AS trying as we may find to live through our current predicament, this is not the first time that the world is witnessing a pandemic or a lethal crisis. A simple Google search will lead you to the infamous Black Death or the bubonic plague that devastated Europe in the mid-1300s; the Dancing Plague in Strasbourg in the 1500s; waves of cholera in the 19th century; and influenza and smallpox in the 20th century, apart from the several famines and rounds of imperialism that ravaged the world. Thus, in order to understand the Coronavirus and how it is affecting our socio-political systems, it is important to look at it from a global historical perspective.

This is exactly what the Bombay Institute for Critical Analysis and Research's (BICAR) new online course aims to do. Professor and director of BICAR, Rohit Goel, explains, "Usually, when a crisis hits us, we panic. A lot of politics, economics, and in this case, policies on preventing the spread of the virus are developed in a vacuum of thought. The course offers a space for the faculty and students to think in times when everyone tends to flee thought and fantasise that everything is actually normal, or will return to normal soon."