Abstract
Covid-19 brought an unprecedented and challenging time all over the globe. With the unpreparedness and lack of awareness regarding the global pandemic, it soon became an international concern. From loss of lives to loss of livelihood, the pandemic had a huge impact on global citizens and various nation-states. Unlike any other crisis, Covid-19 too pushed the government and its people to restructure and reform their framework, especially in the face of such an unprecedentedly adverse situation. This article highlights the need of a crisis response framework and formulation of agile public policy during such a global catastrophe. Taking the novel coronavirus as the epicentre demanding a rapid response formulation of Government of India, the article delineates upon strategic intervention of the government towards Covid-19 and the need of a crisis response framework for the future.
Introduction
The universe has witnessed a wide ranging series of events, from its creation in an instant with a minute point of energy—the Big Bang—to its expansion and emergence of new galaxies. Similar events have led to the creation of living beings and spaces that too are said to emerge from some form of unexpected event. These disasters have reportedly been the turning points in mankind’s history. For instance, the mass extinction of dinosaurs is said to be one among the mass extinctions on the planet Earth. We are surrounded by emergence and extinction, which is a continuous phase witnessed on the planet Earth. The mass extinction event that ended the lives of dinosaurs on Earth is linked with a comet, asteroid or meteor impact. The impact, therefore, could be regarded as a form of crisis, and their extinction can be seen as a turning point to the emergence of new life forms on the Earth. Crisis is nothing but a situation or a phase that requires immediate attention to the changing times in order for one to survive (Koselleck & Richter, 2006). These crises are borne out of certain disastrous events which lay a heavy negative impact on life forms. In the current century, a crisis can take any form. It could be related to health, finance, agriculture, education and nature, all of which have a direct or an indirect impact on human life.
The world in the 21st century is hard-hit by a pandemic, resulting in millions of cases and deaths subsequently. The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has, therefore presented itself as a form of a crisis of unprecedented proportions. It is defined as an illness caused by a novel coronavirus, now called severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus. The first case to be identified was in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China (WHO, 2020a). Wuhan, an emerging business hub experienced an outbreak that resulted in more than 1,8000 deaths and infected over 70,000 individuals within the first 50 days of the epidemic. It was initially reported to the WHO on 31 December 2019. On 30 January 2020, the WHO declared the Covid-19 outbreak a global health emergency (Gallegos, 2020). On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared Covid-19 a global pandemic, its first such designation since declaring H1N1 influenza a pandemic in 2009 (WHO, 2020a).
As a health crisis, Covid-19 has not just impacted the society in terms of physical health but has also churned up the normal functioning of the human order. Today, coronavirus has given rise to a new world order of being ‘masked and virtual’. Where human touch and gatherings were a norm, it has now become an area of concern and something from which one would deviate. Covid-19 has also aggravated various other forms of crisis, such as financial, livelihood, transportation, food, education and mental health. The Covid-19 virus spread like a pandemic across nation states impacting and resulting in more than 60 million cases and one million deaths as on 1 November 2020. It had a huge impact on the well-being of the society, so much so that it brought the functioning of the world to a halt. One of the sectors greatly affected by Covid-19 was the economic sector. The pandemic has brought most countries into recession in 2020 and has projected to shrink advanced economies by up to 7% at least. As a result, it has widely impacted the social walks of life too—lack of employment opportunities, job losses and shutting down of organisations. It has made people bereft of their sources of income, pushing them towards poverty, further affecting their life and mental health.
In order to survive the crisis, and minimize the bruising it caused, a responsive structure or something to be called as the ‘Crisis Response Framework’ is found to be quintessential. The idea of a ‘Crisis Response Framework’ arises from the need to self-sustain during these emergent situations and to provide a way forward in minimising the impact by taking along every opportunity that comes in the way (Coombs, 1998). Implementation of a crisis framework or a structure during an emergent situation ensures a unique functioning of the organisation. A healthy and cooperative crisis response framework includes a structural approach towards it at every stage of a crisis—pre, during and post—situations (Tokakis et al., 2019). Therefore, the current Covid-19 pandemic has opened more such opportunities and responses for governments and international organisations across the world to cooperate and work on such graded response framework for the upcoming future.
