(Not Quite) Business As Usual

BAU is used to say that something is working or continuing in the normal or usual way.

That’s the phrase that crossed my mind on seeing a post by a journalist I greatly respect - about IPL matches being played in Delhi when roads resembled crematoriums.

Almost the entire country is in the midst another total lockdown with a record number of COVID cases spurred by the B1.617 mutant (infamously now called the Indian variant). Having lost a few near ones to this second wave, I wondered about what is the right thing to do. Do we do a repeat of April-May 2020? A 100% WFH?. Then a question nudged, if the situation is so severe, why are elections, IPL and religious gatherings on?

When the pandemic broke out in 2020, we were locked up for the first 2 months and suddenly online workshops and seminars filled our feed on all social platforms. Coaching programs on how to add more zeroes to our current pay checks or increase profits exponentially, learning the Instagram ecosystem to gain more followers, we even had a whole industry selling ‘COVID products’. A lot of us acquired these ‘let’s make money in new ways’ skills and made those extra bucks too. A traditional business owner even told me, ‘I know digital guys are earning lacs in a month but I cannot do that, so I will create something under essential services to keep my factory open’.

Likewise, companies in the tech space who can afford to have their employees WFH are saving a huge cost in office rentals. They have employees working round the clock at a lesser cost of operation and their P & L sheets bear testimony to the increase in profits during the year.

An Opportunity in Adversity has been the mantra for years!

We have become a profit-based society. Across the world, stock markets out performed, companies incentivised teams that book profits even during crisis and lockdowns. Yes, only if business engages in activities the financial cycle continues, people will spend, and when people spend, taxes are collected and can be spend on infrastructure, especially healthcare and emergency services.

But, principles of profit maximisation and booking profits at any cost is a culture that we have been conditioned into over years. Our friends and families will applaud a person who made his business grow even in a pandemic. While my mom will say…stay at home and be safe, my dad will say, hope your work is happening, don’t slack on work just because it’s a pandemic, there is an opportunity to grow.

I started this blog with a lot of anger. A friend lost his mother in law; that was grief. What fuelled anger was apathy. In dire need for oxygen, we tried all methods to arrange for an oxygen cylinder. We finally found someone through a ‘verified source’, and transferred the money to the guy selling cylinders. With no trace of the cylinder, we realised he is a fraud and I called him with the choicest of words. All he said was “This is life, some people loot in white collars, we too found opportunity in adversity and make money for our family.” He had no remorse and unemotionally retorted, “whatever happened let it be, you focus on your patient, try get her a bed.”

We have just become statistics, for content makers…we are number of followers, for businesses we are target audiences, for leaders we are census, for street side thieves.... we are an opportunity!

Let’s be honest, have we not all not engaged in talks about identifying opportunities during this crisis? Similarly, for most businesses, investor shareholders come before customers and employees, that’s how the cash flows in the system. NOW, look at Religion, Politics & Cricket. They are businesses too, aren’t they?

A party will strategise to win in a manner that will allow them a clean sweep, because if they do not attempt that, the opposition will capitalise on it. If they do not hold rallies, the opposition will. They too believe in ‘profit maximisation’, so we have ‘72’ seats so it is ok to lose 2/3 seats is not a strategy they will follow. Allowing religious gatherings supplements their strategy because almost nothing connects people like religion does!

Am I saying the leaders are not responsible for the mess or that they haven’t made a mistake?

Of course, they have !

But they are also living in the same collective mind-set that the show must go on, it is business.The Blood is on all our hands, not just on political & religious leaders or cricketers who many trolled for choosing to remain silent about playing in the IPL to continue even in a COVID tsunami.

During this pandemic haven’t you applauded colleagues who achieved sales targets or wished yourself a bonus this year? Did we not take pride when our content generated more views or we garnered more followers? Are we forgetting that even other parties took part in election campaigns, I am sure they had less muscle to pull the crowd (the super spreaders) than what the ruling party boasted about, but didn’t we all decide to go out and vote while being cynical about how did the centre allow elections during such times. After the results they were celebrating and some even thrashing opposition party candidates, so much for social distancing, probably they were beating the virus out of them, noble deed indeed!

