India Is Experiencing An Outbreak of “Outbreaks”
It is raining “Outbreaks” in India.
We have had several outbreaks in quick succession since the beginning of 2020 starting from New Delhi mob outbreak against NRC, to COVID-19 outbreak, to Migrants outbreak, to Locusts outbreak, to Chinese outbreak or aggression at the border, to Emotional & stress outbreak.
We are still in the middle of the year and God forbid how many more outbreaks we will be experiencing or witnessing.
What we need now is a break/brake from outbreaks followed by breakthroughs in technology to combat outbreaks.
What exactly is an “Outbreak” ?
According to me, an outbreak is nothing short of a revolution ; In fact both are more or less similar by nature except for a qualitative difference or distinction.
When revolution takes an ugly turn, it becomes an Outbreak.
Outbreaks are sudden, spontaneous & impulsive resulting from cause & effect principle, provocation and even enticement.
It is difficult to predict an ensuing outbreak ; they originate suddenly on their own from nowhere with the singlemost agenda of causing extensive damage & destruction to the society.
The tenure of outbreaks can vary from short duration to longer duration depending on how effective we are in applying “brakes” to a given outbreak ; when there is a failure or delay in applying brakes, it can lead to a catastrophe and even extinction of a Civilization.
In fact it is opined that Indus valley civilization became extinct or got totally wiped out from the face of the earth on account of an unmanageable unknown outbreak (such was the magnitude) which is still a mystery !
Real & true disaster management is all about having a “sixth sense or a dog’s instinct” in order to anticipate or guess the arrival of an outbreak, so as to be in a state of complete preparedness for timely interventions and swift action to neutralise or minimise the damage.
The whole purpose is to “nip it in the bud” before the outbreak assumes dangerous and demonic proportion.
I still remember the 3 golden rules that I learnt during my professional training stint at Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI), Hyderabad and the essence of the training program was on “ how to deal with scientific problems that emerge in the field of duty — effective troubleshooting practices”.
In the first lecture of the first session, our management guru (presently he is the Director of IIT Kharagpur) came straight to the whiteboard and wrote the following 3 golden rules :
● Do not underestimate the enemy
● Do not overestimate the enemy
● Do not ignore the enemy
My parting slogan : Identify, respect and destroy the enemy!
