Green shoots. A term that is slowly getting into everyday use as did “social distancing” after the coronavirus began wreaking havoc earlier this year. Before March, when the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic and many countries including India announced lockdowns, social distancing had a negative connotation. If you did not like someone you would try to distance yourself from that person socially. But social distancing (physical distancing is the term the WHO prefers) is now part of our daily life. Irrespective of your liking or not liking a person, you need to keep that precious physical distance – two to three meters for strangers and one meter for family and good friends. This is the defining boundary between possibly getting the COVID-19 disease and staying uninfected.

From March-end, when the nationwide lockdown began, to July, when it has been eased, economic activities had come to a standstill. We struggled to keep the wheels of business and industry running remotely where possible. But work-from-home cannot keep a tractor factory or a steel furnace running: so core economic activities remained firmly shut except for agriculture and essential services. Every day, newspaper headlines reminded us about the number of people who had been afflicted by COVID-19 and the number who had succumbed to it that day. Even the pink papers kept the COVID-19 news at the top. Unemployment kept inching up while growth rates dipped as we watched the spread of the disease with horror.

It was natural. With factories forced to shut down production lines and markets closed, how could there be any growth? Globally the scene was the same except for a few countries such as Vietnam. We worried. And we talked about disasters in the marketplace. Closures and more unemployment were anticipated.

It is July and COVID-19 still rules. But we have realised that life needs to move on and it’s time to unlock in phases. Instead of death, we have already started talking about green shoots! Green shoots are the signs of recovery. And as the Honourable Prime Minister mentioned, there are strong signs that the economy is finding its way back to pre-COVID-19 days. The employment rate is picking up as are market transactions.

But given the situation, we should not expect a steep recovery trajectory, as the menace of the coronavirus still rules. The workplace is getting redefined by the rules of physical distancing and sanitising everything. We cannot have the same workspace as we had in the pre-Coronavirus days. We will take time adjusting to the new reality. And the marketplace is reflecting this. With new distances specified between employees on the production floor, the workspace is being redrawn. That will take time to evolve through trial and error to reach an optimum level. What is the work that can be done from home and how, so that workplace crowding can be avoided? But the market wheels have started moving and the green shoots are out.

So, it’s time for us to get back to work – slow and steady – adjusting and adapting to the new reality.