called modern civilisation which he called as a chronic disease leading to death and not progress. Best wishes.
The narrative of the blog builds around our daily lives and feelings. Professor Tiwari brings out ‘the Elephant in the Room’ with clarity. Surprisingly, the mass media misses on the simple narrative evidence. I wish and hope that the scholars are capturing many research questions from his observations and reflections.
How come the governments of the world remain complacent on the growing rich-poor gap? How can those who derive power from people be so arrogant? Do the stinkingly rich would never be affected by the pandemics that climate change is exacerbating? Humanity requires answering such questions.Business as usual is not sustainable- transformative and quick change is needed.
Dear Prof. Tiwari, Looking at the post-covid-second-wave behavior of some of us, one wonders if the human race is on the self-destructive suicidal path. Further, politicians including governments have given impetus and in many cases, facilitated this journey. Unfortunately, those who are sensible and responsible in their behavior, have to suffer because of the irresponsible section of the society. These are the people, who know what they are doing. But, their ‘couldn’t care’ less attitude puts others in jeopardy. If they want to commit suicide, they should be allowed to do so. These ‘tourists’, who violated the Covid-19 protocol, should not have been allowed back to their communities. Instead, they should have been quarantined for 14 days in a camp outside the city limits with heavy penalties imposed.
The virus will mutate to survive. Even in nature, virus will mutate and create diversity among its population to survive. No two individuals are similar. This again forces the virus to mutate and survive in the host. Religious sentiments and faith have always pushed science in the background. Further, Indians have a tendency to become expert overnight on any subject matter, Covid-19 being no exception. In many developed countries with supposedly educated population, a large proportion of the population including health care workers and professionals have refused to get vaccinated.
Both, socialism and mixed economy’ have failed (or were made to fail) to manage the affairs of the country. This left the field wide open to corporate sector to exploit the situation and now call the shots world over. Why blame big corporates? If at all somebody is to be blamed, it should be the shareholders of such companies, who always think of bigger profit, and CEOs of such companies with ridiculously fat salaries. Big multinationals should not be resented if they are sensitive to their social responsibilities.
Migration to urban centers to escape poverty has been a common mechanism since ages. Even if one created self-contained villages, they would not have generated enough opportunities to provide gainful employment to everybody in the villages. The blame should be placed on the burgeoning population growth. In the law of nature, different species adopt natural culling process to maintain the balance among different species to ensure food availability. However, the Homosapiens have bypassed this process to see their unprecedented growth. May be the nature is doing the job, which human beings should have done themselves! Regards.
Prof Tiwari Ji, an excellent Blog that offers enough food for the thought. It is time to ponder how our society is taking shape! Cities are thickly populated and villages are witnessing out migration that creates “ghost village”. Can we create enough sustainable entrepreneurship opportunities in rural sector! Needs full attention!
Under such a pandemic scenario, casualties might be much lower if we have a balanced population distribution pattern. Also, the resource crunch probably be minimized. It is time to go back to the basics and start empowering the root of the nation.
Wonderfully written article Sir.
You indeed addressed the elephant in the room.
The second wave showed how we could blame everything on politics, lack of resources, lack of awareness but never really discussed the root cause of the whole issue and how it could have been avoided.
And moreover nobody is discussing how to prevent such future pandemics and what we can do at an individual level to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
It is a global responsibility and not just the responsibility of a particular organization or a party.
It saddens me to see people flocking out to celebrate their vacations before the third wave kicks in. It seems like we have accepted this lifestyle of lockdown and pandemic waves.
Could not agree more with your words of wisdom sir…This blog along with the coincidental inauguration ceremony of the Olympics today made me remember the steepest observation by Thomas L. Friedman which he mentioned in his book “The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century” which says, “Today’s workers need to approach the workplace much like athletes preparing for the Olympics, with one difference. They have to prepare like someone who is training for the Olympics but doesn’t know what sport they are going to enter”.
As you rightly stated the A To Z monopoly of such large conglomerates does not only drive the politics & economy but truly drives the world through their said malignant practices.
As far as self-control over our individual state is concerned, I guess we need to observe the “Mutation of Mind” to adhere to the COVID appropriate behaviour is concerned. I just came back from my official Ladakh trip and was amazed to notice the exaggerated rush of the tourists there as nothing has happened since the last 1.5 years…
Truly agree with your thoughts that as of now there two elephants are present in our world. One is in the form of Large Corporations and another in the form of an ever-mutating Virus that might have evolved and spread as the aftermath.
