Undeniably there are many reasons for the world to forget 2020 as a bad dream, wake up with 2021 and move on with life. However, with every challenge also comes an opportunity to become better for the future. Pandemic 2020 too has given the human race many opportunities to evolve for making the world a better place. Let's examine a few of these.

Leadership
Pandemic 2020 has been a surreal test of true leadership at every level – national, business, social, family and at the level of every individual. Leadership is a composite phenomenon and is made up of various attributes but two key ones which define it in every situation are – clarity of vision and intent to execute it. Pandemic 2020 gave no chance for complacency to anyone for these filters. Whether you are responsible for many to millions, your family or only yourselves it was imperative for you to understand the nature of the challenge and take necessary action to safeguard against the same. Pandemic 2020 has humbled the entire humanity and forced us to appreciate what matters the most and more importantly put into action to protect what matters. It has certainly made the world more responsive and responsible at the same time. At the end of the day the quality of life in the world is the sum total of the collective thinking and action of the entire human race. It doesn't matter whether it is top down or bottom up – both could influence each other. Thanks to Pandemic 2020 humanity has grown which will help in making the world more liveable.

Moments of Truth
Challenges create a platform for the opportunity of rightfully responding to them. They provide us the battleground to take the right action which becomes part of our life memory staying with us for life. Pandemic 2020 gave us a golden opportunity to test ourselves on so many counts – patience, risk taking, conscience and character. In some situations, we all had the choice to protect the jobs and the livelihood of our staff whether at office or at home. Life offers us an interesting paradox whereby one person's expense is another person's income. Pandemic 2020 gave us once in a lifetime chance to make the choice between cutting down our expenses or protecting someone's income. In the choice that we would have made Pandemic 2020 revealed to us our true character which is going to stay with us for life. In other situations, we had the choice of making sure that the show must go on even if the stage has shifted to home and zoom. It was clearly a choice between adapting to the new playing conditions or accepting the limitations as the hurdles to deliver on our responsibilities. Basis the choices that we would have made it would have revealed to us whether we could rise to the occasion or not when it was needed the most, something which too is going to stay with us for life.

Whichever side of the divide we stood the conscious choices that we made during the testing moments of truth offered to us on a platter by the Pandemic 2020 will only make us a better human beings going forward. If we were on the compassionate side we have already tasted fruits of a purposeful life and if we missed the bus this time it would compel us not to miss it next time. Pandemic 2020 has left the world more compassionate, more united, more collaborative than ever before.

Science
Thanks to Pandemic 2020 the speed of change for the better has only accelerated. Pushed against time the ingenuity of the human race has delivered in less than a year what it would have taken few years to produce in the pre-pandemic world. Vaccine discovery is a clear winner which is an incredibly great news for the health of the global society. Another winner is the rapid testing technology which could bring an end to the pandemic faster than even the vaccines. A healthy society is more productive and therefore better and faster healthcare innovations are only going to catalyse towards a more prosperous world. Information technology is another winner here as Pandemic 2020 gave an unimaginable opportunity to various virtual technology platforms to become the cog in the wheel to keep the world moving. While an immediate opportunity was that the world kept on moving instead of coming to a grinding halt in the medium to longer term this is going to have a significant and far reaching impact on the improvement in the efficiency and productivity of the global society. Whether it's the future of work or future of business travel output per unit of time is only going to multiply if not fly. A healthy world which isn't out of play and producing more in lesser time is only going to reflect in higher growth leading to more wealth creation and therefore a more prosperous world. We could see the growth in 20s what might have been seen in the 30s of the 21st century. Therefore, we might have lost growth in one year but it may get more than compensated by probably a faster growth of 20 years in 10 years.

Friends, on this hopeful note and with a sense of immense gratitude let's say goodbye to 2020. I am already looking forward to step into the 20s with only hope and no fear. Thank you for being around and staying on the course with your belief for better times to come.

Signing off for 2020 with warmest wishes, love and affection for a wonderful 2021.