Wit Wisdom and Whoop

Life is strange that even when there is tragedy and death it results in an opportunity for someone else in life. When any popular person is sick and being treated to be saved, there is also someone else who is working on planning that persons funeral because life demands that to avoid chaos. It is impractical to not accept this reality and seize the opportunity. The Corona Virus pandemic globally gives India a huge opportunity in many ways and even as every resource in the system is being leveraged to mitigate it, I am assuming that the Govt is being ruthless and also planning to leverage the opportunities this provides. I share below, not in any particular order some ideas on what the Govt should do in these troubled times. Ring fence against China predators: Be it in stock markets, other financial instruments the Govt needs to have a set of laws passed albeit temporarily to ensure that Indian businesses are ring fenced from being captured by Chinese investors and then lat...

This is NOT about politics, NOT about patting myself on the back but just some observations in an unprecedented global crisis where we are like caged animals while the animals roam free. I have been involved in a volunteer activity to help support a program to help the hungry, dispossessed, sick and elderly and this effort is in a small geographical area that covers around 7.5 lakh people which is 0.057 % of the Indian population but to me is a representative example of the reality out there in India – for better or worse. Through the day you get calls from daily wage labourers who have zero earnings, no savings, no ration card or even a formal roof over their head. These are the people who we used to see every day as we went about our lives going to offices, pubs, restaurants, parties etc. They would be painting the sidewalk, repairing some road, working on a construction site be it a small house or a mansion or an apartment complex. If you were one who ventured into specific ...

Just like in the Camel in the tent story, the Corona Virus started rather innocuously in China and before one could get a deeper understanding of its implications, it spread like wildfire. Like it happens with most humans, most folks globally sat back to watch what would happen in China when the virus was already under their seats and exploded suddenly. One of the questions that most people have been asking is – India seems to be relatively doing better with the statistics being quite low compared to almost any other country globally. On the 14 th of February this is how the figures looked like. India had just 3 cases compared to 15 in USA. By the 17 th of March the statistics had changed to look like this. India was still in the few hundreds while USA had climbed to 5000 +. Globally as of 25 th March 2020 the figures look like this. The global data looked like this. Meanwhile the way the cases were spreading and based on what actions each g...