A prayer for 2021

The best way to see a country like India is on the road. Flying in and out is as good as parachuting to a destination and experiencing the best that it has to offer and coming away without truly tasting the essence of a place. Road travel on the other hand with its brief pit-stops and a chance to speak to locals is a far richer experience, though by no means an exhaustive one.

With the unpredictable year that was 2020 causing travel to come to a standstill, road trips emerged as a lifeline. And I decided to end the year with an epic road trip from Kolkata all the way to sunny Goa! My idea was to gather as many stories as I could and make up for an otherwise creatively unproductive year for me. It was also my endeavour to escape the four walls of the house and breathe in the outdoors after 8 months of captivity. But what I witnessed along those 6,000+ kilometres of national highways, state highways, village roads, and city streets succinctly summarised for me the real needs of fellow citizens in the new year.

While crossing five states (West Bengal, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka), the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic is plain to see. People's lives and livelihoods have been impacted for ever. While we sing elegies on the lack of foreign travel and odes to maskless parties, the common man bears a listless look as he struggles to make both ends meet. 2020 has devastated for millions the most essential tool — earning. Except for a clutch of businesses that have thrived during the pandemic, most have fumbled; many have shut down. Thousands of jobs have also been lost. Whether Bhubaneswar or areas near the Chilika Lake in Odisha, Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh, Bengaluru in Karnataka or quaint Goa, the stories were mostly of besieged livelihoods. People are desperate for work and earnings as they smilingly welcome you to peruse their wares but the hardship behind their vacant eyes easily palpable.

The number of shops and stores that are shut in our small towns, villages, and even cities, bear testimony to the ongoing carnage. Sure, some have reopened, but the numbers of those who have closed down businesses are staggering. Reports suggest that the pandemic could take global "extreme poverty" to 1 billion; the World Bank says that almost 150 million extremely poor will be added by 2021. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that 40 million Indians will slip into poverty and hunger taking the numbers to 120 million; many among them had only recently bettered their poverty line. I felt the reverberations of this already while on the road.

In the new year, we need more jobs and more gainful employment of Indians. We need farmers to feel secure, we need small businesses to grow. We need the governments, both central and state, to take into account the number of 'extremely poor' that have been added and formulate urgent, proactive ways of helping them out. We need food security because, accept it, hunger will be one of the most pivotal issues. We need vision and foresight to help the millions that are struggling. We need the political will to stop thinking of big corporate honchos and more for the grassroots people. We need compassion from corporate biggies to lend a helping hand to those in need. We need empathy from all of us so that we choose to support the local businesses and small enterprises that need our patronage more than the behemoths. And we must 'give back' — call it charity, philanthropy, or doing one's duty — we need to donate what ever we can to who ever needs it — your favourite NGO, your maid, your neighbourhood poor. Let this new year be the time that we help heal some wounds of the past year.

The writer is an author and media entrepreneur. Views expressed are personal