How to handle the economic slowdown

We are in middle of Corona pandemic - There is lots of criticism about the economic slowdown we are going to encounter right after that, which keeps us all in panic mode. Is there anything logical we as an individual could do, instead of spreading the panic ?

Before going into this, let us see some of the positives Corona Pandemic situation have taught us during these tough times. Some are:

• Family time made us understand work done by women, so far taken granted by men. 
• Manage money by buying only essentials and how much each could save per month.
• Spouse unique flavour/dish cooking skills are exposed and appreciated. 
• Kids screen time has actually reduced and they get more imaginative and creative by invention of new unique games/crafts. 
• Our appetite to regularly eating junk or outside food can be transformed & controlled with little self-discipline.
• Appreciation of Indian herbs & Food habits to build a better immune system for next generation like our grandparents helped us build it. 

There are various criticism against various leaders in different countries for - Not being prepared before | Not enough actions taken during the pandemic | No plans shared on the economic pandemic which would follow once the Corona pandemic and the effect on economy could be same or even worse than the Corona pandemic.

Question we need to ask ourselves is - Is it only the country leaders responsibility to act upon for recovering from the economic pandemic ?

Let us look at what happened during 2008 Recession, which started end of December 2007 and lasted till early 2010 - 2.6 Million people lost jobs in US | Unemployment rate peaked at 10% and this created a ripple effect in India to lose half a million jobs in 2008.

During that time as well, many criticised the government for the housing market bubble, bad loans, no regulations, etc and expected government & its leaders to solve all the issues. Government did make many moves to recover from the situation and it took more than 2 years to recover back to normal. 

However other interesting trend emerged during that time was the business of freelancers – selling their skills via various gigs as many companies didn’t want to employ a regular employee and many who lost jobs but had the skills like web development, database tuning, digital marketing, brochure designs, etc started earning money.

As of Apr 2020, there is no medicine found yet for Corona and we are told to maintain social distancing & build more immune power. So, if due to some situation we got hit with corona - One has the strength to recover from it with the immunity built. 

How about applying the same logic to much talked about economic pandemic which is about to hit us after the recovery of corona ?

There are many online trainings to learn new technologies and enhance your skills – pick some during this time and constantly enhance the skill to be the best in that. Also skill needn’t be always technical – We realised there is a great cook within us | We have patience and could make kids engaged | We know to drive cars. All of this also calls out as a skill we possess. Could we as individual leaders of our own life, use this opportunity and acquire as many skills as possible during this situation (very similar to developing immunity to take the impact of corona).

Needless to say person who posses more skills in any industry are the leaders and are more confident to handle any turbulence, than the one who possess less skills or an outdated skill. If as many of us start doing this, along with the government measures we could lend a helping hand to have our country grow during this slowdown. Could we start this now??