The efficacy of successive lockdowns during the pandemic has been argued extensively, only to be concluded as a ‘necessary evil’. While social distancing became a compulsion during the successive lockdowns – and indeed, it continue to be mandated given that the COVID-19 pandemic is still raging on – working from home has now become part of the ‘new normal’.
A laptop and a stable internet connection is enough for most service sector jobs, which, as we are learning, can be almost entirely function virtually. Thus, most such employees did not have to use transport – private or public – to reach their service destinations during the lockdown, when most offices had a clear Work From Home policy.
Clearly, this – fewer vehicles on the road – helped the physical environment around us, as studied by a group of researchers from the University of Surrey, who showed that the lockdown reduced concentrations of fine particulate matter in the air – from a 10 percent reduction in Mumbai up to a 54 percent reduction in Delhi.
However, was there an opportunity cost – and an opportunity ‘lost’ by the government with regard to daily travel and conveyance?