News, Opinions & Updates

March 1, 2017

All the negative predictions about demonetization and the sort of negative impact it is going to have on BJP’s electoral fortunes and the Indian economy have fallen on their faces.

In state after state the BJP has been performing quite well – the Odisha and Mumbai election results, for example – and even in UP the party seems to be quite upbeat.

Whatever problems might the people of the state be facing due to mismanagement and corrupt administration, they don’t have any problem with demonetization.

A similar trend has been noticed in the Indian GDP growth rate. As you can read in this Live Mint link, India’s third quarter GDP grew by 7% in the December quarter, in the wake of demonetization.

The growth did slow down from the previous quarter, but the difference is just 0.4%. The growth logged in the second quarter of the fiscal year was 7.4%.

Could there be grounds for doubt about the way GDP is calculated? This Reuter link says that many economists are confused about the latest GDP results because they think that it’s not possible that demonetization had so little an effect on the overall GDP.

Well, what to believe and what not to believe depends a lot on the political and ideological side you stand on.

Here is another link from Live Mint about an interview with the Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen. In the interview he talks about his latest book, Collective Choice and Social Welfare, in which he argues that a democracy isn’t just about casting votes. It’s also about people arguing with each other.

There is nothing wrong in this argument. Of course people should be able to argue with each other and have open debates without being threatened and accused of communalism and this phobia and that phobia.

But then he says that the space for public reasoning has shrunk in India whereas, it’s totally the opposite that is happening. More people are able to express themselves. The Internet, especially social media, has democratised public discourse. No longer a particular clique can peddle its lies unchallenged. Every motivated propaganda is challenged. Every news that is suppressed is brought to the notice of the public. Every information that is being misrepresented, gets represented properly.

Noted lyricist Javed Akhtar condescendingly talked about “less literate” sportspersons talking about national issues and immediately had to face a backlash not just from the sports persons but also from general public. This couldn’t have happened in the “Golden Times” Amartya Sen talks of when they would have been no means for the sports persons to respond to Akhtar’s stupid retort.

It’s not that the space for arguing with each other is shrinking, it is expanding, and this is the real problem for people like Amartya Sen. Just imagine, a couple of decades ago, me publishing a newsletter that is sent to more than 500 people (at the time of writing this) and among them on an average 20% opening it and reading it, every day.

These intellectuals first fabricate a world and then they start creating stories and hypothesis around that world to such an extent that everybody starts believing that it is an actual world and the threats posed by this world are also actual.

Fortunately, contrary to what Amartya Sen says, the space for public reasoning is much expanded now and everybody can participate.