(Irshad Junejo)
In 2015 when the Canadian rapper Drake and the American rapper Future released their collaborative commercial mixtape ‘what a time to be alive’, I took the title more as a protraction of their old friendship and the veneration they felt for each other while doing the album. Since then the title kept reverberating in my mind more about how we were sprinting as a nation. Until this time last year, we were vying with our normal – the rules we set for our society over the last centuries characterized by patriarchal, macho, and women subordination attitudes. With the first two deaths reported in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on 18th March and the third reported in Sindh on the 20th March 2020, Pakistanis joined the world community to start a journey to what is now called the new normal. A year ago, we seldom thought of remotely handling the education, shopping, offices, and even construction works.
Our lives changed as soon as the Corona cases started rising in Pakistan. Our entertainment, education, work, and even ways of adoring each other have changed since then. The virtual meeting rooms are crowded while the ones in our offices are longing for sounds and bustle. The changed working conditions posed a threat to jobs and traditional work patterns initially but then the producers and consumers started to adopt their ways of handling the value chains, at least the essentials like agriculture and livestock. Initial findings were that women were less affected by the virus directly – lower mortality and morbidity in women – but they were adversely affected in terms of their hitherto frailer incomes and economic conditions. It seems now that this segment of the population can be rebounded better if provided with inclusive income and employment opportunities in terms of micro and small enterprises.
Lockdowns and social distancing have, of course, disturbed a lot of routines but could probably become the best blessing in disguise for many, especially for the women and rural entrepreneurs. COVID-19 restrictions have widely influenced our ways of doing economic tradeoffs when the markets are taking new shapes leading to cloud-based economic activities for both producers as well as consumers. This can provide a springboard effect for sprouting women-led and rural enterprises by enhancing their productivity and profitability. They need to be provided with some support on the institutional capacity, enhanced primary production & quality, and training in appropriate technologies leading to successful entrepreneurship opportunities in the poultry, ruminant, and horticulture value chains.
We have already got some success stories and data that can be further explored to identify building blocks. The new normal created opportunities and space for women to run business ventures from home, through self-managed as well as online marketplaces be it cooked food, clothing, cosmetics, or even personal hygiene products. According to the State Bank of Pakistan’s July – September 2020 report, strong growth was recorded in digital financial transactions with the number of registered mobile phone banking users reached 8.9 million, and the internet banking transactions increased to 18.9 million during the fiscal year 21. It provides a good leap forward also for documenting the undocumented economy; one of the greatest challenges for the Government of Pakistan in the last few years.
This should be ringing the bells in the decision corridors and divert attention towards drafting policies and programs that facilitate and train rural and semi-urban women to run sustainable small and medium enterprises. The policymakers must convert this transformation in favor of the half population of the country most of which remained inactive in the entrepreneurial value chains. Rural and women entrepreneurs’ access to markets can be fast-tracked with initiatives targeted at improved production, quality, and marketing of the micro and small enterprises.
During the strict corona times, almost every business/firm/organization formal or informal immediately switched towards virtual forms of business with online client interactions and online products, services selling. The eye-opening COVID-19 restrictions made the public realize the importance of Information Technology and communications. We can see that mobile phones, social media, and digital media are widely used for business transactions. The users include sellers and consumers from the cosmopolitans and small townships.
With the ongoing vaccination and reduced spikes of the corona cases, it is important for us to see the post COVID-19 Pakistan with an aggressive policymaking attitude capitalizing upon the new normal and bringing in the economically inactive part of our population to become more active and contribute their increased share in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Our initiatives should not be aiming at regressively reviving the patriarchal status quo that existed before March 2020. The main takeaway is to acknowledge the alternatives we used as our survival during the pandemic. If those could identically work during the lockdowns for the cognoscenti and the untaught, they can work for everyone and everywhere in the country. The national salvage requires us to infuse strength and hope in the public and promote the alternatives that support increased education, employment, and health facilities taking the advantage of breakthroughs we achieved in terms of finding unconventional ways of working with the help of information technology and communication.
What a time to be alive! The title came to me clearer last year when I started to see an entirely different perspective of this title and deeply felt it every passing day. A time in which people were traumatized with effects, fear, and chaos. The dynamically changing ways of working together have created a hope to engage the rural and women entrepreneurs able to free trade in the local, national and international marketplaces.
