Red Volunteers in West Bengal: Lessons for Public Leadership in a Pandemic

Abstract

Pandemic COVID-19 has transformed our understanding of established notions of leadership and management for tackling emergency situations where the public themselves becomes the cause and bears the effect of it. This study on Red Volunteers in West Bengal provides a ready example of how public management can be created at the local level (neighbourhood/ para) to tackle the spread and veracity of a pandemic. The success of Red Volunteers lies on three pillars: (a) reflecting discontent with government initiatives due to corruption, nepotism and red-tapism, (b) presence of the youth which instils hope and confidence, and (c) factual happenings of service distribution at the ground level. The article concludes by arguing that the future public leadership for the pandemic must arise voluntarily taking into account its context and culture. The experience of a pandemic reflects that leadership must emerge from the society with a new grammar of management, namely, distributing services and goods tuned to sudden requirements of the public.