In this day and age of instant ideological gratification from across the aisle in the form of loaded opinion pieces, it is hard to find true intellectual refuge - a place where one can consume a perspective without looking at the name of the author. After
ghar-wapsi and award-
wapsi, we now have note-
wapsi. The backdrops have changed, but the actors who orchestrate and build a frenzy around an issue have sustained. The government's demonetization exercise has provided yet another opportunity to all ideological foot-soldiers to pander to their respective viewpoints at the cost of rationale. This has resulted in a flurry of ill-thought out articles, which are deceiving the public in name of "expert opinion".
Opinions, rather strong preconceived notions, etched in bold headlines have been gutted out on social media feeds. Let us analyze some of the headlines that have come up recently on the demonetization issue that boast of giving a critical overview of the announcement - "
PM Modi 'Masterstroke' On Notes Backfires", "
Why The Demonetisation Drive Violates Our Fundamental Right to Life" and one goes to the extent of saying "
Narendra Damodardas Modi - A Failure". I genuinely wonder what is the extreme hurry of writing off someone or his policies outright. While the jury is still out, calling it an open and shut case of "failure" shows little concern of the issue at hand, but more that criticism needs to be done for the sake of critique.
No living political or economic analyst has ever experienced an event of this scale ever in their lives. It is an expanse of the unknown. Therefore, all commentaries are based on probables and not factuals. No matter how well thought out a step this would have been, an exercise of this scale would have encountered several boundary cases that had to be dealt with on a real-time basis. But to treat the boundary cases as a true representative of the overall scenario and mocking the government as "going in circles", for example, with its shifting exchange limit, is just ludicrous.
Commentators, editors and also journalists should know that "correlation doesn't imply causation". Two events occurring
together need not have a cause-and-effect relationship. Articles like
this which claim that 25 people have died due to demonetization reeks of this (intentional) logical fallacy. With a little enquiry, it was established that demonetization was
wrongly blamed for the recent deaths. It is indeed criminal to add more confusion to an already panic-struck public. But who will ask for accountability from opinionated opinion-makers? The fact is, there is a large chunk of the population which is looking for a nuanced critique and viewpoint, but perhaps even stalwarts among the intellectuals sitting on either side of the ideological fence have failed to provide a balanced, non-judgemental and true economic critique of the situation.
Several commentaries have suddenly started differentiating unaccounted wealth from unaccounted income generation. While the demonetization exercise was planned to clean up cash-based unaccounted wealth as an
initial measure, is it fair to assume that there would be no follow-up measures from the government? Or that the government will willfully not close the gaps leading to fresh generation of black money? Should the government not be given a chance to lay out its future additional policy measures after this transition period? When the government has hinted at next set of measures like targeting the
benami properties and pushing for state funding of polls, jumping the gun only demonstrates deep partisanship in the analyses of the intent of the government to fight corruption.
In an alarmist tone, Pratap Bhanu Mehta offers a fresh cocktail of -isms in this article "
You have been warned". Mehta lays out an exaggerated sense of moral worth of the middle class by calling them "ordinary citizens". As if they are the most compliant and law-abiding subjects of state. Black money is a public scourge, not the ailment of a few hundred ultra-rich defaulters at the top. It requires a cultural change of society, not induced behavioral change of a few. Moreover, Mehta refuses to account for any moral aspirations a society may have and shuns it as an attempt towards "puritanism". While he does say that a move as large as demonetization is a public project, he refuses to acknowledge that public projects with an intent of public good require public engagement of a moral plane. Be it Mahatma Gandhi with his non-cooperation movement, or Lal Bahadur Shastri with his appeal to the public for Monday fasting, such large public projects have required self-sacrifice and the public enthusiastically participated in it.
What is so inherently wrong for a society to collectively bear the hardships for a public good which we ourselves demanded? By bringing in the reference to the Morality Play tradition popular in Europe during the 15th-16th centuries, what Mehta achieved was literary clout among his followers without contributing much to the ongoing debate.
While the government realizes the implementational challenges opening up in new avenues every day, it has shown nimbleness in adjusting to the new realities and facts. Calling it "ill-thought" does no good to help the government officials working day and night, taking stock of the situation. Neither does it help the public, already under the influence of such a great degree of rumor-mongering. My humble suggestion is that when the government seems flexible to acknowledge the problems and collect as much feedback, we should assist with healthy criticism and creative solutions. While we just cannot expect our political dispensation to rise above partisanship on any issue whatsoever, can we not expect some rationality from our expert commentators?
(Rajat Sethi is affiliated to the BJP. He is a public policy graduate from Harvard Kennedy School and a Senior Research Fellow at India Foundation.)Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of NDTV and NDTV does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.