Connecting deep with nature, beauty, spirituality

A lot has changed in the world in the last 25 months. Perhaps the universal powers have been busy in shifting the age-old trends and making corrections in the earthly plans. Speed has been curtailed, understanding of living in harmony with nature has been growing, and spirituality has been finding more hearts and minds, particularly among the younger generation. Similarly, there has been a change in the thinking about beauty and outward appearance. Globally, cosmetics sales plummeted during the pandemic. During this period, most women worked from home and kept wearing masks, due to which they did not need to do makeup. One of the effects of this change was that women realized their natural beauty better and cut down on make-up, which has affected the business of cosmetics brands around the world. Consumer affairs research firm Kentar surveyed three lakh women in its study. Sales of women's beauty products in the UK are down by 19 percent compared to 2019. Even sales of cosmetics in departmental stores dropped by 40 percent.

Sales of beauty and fragrance cosmetics plummeted during the pandemic. Instead, women focused more on skin, hair and bath accessories. Due to wearing masks for two years, there has been a change in habits, which has caused huge losses to the cosmetics companies. In a way, work from home proved to be harmful for these companies. A shocking survey also came out about the fact that engineering students have negligible interest in sports. Sports and gym are not even mentioned in the top 10 hobbies of these students. Stanford University of USA conducted a survey of hobbies of students from 167 technical institutes in US, China, Russia and India, in which startling facts about engineering students came to the fore. A similar survey was also conducted by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). About 90 thousand students took part in it. The first three hobbies included learning something new, reading and watching online documentary films.

Meanwhile, it was found that 69 crore people in the country are connected to the Ayushman Bharat scheme. 26 crore people have taken some health insurance scheme on their own. That is, 70 percent of the citizens of the country are part of some health insurance scheme, the remaining 30 percent of the population, that is, about 40 crore people are not yet part of any health insurance. The central government also wants to connect these 40 crore Indians with the Ayushman scheme. The National Health Authority and NITI Aayog have prepared its draft. To take advantage of the scheme, each of these individuals will have to pay an annual premium of Rs 250 to 300, in return for which each of them will be able to get free treatment up to Rs 5 lakh in a year. This will also include the facility of being treated in a private ward. This facility is not available in the current Ayushman scheme. The new scheme may be implemented in the next few months. Under the Ayushman scheme, treatment can be done in any hospital associated with the government scheme. Even medical facilities can be used in other states also.

(Writer is a senior journalist & columnist)