A little inventory of some of the lessons we learnt, from the world’s largest lockdown of ⅕th of humanity for 2½months, would I think, help us in our journey ahead! Ambience and ambitions are changing in the neighbourhood and I think it couldn’t be more important that, we have a well coded, exhaustive, simple, user-friendly, communicative and empathic strategy in place, to deal and grow in this ambience, going forward.
My Take: My 3 Lessons: a) Lessons from our Strategizing, b) Lessons from our Communication and c) Lessons from our Implementation of those strategies.
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I think whereas we did quite well in pockets in each of these three departments, there are important lessons for us in each.
The first that I learnt is that of our strategy. The 2½-month-interregnum was the opportunity for us to beef up our resources for testing and for development of infrastructure. At the end we saw, we are still the lowest in testing among the top 7 worst-hit countries, we tested till yesterday 3,077 per million of population, the US tested 57,718, Russia 78,298 and Brazil 4,378. In organising infrastructure, we did a good job of creating 1.5 lacs of Covid-19 beds with oxygen support, but at ground zero, we saw reports of patients being turned away due to lack of beds. We already have 1.06 lacs of active cases net of recoveries.
We also did a few funny things – we converted train coaches into quarantine facilities, spending a few crores forgetting the North India summer, only to reconvert them back spending a few crores once more, to carry our migrant workmen home. On ventilators, according to the Government we had 30,000 ventilators on April 26, today we have around 70,000 but our projections were for 95,000. I’m told we are already on-way for manufacture of ventilators with auto companies chipping in – so my lesson here is keep socks pulled up perpetually.
Our communication strategy needs improvements, both from the Governments’ side as well as from the media side and tough actions required on errant social media users who violate communication codes. Our style of communication not surprisingly, made the virus unduly big and sinister! 1.3 billion people locked-down in just a four-hour-notice, why not allow, say 7 days to prepare? Didn’t we notice Wuhan (under lockdown for 2½ months)? All these hordes of virus carried to rural-hinterlands thru migrant workmen could be avoided. Seeing those ghastly pictures of disposal of the dead, and applauding and garlanding people who recovered, some took it as if the story was as good as over, it’s a miracle if you recover (whereas the actual mortality rates was just 3%.
The disease is seen now as a stigma, generating fear and surrender in most, rather than evoke spontaneous compliance! Every single of the 60 lakhs migrant boys on the cruel marathon walk home that followed, when queried on national channels, exclaimed “Apna zameen pehi marna hai” (I would rather die at home)! Take another one: when we entered the lockdown, we had just 571 cases and 6 deaths and we were 39th in the list. Today after 2½ months we are 2.17 lakh cases and 6075 deaths and we have jumped to being the 7th worst-hit country! And the rate of acceleration is at 6.4%, up from 5% last fortnight. Now, if we communicate, we did better than other countries will that not cause the “given-up” brigade to jump and head for the nearest liquor shop, damn the masks, sanitisers and social distancings!
I think, the way we communicate is also quite funny, we still write “Order” on top of our notifications…faithfully the Raj-style!..not the more polite “Notification No..”..In plenty of places communications mention “SOPs will be made”. Why were they not already made in 2½ months? Vagueness is in abundance eg. slew of “as far as possible”; “preferably”…!. I think necessity of proper brainstorming and exhaustive but precise communication would be my lesson.
My biggest lesson in execution and implementation of strategies was in the “Covid-19 Package” where, I found that of the Rs 20 trillion announced, 11 trillion constitutes credit arrangements between RBI and Banks, 7 trillion already included in several lines in the last Union Budget and 2 trillion is new and I’m happy, but nothing at all for services (where the PMI stands at a 20-year-low of 12.6 (normative 55) and particularly tourism, the biggest sufferer. We were downgraded in sovereign rating just as I had feared and on top of this the Rs 3 trillion guarantees and states increasing deficits by 2% are particularly worrisome. But of more importance here, is the implementation. The Package said 13.6 crore families would gain from the additional Rs 40,000 crore allocation to the NREGA. A study from IIT Delhi shows, just 2.9 crore job cards were issued and the average days of work given is just 3 days for the last 4 months. Take a look at another package, say that of Brazil: and they say Small Enterprises = $1bn; Small & Medium Federal Savings Balances = $15bn; Small Banks to be advanced by Central Bank = $39bn; To Municipalities for tackling Covid-19 = $18bn; Small Farmers $ 1.10bn; Total Covid-19 Package $74 bn. (4.4% of GDP). If you avail the package – no firings! It’s so simple clear and concise!
And in conclusion: Ernest Hemingway, in a letter to a young writer, (Malcolm Cowley, LIFE January 10, 1949) writes…”When people talk listen completely. Don’t be thinking what you’re going to say. Most people never listen.” I think that’s precisely our task ahead. To lead is to listen – that’s our last big lesson!
(Binayak Datta is a Finance Professional)
