Kuldip Maity

Dreams are built on destruction. And such dreams lead to big changes in the way civilization moves. History also tells us that a reconstruction that follows massive destruction comes about as aggregated efforts of people—apparently insignificant in their individual efforts, but together, they provided the mightiest push to roll the world out of the depth of nowhere.

I am sure the same thing is about to happen, despite how the COVID-19 pandemic has ravaged our lives since 2020. My optimism is based on experience. When everything appears bleak, we tend to ignore the sliver of light that shines through the gloom. We tend to ignore that because it’s tiny till it becomes a glare that dispels the gloom.

The pandemic has indeed stretched the resources of MSMEs or micro, small and medium enterprises to the limit. It’s a no brainer that, unlike mega corporations or big businesses, the small ones do not have much leeway in marshalling resources. Last year, these units survived by drawing down on their cash reserves to pay their staff. It’s not as if they didn’t lay off workers or cut costs. However, anecdotal evidence and the industry associations’ reports suggest that the units tried their best, resources permitting, to keep paying by drawing down their reserves.

Supply constraints marked the first wave as the lockdown was global. The second wave, however, is marked by demand constraints. Employers have reabsorbed manpower—but at a lower salary. This itself has had a significant impact on demand. Lower disposable income naturally leads to lower aggregate expenditure.

On the other hand, there has been an explosion in the prices of specific medicines and treatment costs. The second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic has been harsher than the first in terms of spread and impact, requiring longer treatment. People have tended to rein in expenditure so that they have more cash if they are afflicted. All these factors have taken a toll on the market.

Last year, there was demand but no supply to meet the demand. This time there is supply but hardly a buyer in the market.

For many smaller units, this has turned out to be the death knell. The issue for them is cash flow. Meeting the bills from business and not from savings has turned out to be the biggest challenge. Analysts apprehend a contraction of 30 to 40 per cent in the cash flows for the entire sector in the current fiscal.

This is bad if you look at just the numbers. But if you factor in the resilience and the beauty of a small-scale operation, you would see the silver lining. Challenged by the lockdown during the first wave, this sector began producing essentials such as sanitizers, masks and PPE kits. Those with technology quickly switched to producing other essentials at the higher end of the technology spectrum. And we turned into a net exporter of such products as well.

This is where I see the silver lining in the gloom that is being talked about so much. We must remember that there is a demand for some commodities when demand for others dries up. Who would have thought that there would even be household demand for PPE kits? But it was there, and the MSMEs seized the opportunity and survived.

I am betting on the flexibility that is the MSMEs’ beauty, and on the sector’s entrepreneurship. I am also putting my money on this sector’s ability to seize new opportunities. That’s the silver lining that we should bet on and believe in.

There are times when, even if you wanted to, you cannot just look away from reality. It stares at your face so hard that you cannot even blink, let alone look the other way. The only recourse, perhaps, is to desperately wish away the reality. But can you really wish it away? Think about it from a different perspective. Think about the current situation from the perspective of the children!

For adults, the world has changed. But children have no idea about what this world is all about or what the world has in store for them! The COVID-19 pandemic has taken away any chance for them to know the world.

Cooped up at home, their world is increasingly becoming someone else’s experience — a world that exists on the screen. There are stories of alienation of different shades. The alienation is expected to leave a permanent mark on their psyche. And then there are other horror stories to think about.

From toddlers to about-to-be young adults, the reality is entirely different from what we had experienced while growing up. Think about the kids who haven’t even seen the inside of a classroom! What are they learning? Who are they sharing their feelings with? How are they making friends?

Put in the form of questions, the answers come back in the various hues of negatives.

A Class 11 boy was missing from his virtual class for quite a while. Normally, his absence in a classroom would have been noticed. A caring teacher might even have gone to the student’s home. But these are COVID times. Everybody is challenged. There were attempts to call him up. There was no response. Then, his teachers and friends learnt that the boy’s entire family had tested positive for COVID-19. The Class 11 student had to take a call on his father’s hospitalization all by himself. His decision was a shade late. He managed to get his father to a hospital but could not save him. He has been scarred for life.

Under normal circumstances, he would have had his friends, their parents, his relatives and teachers by his side physically. But, in the physical distancing world of the pandemic, he is alone looking after his mother and sibling, trying to figure out what went wrong.

This is not an isolated story. Think about the children left orphaned by COVID-19. These are the extreme ones but are happening in large numbers. Those who are spared these extreme experiences are also suffering. A parent loses his job as his employer cuts costs. Gloom descends on the home, and, for the child, there is no escape into the comfort of a friend’s company. A virtual meet is no substitute for a hug.

The digital is robbing them of a proper education—how many children can afford mobile phones and laptops for a virtual class? A parent’s job loss is opening the door to hunger.

The world has started taking note of it. But given the priority of fighting COVID-19, the issues related to children are taking a back seat. A worried Henrietta Fore, UNICEF Executive Director, recently said: “The number of children who are hungry, isolated, abused, anxious, living in poverty and forced into marriage has increased. At the same time, their access to education, socialization and essential services, including health, nutrition and protection has decreased. The signs that children will bear the scars of the pandemic for years to come are unmistakable”.

This is not the story of India alone. This is the story that has become a global scourge, creating uncertainty that may continue to haunt us much beyond the day the pandemic dies out. It’s a threat that’s not going to die. It would remain the legacy of COVID-19.

We must join hands and act. We need to do it for the sake of our children.

