Back-to-Work Regime Essential

Covid-19 is one bad dream that cannot be wished away and all of us–policy planners, central, state, urban and rural bodies, corporations and the citizens at large will have to take remedial steps, ensure collaboration and Covid-19 appropriate behaviour among the residents of every city, slum community and village in the country

Chatting with some nationally known luminaries at the Pune International Centre at the beginning of the Omicron scare, the discussion veered to what has been the actual damage caused by the first and second wave of Covid. What could be done to minimise similar problems emerging from the Omicron third wave and subsequent waves of different mutations that seem inevitable as the world struggles to predict problems and prescribe solutions?

A study emanating from the University of Toronto talks about an “apparent death paradox” in India, and argues that real deaths attributable to Covid in India could have exceeded 30 lakh people. The numbers reported so far have been 480,000 casualties at the end of 2021, which translates to 340 Covid deaths per 10 lakh of population, about a seventh of the per capita mortality tally in the USA. Even accounting for more resistance buildup in India to viral infections, one could argue for substantially higher numbers. By extending the same logic to other developing countries with anomalous low rates, the current global pandemic estimates of 54.5 lakh could be actually double or triple that number.

While one can argue endlessly about this issue, with one side saying that Indians are naturally blessed and the alarmists should be silenced and the other offering various reasons for low death data, including wrong coding and late release of data on casualties and the natural tendency for state governments to underplay the scale of pandemic-related illness and death for political reasons. What is more important is to realise that Covid-19 is one bad dream that cannot be wished away and all of us—policy planners, central, state, urban and rural bodies, corporations and the citizens at large will have to take remedial steps, ensure collaboration and Covid-19 appropriate behaviour among the residents of every city, slum community and village in the country.

The signs that a third wave was imminent were there at the end of 2021 and while programs and physical functions started getting cancelled and airports started tightening their rules for both domestic and international visitors. Many corporations including a large Bank on whose Board I sit decided to go ahead with their strategy and planning off-site meetings while other organisations, primarily, large multinationals and corporations in the technology sector sent their employees back home and began to hunker down for the inevitable onslaught. In the city of Pune, the well-managed and thoughtful PPCR (Pune Platform for Covid Response) group met with the Divisional Commissioners and the Municipal Commissioners and was delighted with the timeliness and sagacity of their response. No panics, no lockdowns, just a firm commitment to being prepared and seeking collaboration to ensure the city stayed safe. While outcomes are still unpredictable, one can take heart from the fact that we have been steeled by Delta and have added healthcare capacity to meet this latest crisis.

How should we, as citizens, entrepreneurs, employees and concerned parents and grandparents deal with this crisis the third time around and what is the resilience we can build against future waves that look very likely to occur. The most obvious is to not panic. We need to look at the positive view that has been asserted by most medical practitioners that Omicron is much less lethal than its previous Covid avatars and even if one does catch it, given its speed of spread, appropriate isolation and curative methods will get us over the hump in a week. In fact, an IIT Professor I met in Chennai in late December, suggested that Omicron may well be the perfect vaccine and if we had it in our system, would protect us from future more lethal variants. Of course, it is never very pleasant to fall sick so this is not to suggest that we should apply to get it, as a famous humour show host suggested but not be overly fearful if it does happen. At Bhubaneswar, which was the venue of our three day off-site, the famous Jagannath Temple was still crowded though the bad situation in neighbouring Bengal, had thinned the teeming millions somewhat. The Government banned visitors to their offices and announced night curfew as indeed most Governments have done but our evening entertainment continued unabated though masking was an imperative almost all the time.

Our country is struggling to come out of the economic devastation wrecked by Covid-19 and can ill afford to continue to see supply chain chokes and decelerating demand. Children too have to be back in school and as one of my favourite economists, Ruchir Sharma, mentioned in a discussion on his ten trends forecast for 2022, time spent “doing work” through video and no travel may have gone up 20 to 30%, but office productivity in the pandemic year has actually declined marginally. As a strong proponent of a “Back to Work” regime, I cannot help agreeing that getting people back to work, at least some days of the week is an important must-do that we must facilitate through fewer curbs and more voluntary restrictions. Let us help ourselves and each other to reclaim the happiness we all and the country definitely needs in 2022.