People are hurt.

Aspirations are confused.

Ambitions have turned reclusive.

It is about time the Corona Warriors make way for India’s “Trade, Commerce & Financial Soldiers” to re-enforce the economic foundation in the process of nation re-building.

The commerce in the country is not going to bounce back on day one post-lockdown. Hundreds of companies promising to migrate from China to India will not be setup in the first month following the lockdown. The glass furnaces of Ferozabad will take 7 days to reach their optimum temperature to commence any production. Businesses will need to evolve to absorb Social Distancing as a norm. New SOPs will need to be designed and customized. Newer policies around ‘Work from Home’ will need to be framed. Assembly lines, production, manufacturing, sales, banks, investors, buyers and people – everything and everyone needs re-course and re-engineering.

Therefore, we need to arm our “Trade, Commerce & Financial Soldiers” not only with fiscal packages but also with time, a-pause, a stand-down / cooling-off / gestation period, truce /amnesty / compounding schemes. We need to make room for industries, small businesses, startups and entrepreneurs to plan their re-building fearlessly. Fearless of the Banks, tax officers, Authorities, Regulators breathing down their necks. Fearless of becoming NPAs /defaulters / type-cast.

When mental, emotional and financial turmoil follows confusions and uncertainty, we need to take measures to foster trust – amongst people at large, in between institutions and citizens, trickling down from the top offices in the government to the man standing at the end of the line in a not-so-well-known part of the country.

Let our Corporate Soldiers know that their Nation, their Government believes in them, trusts them, has faith in them, is backing them up and most importantly; counts on them to re-build the economy, to generate jobs, to generate revenue and to unclog the wheel.

Unprecedented situations need unprecedented and creative solutions.

The system needs to introduce a“no-coercive action” Sectoral Policy for a predefined time period to help set the ball rolling backwards to the ‘Before Coronavirus’ days before leaping forward to the ‘After Coronavirus’ life.

Under the new set of rules, the re-building of economic foundation will take a long time because it would involve a new social process that just cannot be jump-started. We need to accept that for our Corporate Soldiers, choreographing normalcy by stitching the pieces together will take time. For some, a day. For some, a week. And for most, months or even a year depending upon the multiple sectoral dimensions that one operates in.

A time-limited “No-coercive action” policy / direction from the government to the tax department, banks, authorities, regulators etc. would not only set-off the gestation period required by our Corporate Soldiers to stand up and start running but would also sprout the missing environment of Regulatory-Trust, fostering a sense of responsibility. Elimination of the exuberantly lavish, litigation expenditure forecasted / budgeted towards establishing the complex contours of ‘force majeure’ clauses would remain the additional perk.

We may not be in a state to afford zero rate of interest / tax / recoveries, but, a “No-coercive action” policy / direction, can definitely head closer to that symbol we so proudly have invented. This itself could be a likely driver of any economic growth we foresee from here on.

We need relaxations, breathers and fearless time to put together the scattered pieces of the puzzle and structure the big picture all over again. I still wonder how big the big picture, this time, could be.

But then, it is healing time. Naturopathy takes time to restructure and recover holistically.