Faith and Pandemic: Covid-19 in Perspectives Towards Theo-Pandemology

Covid-19 pandemic has shaken the entire world unlike ever before impacting every realm of human life across faith communities, caste/class, and colour in an unprecedented proportion. There is utter disruption of social, economic, political, and religious life altogether. Not only the entire socio-economic life disrupted, but also the whole religious faith, rites, and rituals torched into tosh. Even it appears true that the power of prayer, healing, miracle have disappeared. Perhaps, the pandemic has truly forced human beings to realise their limitations and also the other side of religions and religiosity as chaos, confusion, anxiety, feeling of uncertainty and meaninglessness of life, and the fear of death engulfs the body, mind, and spirit of people. It certainly has turned human civilization upside down. Indeed, it is one of the deadliest existential crises in history pressing human beings down to the bottom of their existence. People have yet again understood how small and vulnerable human beings are
The impact of the pandemic is extremely paradoxical. It is sad enough: the impact fell heavily on the vulnerable sections of people in terms of the safety of life and their livelihood. For the poor and the vulnerable people and communities such as daily wagers, the migrant labourers, and many other sections of people who makes their livelihood under the mercy of normal life situation, it is a nightmare. But in the contrary, it is truly a blessing in many counts for the rich and the people with secured jobs. The wealthy escaped the worst impact of the pandemic, but the poor faced sickness, joblessness, starvation, and death. While the poor suffered both from safety and survival crises, the rich and well-to-do people accumulated their wealth. What is evident from this is that Covid-19 has certainly deepened the inequalities between the rich and the poor. The rich getting richer and the poor poorer. Oxfam in its 'Inequality Virus Report' reveals the fact that the virus has increased the existing inequalities of wealth, gender, and race. ... hundreds of millions of people are being forced into poverty while many of the richest-individuals and corporates are accumulating their wealth. The world's 10 richest billionaires have collectively seen their wealth increase by $540 bn between 8 March and 31 December 2020. The Indian billionaires increased their wealth by 35% during the lockdown. Mukesh Ambani earned 390 crores an hour during the pandemic when around 24% of people in India were earning under 23,000 a month. Even it is estimated that the rise in fortunes for the top 100 billionaires since the lockdown in March 2020 is enough to give every one of the 138 million poorest Indian people a cheque of 294,045 each.