Education During the Pandemic

The lockdown situation has hampered the learning processes to a large extent across the globe. Many educational institutes promptly adapted to the situation and moved towards online learning, and many found constraints in this sudden migration. The purpose of the chapter is to identify the impact of a pandemic on the ongoing educational activities and how these activities were carried out with the help of technology-based solutions. A comparative analysis of the traditional and modern methods of teaching-learning has been carried out to check their suitability during the pandemic time. The significance of this chapter is to describe an integrative approach of continuing online teaching-learning activities throughout the lockdown time by establishing the connection between the online teaching-learning process and the traditional classroom-based methods. The challenges offered by the online environment have been outlined from the perspective of both the educational institutes and the learners.

Reduction in Environmental Pollution Due to Lockdown in the COVID-19 Pandemic

The Indian government imposed a countrywide lockdown on 25 March 2020 to contain the COVID-19 virus. The lockdown has led to a tremendous economic loss because of the closing of all industries and other activities. However, it has brought a brighter side to environmental quality improvement. This study assesses the influence of lockdown on Delhi-NCR's air and water quality. The earth system rejuvenated during the lockdown. An effort is made to understand the water quality of the Yamuna River in Delhi and the air quality of the Delhi-National Capital Region (Delhi NCR) during the lockdown. In the Yamuna River surrounding Delhi, a reduction of 1-10%, 33-66%, 51%, 45-90%, and 33-82%, respectively, in pH, EC, DO, BOD, and COD has been observed compared to the pre-lockdown. Similarly, the particulate matter concentration reduced by 31-53% in PM10 and 22-48% in PM2.5 during the lockdown of 2020 in comparison to the earlier years (2018 and 2019). Hence, the periodic lockdown has positively impacted the air and water quality in Delhi NCR.

Government Policies During Lockdown

The COVID-19 pandemic has had severe consequences for economies across the globe, leading the governments to resort to extreme strategies such as implementing lockdowns to contain the reach of a virus, to implementing recovery plans in order to ensure business continuity and allow the smooth running of the business. This chapter highlights the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic globally and in India. It also outlines the various government measures taken at national and international levels for reopening of the economy, primarily focusing on policies in the services sector (including healthcare, education, travel, and tourism), in the manufacturing sector (MSME, infrastructure, power, utilities, and energy), and related to fiscal measures (overall, employment and monetary, and macro). The chapter concludes by summarizing the implications for India to combat adversities created by COVID-19, primarily by bringing improvements in the goods and services sector.

The Epistemic Problem of the COVID-19 Pandemic and the Necessary Information Policy

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted personal, social, and economic lives of millions of people around the world. It has taken the familiar world away from everyone. The pandemic is in large part an epistemic problem caused by the invisible contagious virus. Its invisibility can make people ignorant of the threat and spread of the virus. Government and public need scientists to identify and understand the problem of COVID-19. While the latter do not have complete knowledge to cure the disease, they are more knowledgeable to inform the government how to prevent the pandemic from getting worse. Appropriate government intervention requires a thorough investigation involving frequent and massive data collection, which is too expensive for developing countries. Without sufficient data, any government claim and intervention are questionable. The government can compensate the insufficiency of data by acquiring data and information from other sources, such as civil society organization and the public.

The Responsibility Paradox

As countries start to emerge from the pandemic with the development of vaccines, the impact of COVID-19 and the changes it has initiated in the business world will continue to be felt across industries. In this chapter, real-life stories from three different industries—chain restaurants, interior design, and cafés—and the lessons they have learned will be discussed and analyzed. The role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in SMEs is highlighted as a strategy in which organizations can promote the long-term sustainability of their business. Then, three companies in various industries will be introduced with details about how COVID-19 has changed their outlook and goals in competing with other firms and the ways in which they confronted the pandemic. Finally, the authors share implications and offer helpful recommendations as to how SMEs can leverage resources smartly to engage in smart CSR initiatives in better dealing with a global health crisis and play a larger role in taking care of stakeholders in the long run.