A lot of us called for suspension of IPL, why single that out? At least the business of cricket was run with all the necessary precautions and a bio bubble. I think it should have continued. It brought some relief and would have surely gotten some of us to stay home glued to our TV sets rather than stepping out to meet friends.

The problem is not just in our collective mindset, the problem is that we believe capitalism is only the solution. The hospitals charging a lac a day, selling of oxygen cylinders for a lac plus, the online scams of making money by promising non-existent cylinders or cases of robbery reported in make-shift hospitals for COVID patients.

They are also finding opportunity in adversity? It’s a free market policy with no moral conscience.

Even after 6.9 million COVID deaths, pharma companies, heads of countries and an influential tech mogul who is supposedly a philanthropist donating millions to charity, are all blocking the free market production of vaccines. A decision on the vaccines that clearly could have been made a year ago when the pandemic began and by now a frame work for localised production in respective countries using their infrastructure to produce those vaccines with formulas created by pharma giants and labs would be ready. In our current progressive open market society where software programs are open sourced, do you think that would not have been possible? Even with a necessary framework to generate profits for the creators of the vaccines, couldn’t the world have reached a consensus earlier for an emergency like the pandemic? It could have but then what do we do of Greed.

Greed, is the future possibility of earning more, hoard so that we sell at a premium when we sense opportunity! Now where have we seen this, stock markets, cylinders, medicines – it runs through the system through us all.

Most of my blogs have emphasised on the co-existence of ideologies in a system for it to work robustly. If China seems to have won the war over COVID with minimal fatalities, there surely could be something right about the way their government controlled the social infrastructure. Yes, we will never trade our freedom for a life of being controlled, but at times like these, one wishes there was control over the situation rather than free market policies that create vaccine shortages, black market for medicines, oxygen cylinders and hospital care.

Obviously, this is not an immediate solution for our current problems. India is a socialist welfare state, which makes it directly responsible for ensuring health and safety & life of citizens. Even with Disaster Management Act in action black marketing of medical supplies exists and states are fighting over movement of emergency health care. A government taking over the industries such as health care, logistics seems to be imminent at a time when privatisation drive is proposed.

It is Business as Usual, if it’s a Business. I don’t think welfare should be a business. There are enough examples around the world where a government run state machinery is much better than a privately run one. I don’t buy the argument that privatisation improves the quality of product and services. If that was true, our private health care system, pharma, supply chain should have found the solution and saved all those lives lost in the pandemic.

I am not being cynical about any of this, in fact I believe life is cyclical. Like in 1920s when along with plague pandemic and the wars, we saw sensitive and powerful leaders like Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi come to the forefront, I feel we will see that now.

We need competent leaders and more importantly, we need informed citizens who elect such leaders. One of the subjects we often ignore in school is Social Studies and Civics. Most of us don’t know our rights, some of us hide behind ‘I am apolitical’, and then there are others who believe voting was our responsibility we did that. Are we willing to verify ‘viral’ posts, or listen to all sides before making an informed decision? Or do we continue to listen to the loudest anchors, because we are misinformed that truth is loud or be influenced by social media powered mass hysteria that maybe be bot generated. (Anybody remember Cambridge Analytica?). I am not sitting on a high horse, I am guilty of all of this too, but I envision a new era catalysed by this pandemic.

A new era, not only of politics, but new perspectives of citizens and their needs. Truly there is an opportunity to bring a change in this adversity. Besides an opportunity to make profit, an opportunity to keep building a better life.

Never before have I seen my right-wing friends stand up against their ideologies and the left-wing friends accepting that yes there is a need for a financial structure governing social infrastructure for it be a successful enterprise.

In an era of short attention spans and You Tube Shorts, if you have gotten to this point, I see intent to look for better solutions.

Let Welfare be a Business if it has to be, but let it be pro-life and let us not make a life just a number on dashboards.