Quarantined lives

In countries with a wider coverage of digital communication, overuse of the internet is causing the opposite problem

The country has gone into quasi-lockdown, and not a moment too soon. The prime minister’s Thursday night speech, replete with hyperbolic comparisons to World Wars, homilies on how to stay healthy, and observing a voluntary curfew on Sabbath with solidarity exhibitions of hand clapping and ringing bells, was high on rhetoric and low on solutions. There might be some moral purchase in making noise from balconies, but not much. It is akin to the good people of a high rise in Gurugram who have been yodelling “Hum hongay kaamyaab” (We Shall Overcome) as a booster shot against the contagion.

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