It took a while, but the counterfeit penny finally dropped. Demonetisation is like the IPL, and not just for the two obvious reasons: their architects who share a name, and the number of spinners in each.
If we finish with the same amount of money in circulation as we started with, the scheme is a failure, says an economist. No, says the party spokesman giving it a spin, that means the scheme is a success.
Demonetisation (hereafter to be affectionately called ‘demone’ to save space and breath), like the IPL, involves enormous amounts of money, has seen rules made and changed on the fly, shifted goalposts with ease, found loud drum-beaters, and led to predictable corruption. One architect was called ‘Moses’, known for parting the seas, while the other is credited with seizing the parts.
If IPL is ‘cricketainment’, demone might have been ‘ecotainment’ except for the current suffering and anticipated future suffering.
As the chaos increased, the government’s spinners said changes in rules showed the authorities were sensitive to the sentiments of the people. The IPL showed it was sensitive to the sentiments of the people by taking the tournament to South Africa.
Already there is no talk of terrorism or counterfeiting in the demone narrative, just as within days, the IPL’s stated purpose of bringing the cricketing world together was jettisoned. Harbhajan Singh slapping Sreeshanth ended that spin.
And then there are the figures being bandied about. Fourteen and a half lakh crores, 50 days, two lakh ATMs, 80 percent of goal, 0.01 percent drop in GDP. In the IPL, the figures are 4.13 billion dollars, 3.67 billion dollars. The Australian writer Gideon Haigh called it ‘asset valuation plucked from thin air’.
Demone spinners pluck figures from thin air too, pronouncing the scheme a success rather in the manner of declaring a student passed for the mere act of sitting down to write an exam.
If you didn’t agree with one Modi, you were anti-cricket, anti-growth and anti-innovation. If you don’t agree with the other, you are anti-national, corrupt and your mother is a foreigner.
Both demone and the IPL changed shape regularly as those in charge – the RBI and the BCCI respectively – abdicated responsibility in the hope of raking in the money with a Michael Jackson-like devotion to black or white.
Regulations changed faster than the notes in one case. In the other, notes helped change the regulations. Bank limits are increased or decreased, wedding allowances are changed, deadlines are shifted, exemptions are granted and ungranted. Indelible inks come and go. In the IPL, retention of players was added on, players were banned for trying to do what the IPL was doing, viz. make money, fresh breaks were introduced in the television coverage, conflicts of interest were explained away.
The one difference between the two is that while the queues for the IPL comprise smiling faces, those at banks don’t. The players laugh all the way to the bank; the citizens cry all the way away from the bank.
Suresh Menon is Contributing Editor, The Hindu