Horse Entrepreneurs and Their Customers as Partners in Combating the Coronavirus Pandemic

Customers can be important partners and a resource for entrepreneurs during a pandemic situation. In this study, the utilization of this resource was investigated from the perspective of horse entrepreneurs. Firstly, the communication activity of horse entrepreneurs in their social media platforms was inspected, and secondly, a risk assessment for each horse premise was performed. As a result, a variation of communication activity of horse entrepreneurs was found between the northern and southern parts of Finland, and different risk levels of horse premises can be shown. In Northern Finland, 25% and, in Southern Finland, 43% of horse entrepreneurs gave COVID instructions to their customers. Risk levels varied from moderate to unacceptable. Many factors affect the risk level of horse premises, and it is not always in the hands of a single horse entrepreneur to guarantee a healthy environment to customers. Rather, it needs an investigation of the hygiene behaviour of customers and partnership with customers.

New Normal Work

COVID-19 has led to work from home (WFH) arrangement for many employees. Using the conservation of resources (COR) theory, this arrangement has been studied in detail both from a household perspective and an employees' perspective (with special emphasis on women employees). Aspects such as resource consumption in a household, how WFH has affected an organization, and the implications for working women have been examined. Households can now optimize resources based on the findings, and organizations can learn how to adapt to this new WFH reality. An in-depth interview-based qualitative methodology with 25 working women was used, in addition to analyzing their social media accounts and audio/video clips. This chapter will be useful for organizations to design work from home policies such as infrastructure, work timing, job motivation/incentives, role definition, and cybersecurity. Additionally, working women perspectives will be strengthened. The chapter ends by highlighting future areas of research.

CSR as a Stakeholder to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Corporates around the world have engaged themselves in a wide range of philanthropic and corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives to protect their employees, support communities, and maintain trust in society during the COVID-19 pandemic. This chapter highlights the CSR initiatives by 20 major companies during the COVID-19 pandemic. The contributions relate to technology solutions, support to education and healthcare, support to government initiatives, and support to own employees and customers, etc. Providing free tools for collaboration and the development of chatbots are some innovative solutions that have affected a large segment of the people. Along with this, traditional methods of support like eradication of hunger, healthcare, education, and disaster management have remained a focus for a number of corporates across the globe. The chapter analyses the prominent initiatives and their contribution to society during a pandemic and discusses their sustainability perspective.

Strategic Response to the Corona Pandemic Crisis

The corona pandemic is unique in its own way of creating impact on lives of people across the globe. It has affected the women entrepreneurs disproportionately as they had to fight on two fronts – business and family. However, they showed resilience and pivoted their business approaches to withstand the pandemic crisis. The authors discussed with experts from academics and industry and referred to secondary sources to identify the cases of women entrepreneurs whose responses to the crisis reportedly appeared to be counter intuitive in context of India. The chapter captured and analyzed their responses to the crisis from secondary sources. The chapter concludes that women entrepreneurs' responses do not endorse the gendered dichotomy with respect to risk-reduction and seizing the opportunity. The women entrepreneurs were very much receptive to adopt information technology and well-intended to seize the opportunity during the pandemic crisis. The chapter contributes by providing new insights about women entrepreneurship contextualized in India, an emerging market.

What We Learned From the Paimio Sanatorium as a Spatial Reflection of Contagious Diseases

While the threat of tuberculosis, one of the old and important epidemic diseases, could not be completely eradicated, at the end of 2019, the world was faced with a new epidemic, COVID-19. Epidemic diseases such as tuberculosis and COVID-19 bring restrictions and limitations to daily life. It also revealed the need to explore what criteria might be in designing healthy architectural spaces and what kind of future planning-design-production issues shall be rethought. In this context, the problem question of the study is discovered: What might be the new possible design principles in shaping new buildings due to life changes during or after the pandemic process? In order to search for the answer to this question, the Paimio Sanatorium complex in Finland, which constitutes the best example of the reflection of epidemic diseases to space, was examined on-site by the author. In this chapter, the author aims to elucidate how the architectural design features of the Sanatorium buildings may be effective in guiding the architecture during and post COVID-19 pandemic.