It was interesting to read Dr Bart Fisher’s comment that 30% of Americans do not want to be vaccinated and honestly, I was surprised. This prompted me to search on the Internet and I found a Gallup Poll. I share the key findings of the survey here and point out the elephant “I see in the room.”
According to the Gallup Poll conducted in May 2021, the primary reasons for people declining vaccine include concerns about its safety (23%), believing they won’t get “seriously ill” from Covid-19 (20%), fears about how quickly the vaccine was developed (16%) and a general opposition to vaccines (16%). One third of these people are without a college degree (31%) and middle-aged Americans (33%), according to the poll.
So, the elephant in the room is governments have abandoned their primary function of ‘taking care of the people’ and become hand-in-glove with big corporations. Increasing number of people remain uneducated (which also means getting bogus education) and they spend whatever they earn to the profits of big corporations who now own everything on the planet.
I am fully convinced that by 2050 the world will have 10 billion people ruled over by a Technology Singularity. Today’s elephant in the room will demolish the room and will be running amok trampling one and all.
Thank you Sir for another excellent blog. I was articulating my comment when I read Dr Bart Fisher’s comment that 30% of Americans do not want to be vaccinated for COVID-19. And I saw the inequity in global health as the elephant in the room.
What are its core drivers? People in rich countries do not recognize the universality of health care problems and often see infectious disease outbreaks as problems for “other people in other countries.” The major lesson of the COVID-19 pandemic that infections do not respect national boundaries is not heeded.
Those people who say, “I want to watch and wait,” I would like to remind them that their vacillations are reckless and cruel. By not doing your part to reduce the risks, you increase the risks for all of us. And that’s a very peculiar response to this catastrophic pandemic.
In India as of today only 6% people have been given both doses of the vaccine and less than a quarter have got their first dose. This is not enough. Less than 50% of the population without vaccines can render the entire effort waste.
Prof Tiwari Ji, Another Insightful and thought-provoking article.
Sir, It is an eye opener for all of us. The truth is it is our responsibility to get vaccinated for the sake of our survival and not for the sake of government. When the vaccine is freely available, we will ignore it. When there is serious pandemic we will rush for it and blame the government. Are we not sensible enough just to wear the mask for our sake, for our family and for the Society? If at all there is a serious third wave more disastrous than the second wave, we need to blame ourselves and not anyone else.
Another big problem is tonnes of advices, messages, what’s app videos confusing everyone. It is not only illiterates that are confused but even scientists and Doctors are also confused to communicate as what is right and what is wrong. Government observing helplessly without making it clear that only concerned heads of central organisation are authorised to dissipate information and prescribe the procedures may be like in US Mr. Anthony S. Fauci. So many unqualified or issuing statements or sharing videos without any subject knowledge and authority.
Another glaring example is standard prescription for every one suffering with pandemic and so many TV channels showed different prescriptions without understating the fact that each human is different and be treated with care. Another aspect that needs attention is post pandemic problems faced by thousands of individuals irrespective of their age. This is a serious problem and needs the attention of the Central and State governments immediately .
Sir, Honestly, I was not aware of this idea of ‘elephant in the room’. It is true that we have a tendency to avoid fundamental problems and deal with small problems and minor issues. For me three basic problems are: (1) good health, (2) sufficient livelihood, and (3) happy family life. Whatever we do ignoring these three is ignoring the elephant in the room. Since I read your blog whenever I see Lord Ganesha, these three basic points in one’s life come to my mind. Thank you for sharing this great insight.
Excellent concept and very timely example. Sir, to mee elephant in the room is ‘income inequality’. It was always there but ignored as ‘elephant in the room’ and a situation has arisen that all others in the room are feeling trampled by the elephant. The way prices of diesel and petrol are hiked for whatever good reason shows the total control of big money upon the economy and on the livelihood of the ordinary people. First education, then healthcare, and now small retail businesses are all owned by the big money which is flourishing like an automatic machine. Thank you for sharing an essential understanding.
Thank you for introducing this powerful concept. I took some time to reflect upon why it is a fact that we ignore the most obvious problem staring upon us and spend time handling trivialities creating a false sense of being busy and productive. Millions of engineers have no ‘engineering jobs’ today. The entire profession has become an ocean of mediocrity. It has already happened in the USA and it is for everyone to see how the most powerful nation lost its bearings and struggled to even handle the pandemic for its own people. India needs self-reliance which is possible only through excellence in engineering. This is the elephant in the room I feel.
