It was always playing on my mind for the past entire year. I did have a couple of interesting discussions with my mom on this – instead of locking the entire country in March 2020, what if we could have locked up the airline sector from January 20 itself? We did have reports about the foreign virus spreading super fast around the world – we could have stopped the incoming and outgoing flights then and there itself. This would also have limited the resulting damage to our economy and our citizens. The proverb we all learn in school – Prevention is better than cure – could have been put in use. So why couldn’t we see and apply the most logical things?
Indeed, we can always think and say this in hindsight, what if?
For over an entire year now, I couldn’t find any valid arguments to answer the above question. Some of the valid theories that I thought are below :
- We were confident of the ability to handle the virus onslaught
- The nation-wide lockdown argued well against this statement
- There would be lobbying by global world and especially the airline industry that India is taking a very pre-mature decision against a little known virus.
- Considering the fact that developed countries can take their safety first, why couldn’t India do that as well?
- The entire transport, tourism, hospitality industry would have blasted the government for taking the decision which would wipe out a commendable portion of their business :
- Considering the hit the leisure industry has seen for the past year, this hit for a quarter or two would have been minuscule. See the numbers below of major airlines for the last 1 year and compare them with the hit India’s GDP got:
- Airline Total Market Cap and Revenues:
| Sr No. | Airlines | Market Capitalization (crores) | Annual Revenues (crores) (2019-20) |
| 1 | Indigo | 64,853 | 35,756 |
| 2 | Spice Jet | 4582 | 12,374 |
| 3 | Jet Airways | 1011 | 23,286 (2017-18) |
- India Real GDP and % decline yoy:
| Sr No. | Year | Real GDP (lacs crores) | % drop |
| 1 | 2019-20 | 143 | |
| 2 | 2020-21 | 134 | -7.7 |
Comparing the numbers, the partial closure (international operations) of airline companies would have been minuscule to the hit that India’s GDP took over the next year. There would be arguments over unemployment and stuff, but would you rather have an industry becoming dormant or the entire country?
The second and third reason do hold some argument but I still fail to believe that the top officials would be under such pressure to take this steps. We have seen instances wherein they have taken tough decisions – demonetization, lockdown, etc. Banning international flight operations would have been a lot easier than making your own citizens and country to go through the once-in-a-century crisis we find ourselves today in.
My aha moment came this week from an article by Vivek Kaul in Mint. And I quote him here:
“as Niall Ferguson writes in his book Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe: Leaders are rarely rewarded for what they did to avoid disasters – for the non-occurrence of a disaster is rarely a cause for celebration and gratitude. The reason for this lies in the fact that what has not happened cannot be seen. And how do citizens judge what they haven’t seen. This is precisely why most politicians like to be seen doing things when disaster strikes.”
“As Bourne writes: Voters tend to reward those who react to crises dishing out relief, but do not reward those who prevent the worst outcomes from crises by preparing.”
I had got my answer. Two lessons that I learnt from this:
- Humans, no matter how much forecasting we do, would behave irrationally even in crises
- There is no use of the the age old proverbs that we learn in school if we can’t apply them in real life
For us, Prevention is not better than cure.
Sources:
Infinitum 