Democracy is dead, long live democracy

Demonetization is killing us, slowly, but surely; and the checks and balances aren’t working

Why cry over spilled milk? It can’t be drunk, and it go back into the carton either. The option is to buy another carton, I guess. But what happens when there aren’t any more cartons of milk in the market and the cows refuse to give you more than a pint a day? Not a very happy scenario, I guess. You can go hungry or you can shift to other, less wholesome food categories. That would be possible, won’t it?

Now replace ‘milk’ with ‘cash’, the scene immediately becomes murky. How do you transfer money electronically to a cow (read, the unconnected people, small businessmen of India, no disrespect meant to them, of course), and, technically, you cannot get more milk from a cow if she has not produced any herself. Here, of course, you replace ‘cow’ with ‘bank’ or even the Reserve Bank of India (I will not disengage myself from this with any disclaimer).

The Indian economy was not built in a day, even the British, in their wayward ways, could not destroy it, though they did reduce the GDP from around a fourth of the world economy to single digits. The BJP-led government in India has done better; they have rendered the entire country completely ‘sick’. Their holy cow isn’t being able to serve the humans they were supposed to.

I called a friend in Kolkata to ask how her business was doing in this mess. Her reaction was “business, what business”? “We have  produced as per orders and we have no money to buy more raw materials, with an export order coming up. At the same time, our clients, who mostly deal in cash, because they are small manufacturers, cannot pick up their orders. They have been reduced to sitting on their hands, so have we,” she said.

So why don’t they transfer the money electronically as our great Hon’ble Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and our greater Hon’ble Prime Minister Narendra Modi have suggested? “They won’t, because that would involve large activity in the bank, a [place where they can’t even get into, avoiding the serpentine queues. They would rather wait for the mess to clear.”

Hmmm. So the mess will clear? My guess is, the immediate long queues at the banks you shorten, but small manufacturers like my friend will permanent remain in the red, because their inventory will remain unsold and, with time, unsuitable for reuse. That would because the end user would have had to adjust their priorities too. Will the great government take care of these micro manufacturers’ unsold inventory? Will they allow huge sops for them to get over the sudden poverty that all were put through?

They won’t. They would be more interested in the upcoming elections in the north Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Punjab. They would be rejoicing at political gains, while the common man gasps for breath. Was this why this republic was born? You crush to dust the hopes and aspirations of the huge majority to catch a few economic miscreants? Is this why we are supposed to respect our constitution which, for starters, guaranteed us the right to live? Who gave the government the authority to unleash this on us?

That’s how I come to checks and balances that could exist for the crazy minds in government that might, yet another day, take away most of our fundamental rights.

The Republic was built on a few solid pillars. The judiciary happens to be one of them. We have seen a great deal of judicial overreach in recent times, the latest being a strange dictat that movie halls must play the national anthem before a movie, with doors shut. This is a time when people are crying for a little help to survive. This is not the time for our courts to indulge in petty ideological gimmicks (with all respect to the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India).  Was it not possible for the court to intervene for the people, for once, to relieve some of their pain? This cesspool economics of the government will leave people in ruins.

The first line of checks, therefore, clearly will not bother to save us.

What about the next? The media? A BJP representative, appearing on a show on India Today Television, said ‘so what if there is no cash? We can use plastic? We all have plastic!’ Really? For the poor villager ‘plastic’ means a thin polythene carry bag. Times Now super anchor Arnab  Goswami was breathing fire not so long ago, supporting the great move  of the BJP. Of course, he has just got a better offer (probably for Trump-supporter Fox) and is out, but his diatribe has remained with us.

The media will not help either, it seems, except some who, I must say, try hard, but maybe won’t really matter.

Where is the next check? This is a democracy, stupid, there is an opposition, isn’t there? But look around, the cries are muted, except for West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s. She is being dismissed. The political opposition won’t help.

So where do we go?

We are back at the cow story, the holy cow story.

We are not allowed to eat the cow, or use its entrails for business. So that option does not exist. The system has locked you in and won’t let go. Let us live  with hope, let us believe  in a better world, somewhere out there. Let us set up new checks and balances so that no more draconian measures are put in place to screw us all, all over again.

Democracy is dead, long live democracy.