The Lockdown Panic: What March 2020 Taught Me About Collective Emotional Hijacking
When PM Modi announced the nationwide lockdown in March 2020, rational India briefly disappeared — replaced by hoarding, shoving, and 50-kilo rice bags. Here's what that mass panic teaches every professional about self-control on the EQ side of the Winning Kite.
On the night of March 24, 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a nationwide lockdown — and within hours, rational India briefly vanished. Grocery stores were swarmed, shelves stripped bare, social distancing forgotten, and neighbours who'd shared tea for years were suddenly elbowing each other over the last packet of atta. It wasn't a supply crisis. It was a self-control crisis — and it holds a lesson every professional needs to hear.
In short- The March 2020 lockdown panic wasn't a scarcity problem — it was millions of amygdalas overpowering millions of prefrontal cortexes at the same time.
- This is called emotional hijacking: your emotional brain floods your body with stress hormones and shuts down rational thinking, exactly like a hijacker taking over a plane's cockpit.
- Individual hijacking ruins careers (an angry email, a sudden resignation); collective hijacking can grip entire communities in hours.
- Self-control is Trait #4 on the EQ side of the Winning Kite — it's what separates people who react from people who respond.
- You build it the same way you build any muscle: awareness first, then a deliberate pause, then practice under real pressure.
Where this sits on your Winning Kite
Self-control is the fourth trait on the EQ (Emotional Intelligence) side — the left side — of the Winning Kite (KITE Leadership Framework). It sits right after Emotional Awareness (knowing what you feel) and Accurate Self-Assessment (knowing who you are). Once you know what you're feeling and why, self-control is what stops that feeling from hijacking your behaviour. Without it, even your strongest EQ, RQ or PQ traits can't save you from one impulsive moment.
The night the country got hijacked — together
I remember exactly where I was when the announcement came. Within minutes of the Prime Minister finishing his speech, WhatsApp groups exploded. By the next morning, queues had formed outside kirana stores before shutters were even up. People weren't buying groceries — they were buying against fear.
Families that needed 5 kilos of rice bought 50. People who'd never fought over anything in their lives were shoving strangers over the last bottle of hand sanitizer. Social distancing — the entire point of the lockdown — was the first casualty of the panic it triggered. Crowds swarmed grocery stores. Rational thinking disappeared. Fear took over, and for a few days, entire communities were experiencing what I call collective emotional hijacking.
Nobody planned to behave this way. Nobody sat down and rationally decided that hoarding ten times what they needed was a sound strategy. It happened because millions of individual brains, faced with a sudden and unfamiliar threat, defaulted to the same primitive survival response — at the same time, in the same country, within the same 48 hours.
The science: two boxers in your brain
To understand why an entire nation can behave like this in a matter of hours, you need to understand what's actually happening inside a single human brain under threat. Think of it as two boxers sharing one ring:
The Heavyweight — your emotional brain (the amygdala). Fast, powerful, and reactive. The moment it senses a threat — real or perceived — it floods your body with stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. Your heart races, your muscles tense, and your rational thinking shuts down.
The Featherweight — your rational brain (the prefrontal cortex). Slower, thoughtful, logical. This is the part of you that thinks through consequences, weighs decisions, and controls impulses.
Here's the problem: the heavyweight can knock out the featherweight any time it wants. Under extreme stress, fear, or humiliation, the emotional brain takes over completely. It grabs the rational brain by the throat and says, "I'm in charge now." Psychologists call this emotional hijacking — like a hijacker seizing the cockpit of a plane. Your emotions are flying the aircraft, and logic has been thrown out.
The heavyweight emotional mind can overpower the featherweight rational mind in seconds — that's emotional hijacking.Psychologist Daniel Goleman, whose work first popularised the term "emotional hijacking" in mainstream emotional intelligence research, describes this as the amygdala short-circuiting rational thought. I'll say it in plainer terms: when the heavyweight boxer lands a punch, the featherweight doesn't get a vote anymore.
When one person gets hijacked, careers end. When millions do, a country changes overnight
Individual emotional hijacking is dramatic enough on its own. Zinedine Zidane — France's captain, in his final match, the 2006 FIFA World Cup final against Italy — head-butted Marco Materazzi in the 110th minute after a verbal exchange. One moment of lost self-control, and a legendary career ended in disgrace instead of glory. Mike Tyson bit off part of Evander Holyfield's ear in their 1997 "Bite Fight" after Holyfield reignited memories of an earlier loss. Months of training, undone in seconds.
Closer to ordinary office life: Praful, exhausted after weeks of late nights, fired off a harsh, defensive email the moment his boss gave him constructive feedback. He regretted it the second he hit send — but the damage to his reputation and his relationship with his manager was already done. Sandesh, unhappy for months, snapped after one tough meeting and quit on the spot, no plan, no backup — only to realise later he had bills to pay and a family depending on him. In 2018, a teenager in Delhi, enraged after being overtaken on the road, chased down another car and shot the driver dead — over nothing more than a lane change. Even on the cricket field, Gautam Gambhir pushed Ambati Rayudu during a heated 2017 IPL exchange after Rayudu reportedly insulted his family; both were fined. In another high-pressure match, Pakistan's captain Sarfaraz Ahmed and his wicketkeeper let a misunderstanding over field placements spiral into open shouting, rattling the whole team and costing them the game.