Dear Bhaisab thanks for writing a much needed blog highlighting the presence of an Elephant in the Room. You have very well penned the true and perfect observation of the current situation.
Looking back at other countries also the COVID spread is due to irresponsible population who take undue advantage of right of freedom given.
Looking at China the way the communist government has reigned the pandemic, may be we need the similar approach of controlling. In India much blame could be passed on to the irresponsible politicians for whom opposing any governmental decision is their birth right, whether right or wrong.
And not to forget the greedy politicians and black marketeers.Somebody needed to catch these irresponsible and greedy people by their neck and show them the presence of Elephant in the room which is real. Thank you fir sharing your well observed thoughts.
Your observations are spot on, Sir. Taking your argument further, I feel, people who act irresponsibly lose the moral right to pass judgement on the government or institutions. There should in fact, be a monitoring of the social media of these vacationers and other restrictions-defiers. While the second wave of the pandemic was raging here, a parallel pandemic of misinformation was creating havoc too. Both kinds of super-spreaders need to act with restraint. In this context, perhaps it’s time to activate the concept of Citizen Policing – that may, as it grows, gradually help check such activities.
Interesting blog. You could have made the same observations about the United States, where the rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer. The elephant in the room in the United States is the unwillingness of 30% of the population to get vaccinated, which endangers us all. We need to provide incentives for vaccination and counter the anti-science bias which, unfortunately, is a stubborn feature of a large group of Americans. We now have a pandemic of the unvaccinated, which puts the rest of us at risk.
Sir, wherever in the world people are defying pandemic related restrictions is bad and deplorable. I wrote in context of people crowding hill stations, mostly from the cities where large number of people lost their lives without oxygen and hospital beds just a month ago. Thank you for pointing out. Best regards.
Dear Arunji, I appreciate the quality of the stuff you normally write. This time, however, I have some reservations about some of your comments – “There has been a disdain for science among Indian people in general, and it is not fading, but rather ‘mutating’ into haughtiness, to use virus terminology.”
Since you have singled out Indians here, I would like to get enlightened on why are people defying the lockdowns in US and Europe, who in your opinion ‘have no distain for science’ ?
Dear Arun, First of all, let me thank you for writing this befitting blog at this juncture, which highlights the present day paradox. It is not that people are not aware of the problem (pandemic), but they choose to not acknowledge it. It’s as if there is a big elephant in the room and they are just ignoring it.
It is said, public memory is very short, but it should not be so short that they are forgetting the tragic scenes just like a drop of the hat. Your warning is very much well timed and judicious. Everyone should listen to it. Looking forward for your next blog.
Thank you Arunji. Your closing sentence that you can not pretend that elephant is not there in the room when it is there actually. This the the typical response by Leaders resisting to notice the changes in the environment which has large negative impact on the business in the future.
Respected Sir, Good blog and it appears that most of peoples are over confident and taking situation in their hand because they are different people and have their own perception about virus. Time will write the history in due course of time.
The thought behind today’s Blog is well knit and befitting the prevailing situation.
The allegory ‘an elephant in the room,’ used to highlight the human mentality especially Indian mentality is very appropriate. An individual’s thought – Corona can not affect me did prove many a warriors wrong.
Not only senior citizens or elderly, but when young healthy adults succumbed to the pandemic and within weeks popped off the surface of the earth, it did create a short ripple, but then as is said, memory is short lived and evaporation in this heat was fast. Some made a mockery – better enjoy, travel eat and make merry in the Hills, flood the eateries and the markets, religious fanaticism etcetera took over with vengeance. The priceless thought – better enjoy now for you never know the third wave or the so called Delta wave may entangle, got flaunted shamelessly. This is height of crass. And we Indians excel in it. We forgot the recent perils gone through physical, mental, financial anarchy and coined yet another terminology – ‘risk adventure.’
As rightly put by you it’s not the waves or the Delta….Gama… variants semaphoring of their own. Corona is not born requiring a birth control campaign, the spread is because of you and me only. And we only hold the key. If the well known and doctored precautions are observed we shall be able to eradicate it once for all. Let’s not only debate, let’s get on hands on, let’s be practical.
