Inflation and COVID-19 Supply Chain Disruption

Introduction

The unexampled encounters and aftershocks, summoned by the novel corona virus disease 2019 (COVID 19) and the following robust pandemic, inflicted by it, has adduced a havoc disturbance to the entire gamut of normal activities in the lives of most individuals across nations. The darkest side of the disease is the sudden and pathetic blow of negative events, those followed one after the other, without giving a chance to the people to adjust to this level of adversity. As a consequence, it has created a significant and spasmodic chaos in the psychological, behavioural, social and economic facets of life, jeopardising the balance of the Gaia Paradigm of the planet. As the part of such disturbances, the devastating impact of overall Inflation with its obvious impression on the economy has to be undeniable and obvious along with many other domains across the border, as an aftermath. The reasons have been manifolded. One of such reasons is the house bound condition for most of the individuals without any voluntary socialising, barring a few into the emergency services. Thus, the nature of the expenditure pattern, which was solemnly dependent on the lavish and extravagant social lifestyles, was drastically hampered and dropped below the average for the last few decades. It clearly reflected on the gradual increase of Inflation rate, to strike a balance and to save the economy from an obvious descending condition. It is more explainable through the norms of intermittent Lockdowns and its impact on the social behaviour. Such erratic and unsure series of events made many individuals completely insecure with the fear of unemployability, pay cut, unnecessary transfer and many of the negative apprehensive scenarios. It was reflected and aggravated through the Government imposed social distancing norms, making people more mentally vulnerable and pushed them to find a psychological recluse through more of individual savings. Hence suddenly there was a decline in consumer expenditure with an unusual increase in individual savings, especially, due to lack of travelling and outdoor recreational cost (Dunn, Hood, and Driessen 2020). During this pandemic period, people have been more inclined towards buying necessary household items rather than engaging into impulse and fad buying.

The disruption of Supply Chain has been another detrimental outcome of the pandemic. On one side, it diminished the production by the sudden shut down of the manufacturing plants and on the other hand, the consumption pattern got curtailed due to less of outside visits and lack of spending due to aforementioned causes. The only aberration has been information technology and the related industry, flourishing with the advent of the stochastic employment and thereafter strengthening the online aka digitised dependence in every field of business transactions like medical, service, recreation, academia and most visibly in retail industry (Kwan and Mertens 2020).