Furthermore, acknowledging the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as adopted by India to follow through, there is a need to build upon a framework which ensures good health and wellbeing (SDG 3), decent work and economic growth (SDG 8), responsible consumption and production (SDG 12), climate action (SDG 13), life below water (SDG 14), life on land (SDG 15), and peace and strong institutions (SDG 16) (UNDP, n.d.).
Scope
This article presents a timeline focused on understanding the unfolding of the Covid-19 pandemic in India. In this article, the focus shall be on gauging upon the role of the Government of India (GoI) with main emphasis on the crucial key players. By setting up a crisis framework in the hard times, the role of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has been upheld in containing the spread of the virus and facilitating the country during the pandemic with effect of agile public policy and decision-making process.
Methodology
The proposed article begins with an in-depth analysis of the pandemic and its impact around the world. Creating a worldwide perspective to narrowing it down to India’s role in containing the spread of the virus, the author then delineates the response of the Government of India (GoI). It also explores the general principles of reviewing the work that has been done by the GoI during the pandemic.
Covid-19 in India: The Pandemic Unfolds
According to the WHO data, at the time of writing this article, there are 48.1 million total cases resulting in 1.3 million deaths worldwide. 1 The first case to be reported in India was in Kerala. The patient had a travel history to Wuhan, China, where the first case across the world was reported (Andrews et al., 2020). Following this, the disease spread like a wildfire across the country. In order to contain the spread of the virus, the GoI started taking proactive steps and measures in a graded manner.
One of the major concerns for the Central government was the unpreparedness and the quick decisions that were to be made to control the spread of the pandemic, which not only impacted the lives of many but also made the country and the entire world face challenges in each and every aspect of governance. The current pandemic has led to a dramatic loss of human life worldwide and has presented itself as a challenge to public health, food systems and the world of work (WHO, 2020b). Initiating the ‘prodromal’ stage of tackling the health crisis, GoI ensured a proactive take in regulating, restricting and prohibiting the in-coming international passengers’ traffic through immigration check to contain the spread of Covid-19. First Travel Advisory was issued on 17 January 2020, and additional advisories related to international travel were also issued periodically (Department-Related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs, 2020). Focusing on the contagious nature of the virus, GoI imposed travel restrictions and existing visas were suspended especially from countries where the number of cases were increasing. On 18 January 2020, thermal screening for passengers travelling from China and Hong Kong was imposed, followed by mandatory thermal screening for all the international passengers and an advisory was issued to follow standard health protocol for Covid-19 from 4 March 2020 onwards (Department-Related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs, 2020). Progressively, thermal screening was also extended to seaports and land borders, and all international flights coming to India were suspended from 22 March 2020 (Department-Related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs, 2020). GoI took a step ahead and started thermal screening before Covid-19 was declared a Public Health Emergency and even before the first case was reported in India. Thermal screening helped in early detection of symptomatic international passengers that were coming in, therefore, monitoring the situation in a better way. With the view to contain the spread of virus on the national-level, mass transportation services such as Metro Corporation and rail traffic were suspended from 22 March 2020 and suspension of domestic air travels from 24 March 2020 (MHA, 2020).
‘If one doesn’t get into it early then the pandemic grows with limited or low scope of recovery’. With an aim to break the chain of the transmission of the virus and make people aware about the upcoming emergent health crisis, a Janata curfew was first observed on the request of our Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi on 22 March 2020 (MHA, 2020). Millions of people across the country stayed indoor to voluntarily observe the implementation of the 14-hour long curfew starting from 7:00
One of the strongest pursuits of the Indian government to battle the spread of the virus was the decision of the early lockdown. According to WHO, the implementation of lockdown in India is termed as ‘timely, comprehensive and robust’ (UN News, 2020). The battle against Covid-19 had to be fought with all the might and limited preparedness the country had. MHA was instrumental in coordinating with respective ministries and state authorities to understand the situation in their respective areas before implementing a nation-wide lockdown. Concerns such as availability of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) kits, sanitizers, testing facilities, surveillance and quarantine facilities were discussed upon. Real time guidelines/ advisories were issued to the concerned ministries and states/UTs to facilitate these.
