Reviving The Earning Capacity Of The Lockdown Victims 

By Mohamed R. M. Farook –JUNE 2, 2020

Mohamed R. M. Farook

The Covid-19 which brought in the lockdown and curfew has made all levels of economies from the international, the national to the household collapse. Giant and macro businesses including Multi Nationals (MNs) would, though affected one way or other, use a combination of dedicated, emerging and manipulative strategies to raise their heads from the fallout – that too will not be easy and would sometimes take a long time. This category will either resort to a variety of turnaround strategies for their continued survival and growth or by necessity declare bankruptcy and wind up their business ventures throwing their employees into unemployment – a tragedy that the world will be reluctantly witnessing in time to come. Experts in business strategy in crisis situations will not be able to come out with any suggestive strategies for the effective revival of the affected high profile giant businesses as the Covid-19 pandemic has inflicted unthinkable damages to all types of businesses worldwide in a scale never experiences in human history.

Medium, small, micro and mini businesses or vendors including the daily wage earners in petty trading and involved in personal services or vocations are the hard hit categories – majority of whom may not be able to get back to their previous businesses or vocations on their own efforts due to many reasons, personal and circumstantial, and thus need helping hands from people around them. This help should, if possible, be firstly financial but more important than that should be psychological by way of encouragement and motivation especially by persons close to the affected than any others.

In order to come out with workable plans and strategies to help this category of the fallen, we should first identify the different problems or issues that have emerged within each person or related groups affected by the lockdown. There will be some within this category who will rush to start their earning activities once the lockdown is eased and the curfew lifted. This small group who impulsively or enthusiastically or by sheer necessity sans other options, rush to their previous positions in businesses and vocations are risk takers who may succeed through their competences (entrepreneurial), perseverance and deterministic mind-set. Further, due to unhelpful market conditions, some may go out of their businesses or vocations solely because of their inability to withstand and face the dynamics of their daily business earnings / outcomes – so they too need guidance and direction. Those who have the resilience to withstand the impact of the lockdown and thereby to move forward in an optimistic mind-set would be able to succeed provided they do not get unnecessarily distressed but uphold patience, perseverance and resort to systematic planning – and they are the ones who would become ‘successful’ in the long run though they may encounter road-blocks along their business journey. And this had been the history of business successes after a downfall or calamity.

There will also be another group of the affected persons who, though primarily affected by financial downturns due to business stagnation, would have developed latent psychological disorders which will prevent them starting their enterprises due to lethargy, loss of or low morale and most importantly loss of self-confidence. This is where we need trained helping hands having the knowledge and competences in counselling, psychological first aid and relevant and appropriate psychological interventions that may give a boost to the affected persons – but unfortunately we are not in any position to immediately do interventions due to the prevailing lockdowns and the social distancing which had to be maintained even if the lockdown is relaxed or totally taken out. Thus we can safely predict that a certain percentage (say, 15 to 20%) of the affected would have given up the idea of getting back to their previous businesses or vocations. But such persons should be encouraged to think differently, innovatively and optimistically to get into new ways of legitimately creating sources of income – and this message must be made to reach them in an acceptable manner. Whatever the situational outcomes, the dire need to pool the required group of qualified facilitators to be in readiness to help the lockdown victims should take primacy as otherwise it will not be possible to effectively ‘push’ the affected into their businesses and / or vocations and eventually make them successful. These intervention programmes for a start should be executed by statutory / ministerial bodies who have the wherewithal and the trained personnel in social work. 

There may be various options to execute this type of programmes to help the affected. Whatever the option, the main consideration should be to make the discussion and thus ‘deliver’ the ‘speech/talk’ appropriate to the level of understanding of the participants so that the participants will be encouraged and motivated to go back to re-start their businesses or vocations with self-confidence. This may also fall into capacity building interventions of the affected persons. The location, timing and duration of the programmes have to be efficiently planned and laid out for effective implementation. The entire programme should not exceed more than four hours per session per day with intermittent breaks in order to lessen boredom and to encourage informal interactions. The programmes should be held on a contingency footing and should be done for one or two days only. The session should be very informal and participant friendly allowing more time and attention given to the participants to interact, bring out issues, speak out and allowed to ask questions. Any formalised training programme done through academicians, management professionals and medical experts would definitely fail. The programme should be conducted through the involvement of counselling practitioners, mental health workers and trained community helpers. None of these helpers need have any medical expertise or management credentials as it is a norm in institutionalised training programmes. These types of people are presently available through ministries and departments involved in social services and could be sourced from within every area in the country.

How to Kick-Start the Intervention

That said, the important issue is ‘belling the cat’ – who will kick-start the ball rolling under the present situation? Until this is identified we will be in the ‘talking’ phase only thus killing time. This is because we are in a dilemma not being able to execute any form of interventions due to the lockdown, curfew, social distancing on the one hand and not in readiness with the required facilitators / trainers on the other. We also know that the social services departments / units of the health and allied ministries who developed the grass root facilitators / trainers in the aftermath of Indian Ocean Tsunami of 26th December 2004 to go out to the locations of the affected to implement the Psychological First Aid (PFA) and other required interventions, should be sought after for this programmes / interventions. They are the sources to get the required resource personnel for these interventions. 

The Reality Scenario

At present, almost all businesses, except a few, had been instructed by the government to re-start (from 11th May 2020) their businesses which had been forced to be or got automatically closed as from middle of March 2020 due to the lockdown. Around ninety percent (a guesstimate) started their businesses on 11th May 2020. For some, the business transactions were as nearly usual and for others it was not. It all depended on the mix of items one was offering / selling. Shop keepers and vendors in groceries; vegetables; bakery and food items; chicken, meat and fish in raw or processed forms should have had the best of businesses. Textiles; ready wear items; footwear; and household utensils too should have had some turnover. Hardware items and building materials were seen being bought up as the import of some of these had been temporarily stopped. Yet, all these depended on the purchasing power of the consumer. Except the government employees, the salaried permanent staff of private firms, and the conventional fixed income category, the lockdown has affected every other especially the self-employed (most of whom are lockdown affected), the poor and the marginalised poor. These three sectors together are the customer base for consumer goods having a spending potential of around seventy to eighty percent of the consumer spending and when this spending power has shrunk, businesses in general will be unable to survive and therefore some of the existing and functioning businesses, through time, will be reluctantly compelled to close down which will make the business environment unable to operate in a level field. Such a situation could give opportunities to the exploitative elements in the society to emerge to the detriment of the consumers. This is where the government has to be watchful and take necessary measures to break the rise of any form of exploitation emerging.   

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