Creating Hope

40 plus days of social distancing, lock down, isolation, pay cuts, job uncertainty and a continuous bombardment of bad news has made people anxious, to say the least, during this COVID crisis. As we start “Lockdown Season-3”, the talks of relaxation of restrictions, progress in formulation of a vaccine and areas being declared green and orange from red, have given some rays of hope to the masses. It is being felt that better times are round the corner.

Hope is a very strong emotion. It’s link to our survival instinct makes hope an intangible imperative for us flourishing as a race. Every prognosis brings out how this current crunch will change our normal, forcing changes in habits, expectations and recalibrating our individual ecosystems. But this prediction game is easy as the analysts keep coming up with broadband predictions covering all conceivable options and just waiting to say, “I told you so”. However, life being analog has to be lived till the new normal becomes normal.

This transition thus becomes the phase where neither possibility nor probability offers comfort as we sometimes mistake aggressive actions for effective actions. Engaging a large population in such times, while balancing the social and economic variables of individuals, collectives and societies, presents problems beyond the realm of mathematical statistics. For people, life is about value. During adversity, people start attaching more value to the innate while, trying their best to hold on to the notion of life they had. Yet, the beauty of humans is, that they themselves are the most vital link in the entire value chain. Thus, engaging and leveraging this human infinity becomes pivot in defining the strength of our resilience.

There is no recommended ratio of words vs actions that offers balance to leadership. However, plans advertised without the backup of capacity reduce Statesmanship to Statement-ship, eroding faith and seeding fear. While we push through this pandemic, assurances are being sought by one and all. We all want to be told what is being done and what is likely to happen, as it enables us to graduate from symbolic interactionism to constructivism, thus cognitively designing our reality. A simple example would be the headlines, “Lockdown Extended for Two Weeks” versus “Graduated Relaxation of Restrictions Announced.” Both are just word plays on how the next two weeks will be tackled by the government, but the hint of uncertainty against a feel of relief is what makes the two statements vastly different as planning triggers.

Crisis evolution is by large, binary in nature: evolve or perish. As the current situation starts making more sense, it is evident that we need to leverage our strengths and enhance capacities else the hanging fruit will be plucked by someone else who is more ready and flexible. More than 50 major businesses have, till now, decided to ditch China and relocate, but they are mostly moving to other South East Asian countries like Vietnam instead of India and with our own manufacturing still under lockdown, European retailers are threatening to shift orders to the Chinese manufacturers if the Indian factories do not deliver in time.To top this off is the crash in our domestic demand that has made restarting of manufacturing units uncertain, apart from difficult, due to broken supply chains and internally displaced labour.

Feel-good information may be a part in the creation of hope, but excessive symbolism sometimes indicates bankruptcy of ideas. People will like to hear and read about how the huge logistics of the nation rebooting will be tackled, how the markets will be opened, how the flights and trains will resume and once that happens how will the second wave of infections be managed. Unfortunately, all these being politically difficult decisions and the umbrella awareness being fluid in nature, incremental decision-making and addendums are the only realistic bet.

Despite the many limitations, there are many emerging opportunities that we can take and all is not lost. Oil being cheaper, we can try and stock up. With companies having tremendous tech and skill resources threatened due to the global crash (eg Bombardier), we can push stakes in a few to buy the next gen solutions for our own self, at least. People being confined to houses, improvement of existing infrastructure can be attempted which would have otherwise caused great discomfort and warehousing of grains can be optimised for reducing the unforgivable wastage caused by rains. Just a few of the vast canvas of examples up for grabs.

Unfortunately, at the same time, cross border terrorism and its costs have also continued as the western neighbor leases the future of its citizens to Yuan. I compare this insurgency with the COVID pandemic because they both continue to exist today and every pre-mature celebration has ended up with a sad twist leaving the suffering to continue. Fighting ideology with bullets, our triumph over the terrorists has remained occasional and temporary, but our inability to create a secure space has become permanent. We might seek gratification with feel-good news but what we truly need is actual effort and balanced wisdom. Let us use our human strive as a catalyst for change instead of fodder for fire.