#83: Lockdown 2.0

As I write this article, there is a lot playing on my mind. I need to clear my head and try to listen to the hidden voice in my head that keeps telling me that everything will eventually be okay.

This time it is a bit different though, as I want this not for myself but for everyone else who has been less fortunate

For someone who has lived and worked in the Middle East for over 15 years at various time in my career, I have faced a lot of ups and downs from being laid off to exit bans to conflicts at the workplace etc.

Never in a million years would I dream that things would come to this. Economies are dying, people are losing jobs, families are struggling to put food on the table and there is too much uncertainty and variables to contend with.

We oft compare ourselves to people above us and then have to grapple with dreams of inadequacy, but if we care to look below, there are millions of humans whom we would be very worried to trade places with.

At the start of the lockdown, it seemed a novelty. Like anything new, it was a breath of fresh air from the life we called a rat race. It gave us the excuse to have an extended weekend and much like we do at any New Year, we pledged to do things differently but it was more in thought rather than deed.

As the novelty wore off and the dust settled, many people realised that there is real impact to livelihoods, health (mental), and mostly the future.

Most of the countries affected by Covid-19 have shut down the entire money making labyrinth for a minimum of thirty days. Thirty days was all it took to create the butterfly effect. That effect could be felt far and wide across the world whether it came to job losses, to salary deductions, to travel restrictions to lifestyle changes.

Every business big and small has been changed permanently and all the things we once took for granted now lay bare!

My heart goes out to the gig workers, the restauranteurs, the retail fraternity, the daily wage workers and the down trodden who have been the hardest hit

Economists incl. the IMF have reforecasted the growth of many economies and from what I am seeing, they are vastly under estimating the impact of Covid-19.

To understand this, let us look at simple economics.

We have 12 months in a year out of which for 30 days, economic activity has been completely shut down. This means we have a direct hit of approx -8.33% in a month on the GDP of the country. Assuming the economy is at a complete standstill, we still have to account for our basic requirements like eating, personal care etc, thus for a 30 day shutdown, adjusted economic activity stands at -6.33%.

We also know that every economy cannot be reignited overnight and the way Covid crept up upon us, in the best case it would have shown its teeth for at least 15 days before and for a minimum of 30 - 45 days after the lockdown was disbanded.

Considering the above, economic growth for any average country could be impacted negatively in the range of 12% - 15%. Thus in my estimate, the IMF is way off the mark in its revised forecast, be it for the GCC or for the Indian sub-continent.

While this forecast is gloomy, it is very scary and is in the works.

Thus the time has come for taking a stand! A stand of life over paralysis...

We cannot sit with our hands behind our backs expecting things will suddenly change. We need to get back to business, back to our lives else all will be lost for many! Risks will have to be taken, safety guidelines would need to be meticulously followed, but in all this, we need to make the economy tick.

Job losses in the Middle East are expected to be in the range of 3-5 million (mostly expats) while job losses in India are expected to reach 200 million. All this does not bode well for the future and given the bleak forecast, we definite cannot afford a Lockdown 2.0 to be enforced here or anywhere else in the world!

This will be our own worst calling and will drive some countries to social unrest while pushing millions of others below the poverty line.

Let's make the wheels turn again!

What are your views on the imposed lockdown and do you think that the time has come for us to dust off our shoes and get on with our lives?

Do let me know in the comments below...