Seeing the importance of those little things
View(s):In the first in our new series ‘Notes on Resilience’ on life in the midst of the pandem-ic, Adilah Ismail speaks to sociology lecturer cum parliamentarian Dr. Harini Amarasuriya
How do you embrace hope in the midst of global uncertainty? What does resilience look like? What are the post-pandemic futures we need to collectively work towards?
Dr. Harini Amarasuriya: “How unequal we are as a society”
Zora Neale Hurston wrote that “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” Our new weekly series ‘Notes on Resilience’ explores some of the questions that 2020 and COVID-19 have forced us to contend with.
Dr. Harini Amarasuriya was a senior lecturer in Sociology at the Open University of Sri Lanka. As a researcher, she has published on elite politics, dissent, social justice, discrimination and social exclusion of youth, women headed households, child labour, institutionalised child-care, early marriage, well-being, education research and intellectual property. Dr. Amarasuriya was the lead author on the National Human Development Report for Sri Lanka in 2014, and also participated in drafting the National Youth Policy of Sri Lanka that year. In August 2020, she was nominated by the National People’s Power coalition to the 9th Parliament of
Sri Lanka.
How did the pandemic affect the work you do? In what ways did you have to adjust?
During the first round of the pandemic I was working at the Open University and I was Head of my department at the time. We were asked to work from home – which meant that we had to figure out how to shift our work online. As a distance education institute, we anyway use online platforms quite a bit for teaching and learning so we had those in place, but we have always been conscious of the fact that online teaching is a tool to be used together with other teaching strategies – including face to face and printed material. Our students come from very diverse backgrounds and access to and comfort levels with technology are varied. So we had to think carefully about the impact on students if we go fully online. It was not only teaching and learning but also shifting meetings and administrative work online. Then we had to think about internet access and connectivity not just of academic staff but administrative and temporary/contract staff. We rely quite a bit on contract staff – yet, in the system, they are not given the same privileges as permanent staff and this became very evident during the pandemic.
One of the things that I struggled with was the refusal of the authorities to recognise that we were in the middle of a global pandemic and that we couldn’t just carry on as normal – that shifting to working from home and teaching fully online couldn’t just happen overnight with the turn of a switch! And to recognise that students and staff were also affected in various ways by the pandemic, the consequences of the lockdown and that we had to be sensitive to all of that. I often felt that we were more focused on reporting ‘success’ than in actually responding to the issues that arose due to the pandemic. So, my colleagues and I were constantly having to push back on that attitude from the UGC and the Ministry.
This time around, my role is different. People reach out to me with the problems that they are facing – and I am struck by how little I can do to actually help. This feeling of powerlessness in the face of so much desperation is actually quite difficult. I am experiencing far higher levels of anxiety and frustration this time around.
In a year of global uncertainty and upheaval, how have you found hope?
I found hope in the resilience of humans. I found hope in the random acts of kindness between strangers, neighbours and colleagues. I found hope in the sense of community I felt with my colleagues, in my neighbourhood and with my friends – that we were going through this together and that we must help each other through this. I understood the significance of small acts of care and support – not everything has to be about the big things – little things also matter. I realised that when we slowed down, there was also opportunity to relax about life and literally and metaphorically, take time to smell the roses!
If we were to start thinking of life after the coronavirus, what are the social challenges that have become even more urgent?
Dealing with inequality. If anything, this pandemic highlighted how unequal we are as a society. However much we say the virus affects us all, we know we were not all equally affected. We saw that some were more at risk of being infected and also suffering the consequences of lockdowns and curfews more intensely than others. We tend to blame people for problems without understanding systemic deprivations. For example, we scold people for not practising social distancing. How many of us have the luxury of living or working in spaces where social distancing is possible? How many of us have the luxury of working or studying from home? I think it’s really, really important that we identify and fix problems in our systems rather than blaming people – as if somehow, each of us individually is failing to protect ourselves or do better in life. Of course, individuals matter – we are not without any agency in life, yet, I don’t think we understand enough how conditions shape our agency, our actions, our attitudes and our behaviour.
I experienced the importance of having strong and effective public systems in place – especially for education, health, transport. I am someone who always stood for good public services, but this pandemic really made that even more important for me. If we didn’t have a good public health system in place, we would have been in real trouble. Now with the second wave, we see what years of neglecting our public health system is costing us: the greatest danger we are facing now is over burdening a health system that has been neglected – one that has survived despite tremendous odds because the basic services are still in place and because of committed individuals who are fighting to preserve services. But had we prioritised public health services more, had we invested in the people in the system, we would be in an even better place. We saw when there were rules about transportation, the private sector backed out – because it wasn’t profitable for them to run buses with restricted numbers. Public education systems kept going because they didn’t have to worry about making profits. If anything, we should learn from this that not everything can be managed based on the principle of profits and private interest.
This pandemic also made me think about leadership – or rather the lack of leadership. I think leadership has been reduced to who is able to dominate the media more; image rather than substance. And all over the world and in Sri Lanka we are seeing what happens when leaders who have gained power through manipulating media and people’s consciousness are confronted with ‘real’ problems/challenges. They are useless, they are failures. We realise that their so called ‘strength’, ‘efficiency’, ‘being different’ are simply empty, just rhetoric. Perhaps the unravelling of the USA is the most dramatic manifestation of the consequences of this kind of empty leadership. I think we need to bring back substance to our conception of leadership: we also need leaders who are kinder and have empathy for people.
In the backdrop of the pandemic, what are the key learnings you are taking away from the year?
How insignificant and unimportant we are in the larger scheme of things! An invisible, tiny virus brought the entire world to a grinding halt! Surely, that should teach us to be less arrogant as humans? I learned that it is ok to slow down – that you don’t have to run fast all the time to be successful or even happy. I learned the importance of small things: a chili plant in the garden; a leisurely phone call with family and friends; being lazy and not sticking to deadlines – it’s ok – life will still go on! I also learned to be more appreciative of what I have; family, my friends – my privileged circumstances. During the pandemic I had lots of time to observe my cats – and I felt that they really have it all figured out – sleep a lot, stretch regularly, wash yourself frequently, eat many small meals and don’t get too attached to anything or anybody! And observe life closely and carefully! What more do you need to do?!