Our Funarena!

Schools have reopened in several states of India, namely Maharashtra, Karnataka, Goa and most of the north-western states, last month or earlier; in the capital of the nation—Delhi, Kerala and in Tamil Nadu schools are being started from today; and most other states including West Bengal have preferred to reopen after the Diwali festival at different dates. The decisions of the reopening have been taken at various times in various states in the last few months, but the state governments concerned were hesitant due to mostly the objections of parents, the lack of vaccines for kids and the fluctuating numbers of daily infections. However, with the capital Delhi schools operating from today, we are witnessing scenes of kids going back to schools after nearly 19 months. Of course, with various conditions and restrictions attached. Many of  the parents are still not convinced which gets accentuated by the fact vaccination for kids is yet to start despite ZyCov-D, the first ever DNA-based ne

In regard to the nearly 17-month old pandemic horrors in India we usually discuss the economy & the growth rate, loss of lives, jobs & livelihoods, the worst affected sectors, lack of any meaningful financial relief by the government and other issues. The TV channels regularly show how the film stars and other celebrities are doing and how sports activities should be restarted. Only occasionally we discuss how the home-imprisoned students are coping with the crisis; that too we don’t care to know how they are doing, but only hold chat shows with the same education experts or teachers on basically the same points repeated over and over again.  Then, there are the raging debates on holding various types of exams at the relevant points of time. However, in the recent weeks the debates have picked up about holding the 10 th and 12 th class final exams which finally ended with all the states deciding to declare results without holding exams and based on the online tests and overal