Navigating the New Normal

Several senior governmental officials and representatives of partnering organisations led the campaign's virtual launch. As many as 92,000 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and civil society organisations (CSOs) working with NITI Aayog also participated in the webcast. These groups might be better positioned to reach populations of special concern to Navigating the New Normal organisers: economically poor labourers (e.g., in small factories), who comprise a large part of India's vulnerable population, to whom the campaign messages must penetrate.

Informed by behavioural insights, the campaign aims to provide people with prompts and reminders along with simple, easy-to-practice ideas of designing their environment in such a manner that practising COVID-19-protective behaviours becomes second nature. The campaign has two parts: (i) a web portal, containing resources (e.g., posters and videos) in many different Indian languages, informed by behavioural science and the use of nudge and social norms theory, and (ii) media outreach focused on the wearing of masks.

Specifically, developed in consultation with Ministry of Health and other stakeholders, the Navigating the New Normal portal aims to increase public participation and engage CSOs, NGOs, anganwadi workers, and others by providing a repository of open-access strategies, guidelines, and resources around practising 4 key behaviours in the unlock phase: mask-wearing, social distancing, hand hygiene, and refraining from spitting. The materials are organised into specific sectors: health, nutrition, and public transport (in metro cities). The hope is that, guided by this information, institutions and CSOs can plan to resume their normal activities while practising COVID-19-safe behaviours.

In addition, mass media is used to instruct Indians about the correct way to wear masks, a behaviour that has become a socially accepted norm in countries such as Japan and South Korea. The campaign's core approach is to suggest that people remind each other, in a somewhat in-your-face way, to wear a mask. The posters and anthem are aimed not at those who do not wear a mask but those who do, asking them to prompt those who do not. Part of the campaign is a film conceptualised by McCann Worldgroup India that features children spreading the word in the form of a jingle: "mask nahi toh tokenge" (if you're not wearing a mask you'll be reprimanded). Such messages aim to give a nudge towards desired social behaviour in which the enforcement burden shifts from the government to the citizens.

The campaign's 4R behavioural model is based on building collective responsibility to respectfully remind and reprimand others on the COVID-19-protective behaviours:

• Responsibility: Strengthening collective citizen compliance and enforcement, as the country unlocks and the responsibility on citizens to enforce the COVID-19-protective behaviours increases
• Reminders: Sparking people's memory of the expected COVID-19-protective behaviours and the substance of the behaviour through gentle and subtle reminders
• Reprimands: Building community consensus around failure to practice the acceptable social norms around COVID-19-protective behaviours
• Respect: Suggesting that reminders and reprimands be done respectfully by addressing the non-compliers with a title of respect (Sir/Madam)

Health