Thriving in Chaos

Anybody who had a chance to work behind the scenes of large format events in India would have got a whiff about what thriving on chaos is. Always in a WIP mode, built to weather last moment changes and accommodate any eventuality is what every plan would look like. Last year on the previous night of one of the largest flagship events of the Indian Telco industry, I had a chance to visit the venue. Anyone who had no experience in past with such a scale of events would have had a minor shock to see the status of infrastructure that was visible to them. Nothing.. literally nothing was ready even hours before the event that was supposedly inaugurated by the highest dignitary of India Government. The workers were running around all over the place, nailing the carpet, coating paint, connecting electricals, and all sort of things that would have been ready in the previous day. The sky was pregnant, with expectations of rain sometime in early hours. But still, the organisers displayed amazing confidence in completing the work on time. Yes.. they were damn right. Just before the time to cut the ribbon, the set up was ready, even with the light morning showers. That may not be an acceptable working model, anywhere around. But in India, its something that always happens, whether its planned or not. I would dedicate this to a phenomenon called "Jugaad" which can be loosely translated to "adjustment". We always keep our planning approach flexible to accommodate unexpected eventualities and keep moving forward. The absolutely non-existent system is favouring us in this approach to a large extend. And let me say, that is how we thrive in chaos.

Why I am mentioning this, at this moment is to point out the amazing application of this "flexible plan approach" on how we are seemingly getting a grip over the #Covid19 scare, without adequate tests and so many adversary developments hitting us one after another. Some may argue that abysmally low rate of testing is the reason for a relatively slower-paced growth of positive patients in the country, and I do agree with that. The numbers of positive patients would definitely shoot up once the testing process gathers momentum. But being said that, we should also notice another very visible indicator - mortality, not yet gathered the pace as we see elsewhere too. That means that there is some level of control we have achieved over the monstrous level of spread, planned or not. Though I am not proud of this Jugaad, still I am counting on it, given the gross inadequacies in our system and deficiencies in resources.