In the midst of a national lockdown and steady rise in a number of cases diagnosed with Coronavirus infection, Central and State governments have issued a number of guidelines and advisories to better manage the ongoing COVID-19 induced disaster. A key challenge confronting society is how to deal with the increasing social stigma being attached to the disease. A number of cases are emerging from across the country, reporting social ostracization. Such instances are expected to rise further as the infection spreads from various cities to the rural country-side.

The world is at present witnessing one of the most difficult periods in its modern history. It is facing COVID-19 pandemic that has no medical solution in sight yet. Thousands of people are dying and many more are expected to succumb to the coronavirus in days and months to come. Obviously, all efforts are ongoing to save the world from any eventual catastrophe. Apart from undertaking passive measures like social distancing, which helps to break the chain of human transmission of the virus, scientists are trying their best to find an appropriate medicine/vaccine to fight COVID-19.

As long as a human community, as a whole, does not get out of the ‘syndrome’ of reacting and preparing for yesterday’s threats, the world would never remain prepared to address the threats like the pandemics. The field of warfare tells us that humans draw lessons from past wars in order to prepare for future wars without realizing that the face of future wars may not be the same that they have experienced in the past. In very broad terms, there are two main categories of threats, called natural and human-induced.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is not the first disease suspected to be a bioweapon in recent times. Post 9/11 Anthrax attacks in the United States, which ended up killing five people and was an act of intentional use of anthrax spores, any subsequent disease spread gets normally suspected as a human creation. Particularly, since the Coronavirus had its origins in a country like China, the ‘conspiracy theory’ that this virus is a bioweapon has many takers. The State of China has an ‘image’ issue, for long.

Seventeen security personnel, including 12 from the District Reserve Guard (DRG) and five from the Special Task Force (STF), were killed by the CPI (Maoist) in Chintagufa in the Sukma district of Chhattisgarh on March 21, 2020 (Hindustan Times, March 22). The ambush was reportedly planned and executed by Madvi Hidma, who has been heading the battalion, one of the People’s Liberation Guerilla Army (PLGA) in Sukma for more than two and a half years.

The Internet has become a lifeline for the world for the past few decades. At present, owing to the Covid-19 threat, the world is observing ‘social distancing’. However, at the same time, there has been a major increase in ‘digital closeness’. For all these years, the idea of ‘work from home’ had very limited relevance, but now all of a sudden, this is becoming a global reality. Unfortunately, this is also leading to the overcrowding of digital networks due to rapid traffic growth.