The beautiful Elephant in an equally beautiful barren office room with only a recycle bin in the picture makes me wonder…. Where has everyone vanished? (Manali, Shimla, Kufri or Dalhousie – as you mentioned, forgetting the elephant) Rather than debating extensively how it came, who brought it etcetera somebody needs to bell the elephant and show the exit or is it that some smart startup has kept the bin to collect elephant manure for creating and developing some draconian gimmick and become a billionaire. A well known fact that an elephant produces lots and lots of methane gas which could let a car travel around 20 miles on the amount of methane produced by one elephant in a single day would be worth exploring.
That some made tons of money while majority suffered. That some lost pathetically but few did thrive on some body’s misery is a well accepted fact world over. Everything is possible in today’s materialistic world. Akin to a stock exchange – someone has to lose for other to gain. Alas the losers are many but only few are the likes of Rakesh Jhunjhunwala.
Your highlighting of the rich getting richer and the poor, poorer is a universal truth. The disparity is ever on the increase. Money begets money and with new spoilers inundating the Indian market, the so called developing nation, the comfort providers, the taste enhancers and the like making an ordinary human fall prey to the temptations of life, is a well oiled machinery. Easily forgotten is that there did exist a splendid life even prior to the newbie’s, a life which was much better, more laborious more satisfying and much healthier. Contentment and happiness glowed over the faces.
The age old trick – Create and provide, flood the market by volume….make one habitual…. Mint the profits thereafter. Is like drooling a lollipop to a child and making him come and fall in your trap. That’s what the rich have mastered.
Your quoting Lord Buddha “That is because that is, if this stops that stops,” in itself amalgamates the present problem – If we are able to evolve and understand that and are able to stop this, the root of the problem gets eradicated. We the Gods intelligent creations need to understand it is in our own hands. We rightly can’t sit like a pigeon closing our eyes brooding if we can’t see, none can see us.
Rise man rise – Beating Corona is in our own washed hands. And making this world a better and a balanced place to live and breathe too is in our own mind.
In the last three decades or more since the collapse of the Soviet Union and its client countries, the socialist argument has been almost completely vanquished. And capitalism has got an almost divine legitimacy, allowing its relentless march on all societies.
But three quarters of the world does not even enjoy basic human needs.
While the democracies in whole swathes of mankind, and not just in the West, are almost completely under the ‘ benign’ grip of concentrated wealth’s talons.
We are slowly but surely sliding towards a tumultuous era. For, amongst all the three Laws of Newton, the third one is the most potent.
There will be anguish and reaction which will lead to unspeakable turmoil. And perhaps sooner than we think, triggered directly or indirectly, against the immensely unjust distribution of opportunities, natural wealth, prosperity and well being across the Globe. The shamelessly skewed distribution of the Covid vaccine is only the most recent example.
Allah Ishwar, sabko sanmati de Bhagwan: is all one can say.
Dear Sir, Yes, you right, there is a big elephant in the room but in my perception this is not the handful of billionaires holding 90% of money with them and uneven distribution of money, it is the global warming and population.
In this summer, Canada like country is facing hot summer waves resulting high rise of sea temperature, causes millions of sea animals bodied to death recently. I feel, world is in seriously dangar environmental condition. When the ice at poles will melt, will release microorganisms in sea water which are inactive since ice age.
We don’t know how they are going to affect our health. We might be fighting with lot’s of new viruses like Covid-19 at a time. How will we get vaccine for each one? God knows! If we failed to control this global warming elephant, it is going to destroy our official place to live, undoubtedly.
Dear Sir Good morning, as always you have covered the issue 360 degrees, the biggest challenge in a country like India is self discipline of citizens. It’s very obvious that citizens of this country are inviting the 3rd Tsunami (not a wave). We can keep debating endlessly, the origin, the vaccines, like you said, its starts with every individual exercising caution.
Unfortunately, Mahatma (MKG) Gandhi, taught lot of lessons, but what intrigues me is, the one lesson that’s stuck across is “Civil Disobedience,” when govt declares lockdown, we see educated people sneaking in home help without the knowledge of associations in apartments, stepping put of home without reasons and the list goes on…..
I am not sure, even if the Lord’s Avatar’s are to be believed, and if he incarnates again to solve this crisis, will the human beings listen? are these the seeds for the “beginning of the end” time will tell.