An early lockdown as planned by the GoI helped in the longer run to fight the battle against Covid-19. With an early lockdown guidelines and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) as issued by the MHA, the priority was laid on to crack the transmission of disease by breaking the transmission chain through social distancing, hand hygiene and proper use of masks. Such an imposition gave the much-needed preparatory time to gear up the necessary arrangements for the pandemic especially regarding healthcare and logistics. While worldwide the implementation of lockdown was observed in a quite delayed fashion, India was one of the few countries to impose an early lockdown and strategise to effectively cater to the exigency.
MHA: From Public Grievances to Policymakers— Crisis Management
Covid-19 pandemic brought a set of new challenges at the organisational level too. During the pandemic, the need was to adapt to the sudden changing times and practices. Keeping that in mind, MHA, which is essentially responsible for the maintenance of internal security and domestic policy relating to internal security, and disaster management, transformed it into a public grievance and redressal body.
The MHA played a proactive role by constituting the empowered groups for tackling the pandemic.
Empowered Groups: The Policymakers
Under the Disaster Management Act, 2005, eleven empowered groups were constituted on 29 March 2020 to function and facilitate the different aspects of Covid-19 management in the country. During the pandemic, these groups took the responsibility for individual sectors, leaving no area uncovered from medical healthcare facilities and logistics to transportation of essential goods and services, movement of persons, NGOs and international cooperation, technology and ICT, capacity building and human resources, everything was taken care of by these initially formed groups.
The empowered groups were at the decision-making and policy-making level for respective agendas based on the need of the hour and accordingly issued guidelines and SOPs for area officers and control room functions to work upon. Other than receiving grievances and solving them at the ground level, it was the role of these empowered groups to provide people with facilities and required needs leaving no room for citizens’ distress. Certain empowered group members were appointed as the area officers to further ease out the facilitation, especially for logistical issues of healthcare facilities and movement of persons.
The groups were organised to identify the problems and provide time-bound effective solutions in the respective areas. Each empowered group was assigned with their own unique roles and responsibilities based upon the urgent need of the hour during the pandemic (Figure 1).
Control Room: The Nationwide Lockdown Monitor
As the nodal centre of MHA, control room ensured functioning for pan-India services. Under the jurisdiction of the Joint Secretary (Internal Security Division), the control room dealt with internal security and disaster management. It was during 1981, when the control room was made operational for the first time on a 24×7 basis. Post the 2008 Mumbai attacks, certain structural changes were proposed to the control room, leading it to be manned by an official from Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) on a deputation basis. Its officers comprise constables, head constable, assistant sub inspector, inspector, assistant commandant, deputy commandant, and second in command officer.
So far, the control room has been dealing with only the internal security with a separate entity for the disaster management branch, focusing heavily upon being the bridge between the Centre and state facilitation.
Structure of Control Room During Covid-19
Assessing the need of better facilitation and coordination during the pandemic situation, MHA ensured that the strengthening of control room is the need of the hour. As of 21 March 2020 onwards, the control room operations were expanded to make it function 24×7 under the supervision of senior officers of the level of Joint Secretaries along with the key representatives of key Central ministries.
Furthermore, four additional control rooms were set up to deal with the pandemic, increasing the total count to five control rooms. Earlier the control room had only seven helplines; however, during the Covid-19 these rooms were equipped with sixty-six non-chargeable landlines with over 200 staff from National Disaster response Force (NDRF) and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF). Normally, the head of the control room is a duty officer and is from the background of CRPF of 2nd in command/deputy commissioner or DIG level, but, at the time of Covid-19, this post was handled by an officer of Joint Secretary level. This changed orientation expedited the decision dispensing.
Functioning of the Control Room
The prime focus of the control room during the pandemic was to attend queries of the states/UTs and other ministries for the implementation of the lockdown measures, address inter-ministries and inter-state coordination issues and so on.
When a call was received in the control room from a distressed person for Covid-19 issues, a protocol process was followed upon (Figure 2) which shows how the MHA control room worked after receiving the distress call, wherein the control room shared state/UT helpline number and advised the caller to speak with state helplines. However, in urgent cases, the control room directly contacted the concerned ministry/state/UT. In order to establish a transparent and accountable system, the control room officers ensured a follow-up call that was scheduled accordingly. Often in the context of the migrant workers, they were referred to other district/taluka officials, NGOs and so on. Similarly, if the issues weren’t resolved, a chain of communication was established with the concerned officers such as state nodal officers and transcending to Joint Secretary level in the MHA.
