RUPEE FALLS WHILE ANNA FIDDLES!

SUNNY THOMAS

Absolutely absurd! The fall of the rupee has nothing to do with Anna’s fasting. But as if by a conspiracy of circumstances, both happened to make news almost the same time. Team Anna’s irresistible desire to occupy PMO without an election is taking all shapes and dimensions. But the Indian Constitution has no provision for a self-appointed Gandhian to take over the reins of the country via television channels.

Can you think of someone who promised so much and delivered so little as Anna, once deemed a new avatar of Gandhi! His thunder, without wisdom and power, sounds hollow; his utterances have the ring of the Greek oracle, but without its prophetic quality. The immortal Charlie Chaplin made his audience laugh because of the incongruity of his comedy shows: the pretensions and ground reality that Anna present creates a ripple effect that could make him immortal, too!

Between market failures and government failures, you have nothing to choose from. They are the two sides of the falling rupee. Money, the missing link between macroeconomics and microeconomics, is the least understood of commodity.

The running inflation over the last one year has deprived the middle class of their purchasing power. People don’t buy when they have no money to buy, and the domestic demand falls. When no one buys automobiles, (dream) houses, refrigerators, chocolates and ice-creams, the producers whittle down their production. And inevitably, the industrial production comes down.  Precisely then, the Doctor prescribes a steep hike in petrol prices, and wonders what on earth has the market done to the economy!

When exports are shrinking, trade deficit is widening, budget deficit yawning, the rupee can only plunge. Elementary, Dr Manmohan Singh! The startling revelation by Vayalar Ravi and A K Antony that contrary to public perception, the oil companies have been making profits, not losses, should present us the larger picture. Almost everyone, from Suresh Kalmadi to Ashok Chavan to oil companies seems to be misleading poor Manmohan Singh who is obsessed with a 10% growth rate. 

On the battlefield, Napoleon felt devilishly thirsty and asked for a jug of water. As he lifted the jar, he saw a dying soldier looking longingly at the jar. Like a true leader, Napoleon commanded, ``Give him the water, his need is greater’’.    

If you say, ``The greed of the multinationals is greater than the need of the crushed middle class,’’ you got it right. Now you know why the rupee is falling!

``My greatest dream in life is to become a trade union leader and lead a strike,’’ said the 12-year-old Appu Kuttan, studying in a government school in Kochi! Teenagers living in metros like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore or Chennai have better career sense and aspirations because of their exposure.  

Non-Metro teenagers, especially from the neglected sector, choose the wrong role models, grow up misguided and become cannon fodder for violent ideologies that cast a spell over them. Education has imparted little enlightenment or a vision to meet the future challenges of life. Most of them pass out with no idea what to do with their lives! 

  

Why, in law-abiding Chennai, a student stabbed to death his teacher (Uma Maheswari, 39) because she reprimanded him the previous day. The catalogue of crimes in God’s own country makes a horror reading: a lady doctor (Tinku Edwin) who refused to treat a man was stabbed ten times in Thrissur; a 35-year-old woman (Smitha) returning home from work at 7 pm was dragged to a marshy place, raped and left to die in Kayamkulam; a young girl, the only bread winner of her poor family (Soumya, 24), was pushed out of the ladies’ compartment, raped and left to die in a jungle. Hiring `contract killers’ to eliminate business and political rivals is in keeping with the violent political system of Kerala. It beats even Devil’s own record when a senior Marxist party member made a public statement admitting the party’s role in plotting a series of political murders.

L K Advani and Sushma Swaraj were not seen at the BJP rally while Arvind Kejriwal was untraceable at the latter half the Jantar Mantar road show. But don’t read too much into the misses. They were just on casual leave!