The Novel Corona virus or COVID-19 pandemic is a one of its type of crisis we are witnessing in our lifetime.

I was watching the movie Dunkirk few months ago and in one of the scenes, when the soldiers arrive at the railway station, an old blind man provides him tea and says, “Well Done”. It was a surprise to the soldier, and he states, “All they did is survive”. To which the old blind man replied, under the circumstances “That’s enough”.

Whenever anyone is in midst of crisis, he should try to come out of it unharmed or with minimal injuries. Crisis of any kind test us big time and we learn a lot in the process of overcoming it. There are many elements in crisis management that help us to survive a crisis but the ones below, I feel, are the most critical –

• Resources: Whenever a crisis hits you, the first important step is to look at the available resources and accept the fact that only these are available for our survival. In a crisis, optimum utilization of resources is must for everyone. Any wish like – ‘I should have this or that’ will derail the recovery.
• Time & Patience: The second important factor is time. Timely action and use of resources will increase their longevity and provide us more time to deal with the crisis. The current lockdown of 21 days by the Government of India is one such example. They knew they have very limited resources in hand to deal with COVID-19 and early lockdown is important to contain the spread of the virus. One need to be have patience & wait for the right time. As few countries saw signs of recovery, they hurriedly started re-opening of lock down & now again facing a situation where they may have to go for lockdown.
• Innovation (Jugaad): Normally at the time of a crisis, discovery and invention are unlikely. But survival leads people to innovate. Indians are blessed with an innovative mindset. Indian jugaad methodology has helped us to overcome many a challenge in minimum cost and time. Exploring the use of a snorkel to support patients or manufacturing of sanitizer by IIT’s in just two days in the current COVID-19 pandemic is one such example. Government created a Hospital on wheels using discarded railway bogies with minimal cost. We must look at the resources available at our disposable & innovate to meet our ends.
• Optimism: The most important behavior one needs to have or develop in a crisis is to be optimistic. A depressed and demoralized individual is unlikely to come out of crisis by himself. He will further instill pessimism on others who in turn are likely to succumb to the crisis as well. So, one needs to be optimistic and positive as it helps him in walking to the path of recovery and eventually overcome the crisis. The government’s approach of a staggered opening post lockdown clearly indicates that there is optimism but also evaluating daily scenarios so that they should not go wrong on timings

We need to have a positive mindset to tackle and overcome the problem. In the times of crisis, one cannot hide, one should try to survive & in some scenario, it’s “Enough”.