Leadership in the age of pandemics

New york skyline

ONE of the upsides of the lockdown is that one gets to read books that one should read but never had the time for.

Former deputy chairman of India’s Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwahlia’s new book, Backstage: The Story Behind India’s High Growth Years, is an illuminating inside picture about how leaders emerge at a time of crisis. I will review his book in a forthcoming article but his brilliant quote of Italian political philosopher Machiavelli is spot on for this age of pandemics:

“At the beginning, a disease is easy to cure but difficult to diagnose but as time passes, not having been treated or recognised at the outset, it becomes easy to diagnose but difficult to cure. The same thing occurs in affairs of state. By recognising from afar the diseases that are spreading in the state (which is a gift given only to a prudent ruler) they can be cured quickly. But when they are not recognised and left to grow to the extent that everyone recognises them, there is no longer any cure.”