Covid-19 Pandemic-Community Resilience is the Key

 

Covid-19 Pandemic-Community Resilience is the Key

 

The Covid-19 pandemic has not only dealt a massive blow to the rural communities, but also laid bare the systemic failures in political, economic and social spheres. It also put a question mark on the contingency plans to contain the damages that might be caused in future by an emergency of the scale of the current pandemic.

The pandemic pushed marginalized and vulnerable communities to the edge, especially migrant laborers who endured unprecedented reverse migration, perhaps the most horrible and devastating since partition. It generated fear and stigma among communities, exposed the services in public health sector and caused humongous loss of human lives and livelihoods.

The impact of the pandemic can seen in rural communities as broken agriculture supply chain and reverse migration put huge burden on limited resources in the villages. Rebuilding the rural economy and restore the confidence of rural masses requires a counter stimulus by creating a new bulwark around community resilience through collaborative approach. Community is resilient when it has a sustained ability to utilize available resources to respond to, withstand, and recover from adverse situations. The core element of this belief is to make a strong chain of community leaders and volunteers, spread awareness of the preventive measures among the communities, promote and provide place based rural livelihood to contain reverse migration, secure livelihood opportunities and curtail the community spread of the devastating virus. It was observed during the pandemic that the communities came together to confront the disastrous situation. Community leaders and volunteers have been instrumental in combating the pandemic. CSOs operational in rural communities over the years have played a vital role in strengthening them by developing leaders and volunteers.

The Government also acknowledged the role of CSOs in their effective response to the crisis on the ground. How this could become possible? The answer lies in the massive strength of community leaders, youth and women leaders and volunteers who were brought into collaborative actions with common strategies, capacitated, and re-oriented in order to address the issues related to these communities. These community leaders actively involved in disseminating proper awareness and information regarding the importance of maintaining hygiene, right way of washing hands, maintaining social distance etc. The community leaders, active youth and women group pro-actively engaged in reaching out to local government for IEC materials and keeping community members updated. They played a key role in assisting Panchayats to identify survival needs of the individual, families and communities and facilitated in providing relief material and support. The community leaders, various group and volunteers even got engaged in monitoring and capacitating other members of the community as well as to link them with their entitled provisions. All these initiatives strengthened the belief that the community must their leaders and volunteers identified, strengthened and capacitated to sail through difficult times.

People’s collectives in the form of CBOs and POs in the community have also played vital role in containingthe pandemic. People organizations with its rigorous efforts and collaborations ensured social harmony, reduced fear, increased acceptance, adherence to the preventive measure and behavioural change.

Gram Panchayat was one of the important actors that played critical role in the whole process and ensured that the response to the crisis included consultations with stakeholders and participatory decision-making at the local-level. Gram Panchayat collaborated with the local volunteers, non-profits, SHGs, CBOs, to undertake awareness drive among community members. GP also coordinated with ANMs, ASHA workers, doctors from primary health centres, and local health volunteers to monitor the health status of the village and communities. They also ensured strengthening food security and livelihood opportunities by providing ration through PDS to marginalized people and job opportunities through MNREGA. Gram Panchayat with the help of CSOs identified the migrants, enrolled them with MNREGA and ensured that they had livelihood to meet the needs of their family. 

Covid-19 may not be the last of pandemics. The solution lies in creating huge social capital at the grass roots and strengthening community resilience through collective efforts. And at a time when a big challenge is staring CSOs in the face, it becomes all the more important for these efforts not to lose pace.  

The views expressed by the author are personal

By-Dr Jayant Kumar.