COVID-19 onslaught: Its impact on human life & business

Prashant Sardeshmukh, MD, MMC Hardmetal India Pvt Ltd., in this interesting article tells us how the coronavirus pandemic will change the human mindset and bring about a shift in governance and business

COVID-19 has brought the life to standstill across the world and a death toll has crossed the 115,000 mark on global scale. This pandemic has wrecked havoc than any other calamity perhaps in the history of human race, leaving entire global community in utter grief and disarray.  The world has not faced the crisis of this magnitude for generations together and no one is able to predict how fierce it will become in the coming days.

Nonetheless all of us are optimistic that the corona monster will be tamed very soon and normalcy will restore.  I keep my fingers crossed.  But you don’t need to be an astrologer to predict that there will be many upheavals in overall lifestyle of the people across the world and massive changes in different spheres of life. But I would like to keep my focus limited to the positive side of changes and here are some of them, which have crossed my mind.

Human behaviour

Here are a few things. One may term it to be a wild thought or wishful thinking. But these are some good, positive changes I envisage in human behaviour.

1. Since, entire global community is bearing the brunt, people have experienced the grief and helplessness. I hope, people across the world will develop sense of empathy and compassion towards one another. There will be growing sense of cooperation and people will look for peaceful co-existence.
2. Largely because of loss or threat of loss of jobs on mass scale and restricted resources of earning people will learn to seek happiness and contentment in small things. They will realize niceties of life with new perspective.
3. People will realize value and importance of relationship and will try to honour each other’s space.
4. People will learn to use available resources more judiciously and prudently.
5. People will realize importance of family life and real essence of emotional bonding and togetherness.
6. People will develop a sense of proactiveness and will have better healthcare awareness to tackle any seasonal epidemic.
7. People will be keen to keep their health and fitness levels high in order to resist any such onslaught in future.

Governance & Business

1. Even after the pandemic comes under control people will be scared to venture on long, overseas tours.  The tourism and hospitality industry will keep limping for a while. But people will take sojourn to nearby places to release stress thus allowing domestic tourism to get momentum.
2. Industries and business houses will try to work out some sustainable mechanism or fool-proof process to sustain the shock of such unprecedented disaster.
3. Industries across the world will have to follow more stringent environmental and health & hygiene related norms which may, in the long run, help to fight any such calamity.
4. The governments will also allot large budget to bolster disaster management of this nature and magnitude.
5. Governments will cut down on excessive budget allotted to other things and allow sizeable spend on improving the healthcare facilities.
6. Certain traditional businesses or services which are less productive with negligible profit margin will go into oblivion and some new business models, particularly in pharma and healthcare sector will emerge.
7. Certain traditional jobs will turn obsolete and new job opportunities will come up, in many countries including India, and the Western countries like USA, Italy, Spain, Germany, France and UK who have suffered big dent due to the monstrous spread.
8. Certain sectors like Fashion Industry, Entertainment, Jewellery etc. will get less priority when it comes to public spending and people will prefer to spend extra to ensure more sustainable and healthier lifestyle.
9. Government will have to pump in more energy to boost the Agricultural sector and infrastructure development, realty sector and manufacturing sector. I hope these sectors will catch the momentum soon and play vital role in economic growth of the country.

These are general observations. However, one cannot predict sudden change in human mindset. Therefore, though I foresee a positive change in human behaviour for certain period of time from now, it may not be on permanent basis. It will remain so, as long as the scary picture of this shocking phase of life is in the minds of people.

Be that as it may, let’s prepare ourselves to stay relevant, productive and competitive in the changing scenario and let’s try to become one of the important parts of the changing global environment.