Role and Impact of Control Room
Control room, which was earlier established for the maintenance of law and order was transformed into a public grievance and redressal unit during Covid-19. With more than 230 personnel from various other ministries, NDA and CRPF, the control room was turned into a SOS call unit making it a ‘one contact window’ for the citizens. From issues such as essential services to movement of persons, everything was taken care of by the control room. It was working in a multi-line hunting mode, that is, ensuring that whenever a citizen in need and calls the control room, s/he is well attended without any delay. The control room ensured to create a network of landlines wherein if one phone is busy it automatically gets transferred to the next available one without any delays. Therefore, being a ‘hunt group’, the control room officers ensured that no stones are left unturned for the facilitation during the lockdown.
Almost 6–7 groups were constituted to handle different responsibilities pertaining to solve the grievances of the citizens faster, within them, four were of joint secretary level. While small issues and easy coordination were handled by the control room directly, higher level authorities—additional and joint secretaries—took care of the areas that required state level coordination. The control room’s main objective was to provide solutions to the citizens as early as possible and overcome the said challenges with the limited time and resources. From services including transportation of food and resources for the people in need, to transportation of migrant labourers, people to travel from India to abroad and from abroad to India and essential goods and services, everything was taken care of by the control room staff. The state nodal officers and concerned authorities ensured an end-to-end and one-on-one approach to resolve the crisis.
Through calls and emails, various people from pan-India approached control room with their grievances. According to the call records, from 25 March 2020 till 11 November 2020, the control room had handled a total of 13,102 calls (not inclusive of the calls regarding Shramik Special Trains). In the subsequent number of calls, 854 calls were in relation to essential goods and services, 11,377 calls regarding food and shelter, 129 calls for the North-Eastern Regions and 742 calls for other issues (Figure 3 and Table 1).
Calls Received Between 25 March and 11 Nov (Total 13,102 Calls).
Similarly, from 2 May 2020 to 7 October 2020, an emphasis was imposed on the facilitation of people and their movement in India and from abroad. As a result, for Shramik Special Trains a total of 295,327 calls were received including 32,986 calls from stranded persons for their movements. There were also 271,219 calls from laborers, 5,388 students, 1,539 tourist and 17,052 for others (Figures 4–5 and Table 2).
MHA further facilitated the travel of Indians who were stranded abroad and foreigners who wanted to travel back to their respective countries, wherein 296 calls were received from people who wanted to travel to India and 265 calls for people who wanted to travel abroad (Figure 6 and Table 2).
Movement of Persons from May 02 - Oct 07.
Area Officers: The Bridge Between the States
Meanwhile, the MHA was tackling with the grave situation of a pandemic, a new group was constituted called the area officers. There was a need to formulate a group of area officers especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, who would handle the inter-ministerial facilitation. After fourteen days of the Covid-19 outbreak in India, state reports were started being collated. There were individual attempts to contain the spread of the virus; however, a unifying thread to bind everyone together and facilitate their management was required. As area officers, their role was to bridge the gap between the Centre and state facilitation during the Covid-19 pandemic, from transportation of food and essential goods to movement of persons, providing with healthcare and logistics in remote areas: It was the role of area officers to facilitate the end-to-end supply chain.
While the control room functioned proactively to resolve the problems and challenges faced by the citizens, there were still some grievances which were supposedly to be resolved at the ministerial and state level. For such a purpose, the already existing officers who handled different divisions of the MHA were then appointed as area officers of different regions of the country. Looking at the expertise and familiarity of the domain of these officers, they were assigned different regions of the country accordingly. The job was to further make it easier and better facilitate the functioning of the country during the nation-wide lockdown. Their role was to ensure smooth movement of all essential items throughout the country and to regularly monitor the availability of such goods and services in collaboration with the control room officials.
