The Crocodile theory and PM’s tears

Why Narendra Modi has been weeping? Because he can no longer afford to smile

There goes a Crocodile theory, but it has apparently nothing to do with the old adage of Crocodile tears, so what if the Prime Minister of India recently has been shedding tears, little too often for even his hardcore fans’ likings.

The Crocodile theory has more to do with a joke instead and the joke goes : “The king wanted to kill a Crocodile so he ordered to drain the pond. But what happened was that Crocodile smilingly shifted his way to an another swamp and all the small fishes got killed.”

This is what has been happening in India ever since the now infamous demonetization drive of NDA Government took place. No wonder Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been weeping. Because in an electoral democracy, based on popular mandate, no head of state can afford to smile for long, when the large masses are shedding tears, and real ones at that, not the Crocodile tears.

The stats say it all. Ever since the fateful night of November 8, when Prime Minister of India declared demonetization in some spectacularly chest-thumping way, the government of the day has only managed to release the currency notes worth Rs 1.36 lakh crore, which is less than 10% of the value rendered illegal by the demonetisation. And as “Times of India” writes in it’s editorial, India's cash requirement is estimated at Rs 10 lakh crore, which will need seven more weeks to be met if currency notes are released at the current rate. Well, in which case, what we are staring at is a Quixotic tragedy of epic proportions. As Ivan Turgenev had put it so eloquently, “It it wasn’t so ridiculous it would have been absolute tragic!” Well, it still can be.

So why the jingoistic Prime Minister of India has been weeping? Because he has no other option left. Only it is yet to be make out if he is weeping for the foreboding or for the lack of better judgement. Foreboding that the political fallout of demonetization can crush his party to the dust, while he was dreaming to win the nation’s heart by taking a supposedly brave decision, lack of better judgement that it will he hard for him to forget that when all was going fine, it was him, who messed up the whole financial system with a whimsical move, which he could not well have taken at all and instead had gone for a peaceful sleep on the fateful night of 9/11, not to mention to let others sleep peacefully too.

For instance, what will happen when it will dawn upon the people of India, that all the sufferings and sacrifices that they are being subjected to, is not such a big national service after all. That the benefits of the demonetization are still hard to see on the surface. That the rich and mighty of India have barely lost sleep over this and it is them, the small people of the Republic, who have been made to stand in queue like cattles all day long to get their own hard-earned money. This humiliation belongs to them, not to the rich and mighty. That in a system as corrupt and as rotting as India’s, it is almost impossible to take such steps, which make small fishes suffer less and the big fishes more. The big fishes, or rather the large crocodiles, are apparently smilingly shifting their way to other swamps and the smaller fishes are being drilled and grilled at the altar of political wisdom, or rather lack of it, of the Union Government of India.

An economy, which was cruising with flying colors, has literally come to a halt, a stand-still. The fallouts of it can be dreadful. If the panic sets in and the emergency impulses wake up in the economy, India can return twenty years back in history, into those dreaded pre-globalization days. The cash currency, the lifeline of Indian economy, is being drained by a thoughtless decree and people are left to fend for themselves. The large masses, who suddenly have to care for not only earning their livelihood but also to get their savings changed to effective currency to fulfill their immediate requirement, these same large masses can turn the tables on them when they will get their chance. Narendra Modi, the supposedly shrewd and astute politician, may have just committed a political hara-kiri here and the consequences can shake up the Indian socio-economic structures and power-balance in Capitol.

The game has just began, said Narendra Modi in Goa with a pinch of emotional appeal. Well, maybe, it could just be the beginning of a long decline as well.