Towards Complete Failure…

You know that the political leadership has reached the peak of corruptibility when the governed people look at every move and action with suspicion. I was speaking to a few random people and the Chidambaram comment of the weakening rupee not deserving the panic it is encountering came up for discussion. There were some opinions of intellectual sort and some kept quiet. The comment that stuck to my mind the most was the claim from one person, known as someone with significant optimism in general who said, "I am sure someone somewhere is making illegal money off of the rupee depreciation." This gentleman, while he had no plausible explanation of how anyone was making money but the conviction that some money was changing hands to allow for the weaker rupee, was absolute and unshakable.

And that’s proof that the country is in dire trouble. We have reached a stage with the current Indian government where the common average aam aadmi, the median that the government is so inclined to champion the cause of, begins suspecting your every move. Whether it is good for the country, bad for the country or anything in between, the average Indian has begun suspecting the very core of what holds together the democratic form of governance that is India. Too few people have spent too much effort in making too much of undeserved money over the last few years and this has led to a complete lack of belief and trust of the people in the system. And when the system established by and for the people, loses hope and faith of the people, democracy is cracking at the seams.

The problem is that the cracks do not span across a specific political party, leadership lobby or region. It spans across the ruling class irrespective of political ideologies or affiliations. So a change in leadership from one political tower to the other is not going to cement the cracks that are threatening to transform into crust shattering rifts. I do not know what the solution is. I have some inkling of what the outcomes might be.

Political Crisis is generally preceded in appearance by economic crises and plenty of this is available for introspection today if you take a look around. Economic crises also follow political downfalls because of the paralysis of policy, decision making and implementation. We have seen enough and more indicators of the Indian economy failing consistently – weakening currency, dropping credit ratings, slowing GDP growth, etc. No matter how much our leadership claims that the signs are not worth the panic and the world is slowing down and taking India down with it, the possible truth is that the leadership has no idea of why the world is spiraling out of control and even lesser idea of what can be done to stop the free fall.

And economic crisis is generally followed by unemployment, crime, civil unrest and eventually an absolute and complete socio-economic breakdown.