As a requisite, six area officers who were acquainted with the respective states and terrain were allocated to act as a bridge between the citizens’ grievances and the state. From grievances related to movement of dead bodies, labourer, transportation of essential goods and services and so on were taken care of by the area officers at the grassroots and the state level. The unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic transformed the modus operandi, the managerial paperwork saw a tremendous shift of working through online mode especially using personal devices such as phone calls and messages and coordination through landline services with the concerned level officers and authorities to solve issues at various levels. These area officers were responsible to bring a unique system of functioning using innovation and agile policymaking techniques to deliver services to the stranded citizens in different parts of the country. Furthermore, during the unlock period these area officers were the first one to ensure the implementation of the unlock guidelines.
Area officers of the level of additional/joint secretaries were appointed by MHA who would go to the last mile and ensure that the issue is resolved. Quite like the role of the control room officials, area officers also brought in a unique perspective and agile functioning of the MHA. A unique collaboration between the two was observed wherein, both the divisions worked 24×7 without any vertical hierarchical system, a unique horizontal landscape was thus formulated. The objective and prime motive was to deliver the services as demanded by the citizens. The area officers also ensured a speedy and quick process as all the hierarchical systems had now shifted from offline to only online work through landlines, mobile phones and e-mails. A unique and proactive teamwork approach and a problem-solving method of working were adopted, therefore, formulating a horizontal landscape.
Inter-Ministerial Teams: The Special Forces
Observing the spike in number of active cases in certain states and parts of the country, there was a need of intervention in certain states to gauge the situation effectively. For such immediate actions and agile-proactive steps, the Centre further formulated six Inter-Ministerial Central Teams (IMCT). Two each for West Bengal (Kolkata and Howrah) and Maharashtra (Mumbai and Pune) and one each for Madhya Pradesh (Indore) and Rajasthan (Jaipur) to make on-the-spot assessments of the situation and issue necessary directions to the state authorities.
IMCTs were to focus on complaints of implementation of lockdown measures as per guidelines, supply of essential goods and commodities, social distancing, preparedness of health infrastructure, safety of health professionals and conditions of relief camps for labour and poor people. Their role was to assess the situation on-site and formulate a report for the Central government accordingly. Based on these reports, certain actions and guidelines were then proactively proposed to stabilize the situation.
India and Future Preparedness for Pandemics: A Way Forward
While Covid-19 was one such pandemic, the future upholds more such global health and environmental crisis. As a result of ever evolving climate change and human intervention with the natural habitat, the spread of the virus and bacteria has rapidly increased. Furthermore, there has been little or no significant contribution to the learning of the upcoming threats. While humans have dogged the bullet of H1N1 and Ebola, Covid-19 was one of the few which spread like a wildfire. Therefore, it is necessary for the nation-states across the world to be prepared for the upcoming pandemics with all their resources and power.
Based on the current preparedness of the GoI and for upcoming challenges, there is a need for an agile crisis framework, which is ready to be put in place in such emergent situation. During Covid-19, the nation-state had to revamp its functioning overnight; therefore, the following suggestions and recommendations revolve around such restructuring and future course of action for the upcoming pandemics:
Establishment of Hi-Tech Disaster Management Control Room
Though MHA control room has done a tremendous work in managing this humongous and heterogeneous population by providing them adequate and timely assistance, a need to establish a well-equipped control room was felt. The control room, comprising of representatives of each central ministry and officers from state ministries would help in acting as a bridge between inter- and intraministries and Centre-state and inter-state.
National and Inter-State Migrant Register
The issue of migrant labourers emerged as one of the reasons for spike in positive cases of Covid-19 due to under estimation of the number of migrant population or we can say non-availability of data related to the migrants working in different parts of the country. Assessing the situation from this pandemic, it is suggested that government should mandate a dedicated register (online/offline) comprising of the data related to the number of migrant populations of each state in India. This would act as database for the administration to deal future pandemics and would help in formulating informed policies.
Capacitating the Control Room Officers
A robust training of capacity building should be conducted every quarter for the officers of control room to make them better understand the guidelines and the laws made related to the disaster. Apart from providing capacity building workshops to the officials of control room and other essential ministries/departments it is also suggested that grassroots awareness programmes should be conducted with well-trained trainers and educators at rural and urban areas. Special human resources should also be trained for disaster and other epidemic/pandemic situation so that regular work does not hamper unlike the Covid-19 pandemic in which officials of various departments got shifted in providing the emergency services that in turn interfered with their routine office work, further leading to some problems in the domain of administration.
