Facebook group for each Zone: A Blessing in Disguise.

Apart from the sole purpose of disseminating information to locals in specific zones, the Facebook group created for the benefit of zones if used extensively will foster even greater community vitality. 

The forum is helping local businesses attract more customers by connecting to the needs and preferences of the local residents. On the other hand, the customers are also benefitted in terms of reduction in travel cost incurred on shopping which were mostly done from far-away shopping malls prior to National lock-down. Similarly, with instant messages on your mobile phone informing you about the arrival of goods, it increases your probability of getting to buy fresh vegetables, dairy products and any other essential goods. Which, in traditional market set-up, is non-existent. 

Overnight the offline store also started to function as a mini-online-retailer, informing and directing shoppers about their location, the goods they sale, and about their new arrivals. The business picked up as new consumers assembled in line to do their purchase.     

Prior to lock-down, residents were botherless about the names of shopkeepers as well as the shops from where they use to purchase their monthly ration. If not face to face, the virtual interaction space created by the Facebook group is helping local residents know their neighbors too and the fellow residents who live few blocks apart. While they meet, though faces are hidden behind those masks but one can feel the warmth of brotherhood and see the smile greeting each-other through their eyes. 

Looking at how quickly vital information is shared and genuine concern been shown to random fellow residents, and how beneficial its turning out to be for everyone at the moment, I foresee many more positive future implications of this virtual space based on this newly discovered sense of brotherhood, trust, and awareness among the local residents. 

The local residents, through this platform, would be now able to instantly organize community services like cleaning, blood donation, planting trees, donating essentials to needy ones, take the ownership of the developmental activities and take good care of the public properties they have been enjoying in their own locality.

If this lively communication and connection continues after lockdown relaxation with this existing yet heighten sense of concern shown beyond one’s four walls and if this magic is true and is prevalent in all zones across the country, then we have succeeded to become stronger than ever, collected and poise in our thoughts and ever more united to fight our common enemy-Covid 19!