Shaking of the pandemic

Post-Covid resetting is changing the economy. M. A. Siraj reflects on the the future of social spaces in this light

Humanity is on life- altering swings. Never in the past have we been so intrusively impacted by any catastrophe. The all-pervasive serenity it induced during the global lockdown was unprecedented and carried dire prognosis of what is about to come. It was as if the Planet Earth had declared a respite for itself, flaunting a banner- “Closed for maintenance and necessary repairs”. The intense material race had come to a grinding halt. The silence was deafening and the future looked uncertain.

The big question that has come to haunt us is if the post-Covid-19 world at the end of 2020s would be the same as before? Never before the forces shaping the world had so much time at their disposal to redesign the trajectory. The world is clearly in the throes of a paradigm shift. Just around the turn of the century the internet had heralded a major disruption. The pandemic promised to be no less a gamechanger. It appears nothing that one does would remain unaltered.

Physical hiatus among individuals is perhaps the most definitive and transformative of the changes in behaviour that the pandemic has heralded, nay unleashed. It is unlikely to vanish soon from humanity’s treatment of social spaces. It is where changes can be seen in how one eats, meets, moves, builds, shops, entertains, transacts and interacts.

As businesses gear up to move online, it is not certain how the microeconomic context of a majority of Indians will accommodate changes. Deliveries will be the norm. Online purchases will essentially depend upon and result in greater brand consciousness. Linked to it would come the credibility of those managing the enterprise.

It will not be business as usual. The internet destroyed distances and dissolved borders for intangible things like ideas, visuals, sounds, texts. It made post offices redundant. It eliminated queues and attendant barricades at rail reservation counters and shrines. The Covid-led changes have introduced social distancing. The virus outbreak is all likely to lead to decline in demand for many types of spaces. Co-working and co-living will get the first hits and there are straws in the winds that have started to bite the coworking market.

A webinar themed “After the Bloodbath, Emergency Revival Plan for the Restaurant Sector” organised by the National Restaurants Association of India, predicted that 30 to 35 percent of the industry will not exist post-Covid. Manu Chandra, chef-partner of Soda Bottle Opener Wala, a popular Parsi food chain in Delhi, said: “If social distancing cuts seating in half, there is no point in reopening the restaurant. The restaurant industry employs over 7.3 million people and has an annual turnover of $50 billion.

Realty’s downturn was steep. Trend to offload spaces will continue. Having worked from home for a considerable length of time, people may question the rationale of commuting to work. The construction sector has begun incorporating audio-visual (AV) communication options for virtual visit of buyers to ready-to-move in homes and virtual walks of construction sites for global buyers. Digital marketing will gain ground and chatbot communication will reset developer-buyer and owner-tenant exchanges.

Ever since the dawn of the metro era in India, densification was the buzzword in town planning. It will have few advocates in the era that stares into our face with decongestion of the urban spaces being the guiding moral imperative. Even if the situation normalises, the perception of risk will persist. Behavioural changes now in place might outlive the crisis. Spaces with greater human density will be unpopular and will need to be redesigned. It could be seen as when PGs got emptied; colleges shut; hostels sent out inmates; eateries downed shutters; and, value of crowd-gathering assets nosedived. There is bound to be rethinking on investment on such facilities.

Greater fears emanate from touch surfaces. Spaces with high-touch surfaces will have to look for alternatives, for instance, facilities and apartments with common elevators. Quite likely, remote keys will soon be out for elevators. Restaurants are planning digital menus in order to avoid touching physical ones. Sanitisers, masks, gloves, disinfecting tunnels, and thermal scanners may have to stay on the scene.

As has been learnt from the long lockdown, business travel will be avoided if video-conferences can achieve what travel promises to deliver. Travel demand and commuting patterns are all likely to be closely scrutinised in future by companies and businesses in terms of costs as well as productivity. But a great amount of mobility is indispensable. Companies will adopt the ‘drawbridge’ strategy to allow it selecti