Capacity Building Among Centre-State, Inter-State and International
Disaster management requires a great amount of coordination between different stakeholders and it can be managed better when the whole territory of a country comes on a same line and works systematically. This requires large and efficient capacity programmes which would include officials of various departments and should be a good blend of public–private partnership model. This programme should include a short-term medical training to all the officials of government, private institution. It would be beneficial if there is a mandatory course in education system related to the disaster management and medical training to be better prepared for future pandemic. It is also to be noted that there is a wide scope in capacity building programmes among various international grouping like South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), BIMSTEC (Headquartered in Dhaka, BIMSTEC is an inter-regional grouping that seeks to foster regional and economic cooperation among nations in the littoral and adjacent areas of the Bay of Bengal — India, Thailand, Myanmar, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Bhutan, The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), or Shanghai Pact & The Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA). We should embrace knowledge and experience sharing as an essential element of building resilience as risk is global but resilience is local which means every state has their own expertise and unique way of dealing with pandemics and other disasters which can be learnt by other countries for better management of any hazardous situation in future.
Future Ready by Creation of National Pandemic Authority
Covid-19 has shaken the world in many ways. No country in the world was ready to deal with such kind of pandemic for such a long time. Every administration tried their best to fight this pandemic as early as possible and has devised various techniques and policies to deal with it yet Covid-19 took a lot from this world. By looking at the situation in India, it is suggested to form a new authority that may be christened as National Pandemic Authority comprising of various officials and personnel from various areas like health, environment, disaster, infrastructure, transportation and other essential services in order to be ready to deal with any kind of pandemic in future, if occurs.
Elevation of Disaster Management Cycle in A Holistic Manner
As per the 15th Finance Commission Report 2020–2021, India for the first time has a predictable way of financing all aspects of a disaster risk management cycle. We now have a dedicated resource for entire complement of disaster mitigation, disaster preparedness, disaster relief and rescue and disaster recovery and reconstruction. It is an un-parallel opportunity to pursue disaster risk management in the country in a holistic manner. It is important for us to ensure that utilization of these funding windows is done in a meaningful manner.
Revisit Disaster Management Act, 2005
As this pandemic has shown the country an unknown type of disaster which has impacted the whole nation on a large scale, there is a need to revisit the Disaster Management Act, 2005 and incorporate the necessary lessons learnt from this pandemic.
Devising A Separate SOP for National-Level Pandemic
As this pandemic was unprecedented and no one anticipated such a situation, the SOPs adapted were demand-driven and dynamic. There is a need of a detailed and separate SOP for a national-level pandemic. As for now we do have plans for disasters but that are destination specific which concur with the place where the disaster has occurred. But this pandemic had put the whole world on standstill, and India too was locked up and required a perfect balance of federalism, which to some extent was achieved as all the state and UTs were coordinating with the Centre for a systematic approach to tackle the spread of Covid-19. Still, it would be a lot of help if there would be a national-level SOP inclusive of all states and UTs with other stakeholders and agencies for better management of any pandemic in future.
Conclusion
Covid-19 pandemic was observed as one of the most unprecedented times of the 21st century. While this may not be the end of pandemics, rather a starting point for the future pandemic, currently, the need of the hour is the establishment of a framework, fully equipped with all the necessary paraphernalia. It was because of the agile policymaking and prompt decision-making process of the GoI that bonded the country into one unifying thread and ensured safety of the citizens. From proactive steps before the pandemic hit the country to rigorous lockdown during the pandemic and relaxing-planned unlock for the country as a way forward, GoI strategically implemented policies in an emergent situation. Adhering to the ongoing crisis and pandemic, MHA ensured that they also uphold their daily functions apart from containing the spread of the virus. The paper highlights the discourse of rapid-responsiveness of GoI in the face of an upcoming global health crisis, therefore, implementing a four-staged crisis framework. We as a country or even as an individual could not be full-proofed prepared for every hurdle coming our way, however, one can formulate a necessity framework during such unparalleled times to ensure protection of one’s assets and a faster recovery. Henceforth, there is a need of revision and capacity building reforms at all levels to fight such pandemics with the effective collaboration between public–private along with potent use of ICT.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.