It wasn’t very long ago that hoardings and print advertisements were the main routes of reaching out to the market. Television ads were a big thing, and companies made money from composing jingles for the radio. Companies put up internal circulars on the office notice board, and with the advent of email, the official mail inboxes would fill up with internal circulars.

Emails, of course, were a big thing and the companies had to frame policies about employees’ rights to reach out using official email. But social media changed all that. It was such a drastic change that the line between official and personal has blurred.

Emails necessitated hard thinking about usage policy because any mail with the office ID bearing an employee’s personal view could be construed as that of the office concerned. So companies had to frame policies drawing clear boundaries about the content that could be sent from the official email ID.

If you think that only companies faced a challenge in defining the boundaries, you would be mistaken. The legal system also faced the challenge of recognizing what was official and what was not. Whether emails could be taken as official communication or any document, to be legally acceptable, had to be the old pen-and-paper stuff bearing all those parameters deemed redundant these days, became part of a big debate. When digital signatures were created, electronic communications became the thing and conventional pen-and-paper is now archaic.

But the digital space has churned up a lot more confusion, which made the email debate look like a storm in a teacup. The digital space created social media, which now covers the entire identity space of the millennial society. The ad world has taken to social media and spouts jargon that appears gibberish to someone from the last century.

Social media being interactive by default, users can voice their “likes” and “dislikes” instantaneously. Now we have long-form and short-form communication, something that would have had little meaning even a decade back. There is one constant that hasn’t changed — business strategy.

Business strategy is about relations, and relations are defined by communications or the lack of it and its effectiveness. The digital space keeps defining you every moment based on your communication. In the previous era, things were slow. For example, a company could recall internal notices, leaving no trace of it except at the gossip space around the coffee machine.

Today, there is no such reprieve. Once a company sends an email or publishes something on social media, it could go viral, and someone could capture a screenshot by the time the company withdraws it.

Managing the digital space is not easy. What an employee does in his or her digital space may also have a bearing on the company’s image. Someone makes a controversial comment on his or her social media. If the comment goes viral for the wrong reasons, people can quickly link it with their employer.

Or a person comments on social media on an internal decision of his employee. People will quickly connect one of the engagements from the employee’s personal space as a challenge to that decision, and all hell may break loose. Here the personal spills over to the official space, and containing that becomes an important part of the business strategy.

Every nut, bolt and screw of business is about this—starting from the balance sheet to product design and marketing. Social media has changed the entire landscape of business strategy, making it more complex and interesting for a strategist. And for employees too, as they have to firewall their personal digital space so that there is no spillover into the official!

We must put our health first if we are to move forward. One cannot ensure financial sustainability without being in good physical health. To do this, one must impose and follow strict public health protocols to avert major crises like the resurgence in the COVID-19 pandemic. As a community, the onus is also on us to think rationally and maintain safety precautions. Building pandemic awareness should not be a one-person show; it is a social responsibility.

The federal and state governments have to work with the general public to ensure the smooth functioning of operations and security.

One cannot predict the future, and it can be hard to weigh the gravity of the pandemic in the rural areas where our customers reside and do business. But one can surely build a defence mechanism and salvage the situation.

For Anuva Chakrabarty, it was the need for a defence mechanism that catalyzed her entrepreneurial dream. Growing up, Anuva had always dreamt of financial stability. But life had some other plans. Right after her school-leaving exam, Anuva’s family got her married off. In the humdrum of “everyday chores”, her dream got lost. Her husband’s income was enough to provide her with the comfort of a humble existence.

But when Anuva became the mother of a son, the family’s rising expenses triggered the need for a Plan B: how would they manage any crisis, let alone the rising costs? Their income was fixed, but the child’s welfare needed to be protected. Financial security became a matter of utmost importance. Anuva realized that they needed a second income stream, the second line of defence.

On a visit to her maternal home, she was rummaging in her old cupboard when she came across the costume jewellery she had as a teenager. She had her business idea! After returning to her husband’s place, Anuva visited the branch office of Village Financial Services. (Her neighbour’s daughter had introduced Anuva to the idea of taking a loan from VFS.)

Within months, Anuva had a shop stocked with cosmetics, costume jewellery and soft toys. Just in time for the wedding season. The shop was well-stocked for the upcoming wedding season. Now she needed to build a loyal customer base. Luckily, Anuva had good people skills and a down-to-earth demeanour. Customers kept coming back to her.

The loving mother was now a proud entrepreneur.

The initial success gave rise to dreams of expansion. Anuva realized the potential of being a business owner. With the help of the profits and another loan from VFS, Anuva decided to expand her operations by diversifying her product range.

But dark clouds are gathering over the world. The first few cases of the COVID-19 virus were reported from all over the world. The Indian government tried out a day’s lockdown and then imposed a prolonged lockdown.

The COVID-19 pandemic began shutting down economies. People found themselves battling with a disease unknown to them even yesterday. The lockdown forced Anuva to put her expansion plan on hold.

Everywhere, people reorganized their priorities. Washing hands with soap, wearing masks when outside, and staying indoors became the rule. Anuva took care of her family as best as she could and helping neighbours from a distance when required.

When the country relaxed the lockdown in phases, Anuva was back in her shop, masked and gloved. She had tasted the first major challenge to her entrepreneurial journey: adapt and change with the situation. As economies started shaking off the gloom of the pandemic, customers returned to Anuva’s shop.

Security is subjective.

The pandemic refined Anuva’s definition of security. She realized that economic health, physical health and family welfare need to be in sync if she wanted to call herself “secure”. It is the confidence of security that gives rise to the confidence of moving forward.

If we get out of the current health crisis, we must build a new world of health security.