Every one of these was a single heavyweight boxer knocking out a single featherweight. The lockdown panic showed something scarier: the same knockout, delivered simultaneously to an entire population. When fear is big enough and sudden enough, it doesn't need a boxing ring — it needs a WhatsApp forward and forty-eight hours.
What separates the panic-buyers from the Pujaras
Now flip to the other side of the coin — people who faced enormous pressure and didn't get hijacked. Cheteshwar Pujara, during India's historic 2020-21 Test series win in Australia, absorbed blow after blow from fast bowlers, refused even painkillers because he feared they'd dull his focus, and stayed at the crease for hours without losing his composure. Rahul Dravid earned the nickname "The Wall" as much for his emotional control against hostile bowling as for his batting technique. MS Dhoni, chasing a target in the pressure-cooker of the 2011 World Cup final, promoted himself up the order and played one of the calmest, most composed innings in cricket history while the rest of the country held its breath.
None of these people felt no pressure. They felt exactly the same fear, frustration, and adrenaline surge as everyone else. The difference is they didn't let the heavyweight boxer take the wheel. That's the entire definition of self-control: not the absence of emotion, but the presence of a pause between feeling and acting.
Employee A vs Employee B: the same gap, at your desk
| Employee A (Low Self-Control) | Employee B (High Self-Control) |
|---|---|
| Loses temper easily when plans go wrong | Stays calm even when frustrated or stressed |
| Sends angry emails or messages in the heat of the moment | Pauses before responding to difficult emails or situations |
| Snaps at colleagues under stress | Manages stress without taking it out on others |
| Makes impulsive decisions without weighing consequences | Thinks through decisions carefully, even under pressure |
| Quits projects or jobs when frustrated | Persists through challenges without giving up impulsively |
The lockdown panic was Employee A's playbook, run at national scale. It didn't happen because Indians are irrational people — it happened because fear had no outlet for a pause. There was no time to think, only time to react, and reaction is exactly what the heavyweight boxer specialises in.
Building self-control at work: the practical steps
Developing self-control starts with the two traits that come before it on the Winning Kite — Emotional Awareness and Accurate Self-Assessment. When you understand what you're feeling and why, you're already halfway to managing it. From there:
1. Name it before you act on it. The instant you notice your heart racing or your face flushing, silently label the emotion: "I'm angry," "I'm scared," "I'm humiliated." Naming an emotion engages the rational brain and slows the hijacking down — this is close to what psychologist Daniel Goleman calls affect labelling.
2. Build in a mandatory pause. Drafted an angry email? Save it. Don't send for at least an hour — ideally overnight. Praful's story would have ended differently with one delay.
3. Think brake and accelerator, not just accelerator. Self-control isn't suppression. It's knowing when to speed up and when to slow down, the way you'd drive a car in heavy traffic — not stalling, just not flooring it either.
4. Rehearse your triggers. If public criticism, tight deadlines, or difficult customers reliably knock you off balance, plan your response before you're in the room. Pujara didn't discover his discipline mid-innings — he built the habit long before the ball was bowled.
5. Debrief after the storm. Whether it's a bad meeting or a national crisis, look back afterward and ask what triggered the reaction and what you'd do differently. This is how individuals — and organisations — build resilience for the next shock.
These are exactly the kind of practical, EQ-first tools I work through with teams in my Signature Programs and in leadership workshops across corporate training topics — because self-control isn't a personality trait some people are born with. It's a skill, and like any skill, it strengthens with deliberate practice.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is emotional hijacking?
Emotional hijacking is when your amygdala (emotional brain) overpowers your prefrontal cortex (rational brain) under threat, fear, or stress, causing you to react impulsively instead of thinking clearly. The term was popularised by psychologist Daniel Goleman.
How did the March 2020 lockdown announcement cause collective emotional hijacking?
When PM Modi announced the nationwide lockdown, fear of scarcity overrode rational thinking for millions of people simultaneously. Crowds swarmed grocery stores, people bought 50 kilos of rice when they needed 5, fought over hand sanitizer, and abandoned social distancing — proof that emotional hijacking can spread through entire communities, not just individuals.
Where does self-control sit in the Winning Kite framework?
Self-control is Trait #4 on the EQ (Emotional Intelligence) side — the left side — of the Winning Kite. It builds on Emotional Awareness and Accurate Self-Assessment, the first two traits, and is essential for the EQ, RQ and PQ balance that produces Success at the top of the kite.
How can professionals build self-control under pressure at work?
Start with emotional awareness — name what you're feeling before you act on it. Pause before responding to triggering emails or comments. Practise the 'brake and accelerator' habit of deliberately slowing down under stress. Reflect after high-pressure moments to spot your triggers, and build routines (like Cheteshwar Pujara's discipline) that keep you steady when the pressure is highest.
Related Articles by Avinash Chate
- Employee A vs Employee B: The Conscientiousness Gap That Decides Who Becomes Indispensable
- Sarfaraz Ahmed & the Wicketkeeper: When a Captain Loses His Cool
- Emotional Awareness: The First Trait of Workplace Stars
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