Mr Chief Economic Advisor, Printing Money is Always a Bad Idea.

The Economic Survey for 2020-21 was published yesterday. I wrote a summary of the survey titled 10 major points made by the Economic Survey.

It wasn’t possible to even speed-read the whole Survey quickly, hence, I missed out on a few points, and am writing about them here. This piece is a follow up and I strongly recommend that you read the first piece before reading this one.

Let’s look at some important points made in the Survey.

1) The spread of corona has led to a massive economic contraction this year. While the growth is expected to bounce back over the next few years, the impact of this year’s contraction isn’t going to go away in a hurry.

As per the Survey, if India grows by 12% in 2021-22 and 6.5% and 7%, in 2022-23 and 2023-24, respectively, the Indian economy will be at around 91.5% of where it would have possibly been if there would have been no covid and no economic contraction, and India would have continued to grow at 6.7% per year on an average, as it has in the five years before 2020-21.

At 10% growth in 2021-22, and 6.5% and 7% growth in 2022-23 and 2023-24, respectively, the Indian economy will be at around 90% of where it could have possibly been, the Survey points out.

This is an important point that we need to understand. While, 2021-22 might see a double digit growth, covid has put us back by more than half a decade, if we look at trend growth.

2) The Economic Survey recommends money printing to finance higher government expenditure. Call me old school, but I always feel uncomfortable when economists recommend outright money printing to fund government expenditure. Of course, there is always a theoretical argument on offer.

The Survey refers to a speech made by Patrick Bolton, a professor of business at Columbia University in New York, to make the money printing argument and why money printing, where an excess amount of money chases a similar amount of goods and services, doesn’t always lead to inflation.

As the Survey points out:

“Printing more money can result in inflation and loss of purchasing power for domestic residents if the increase in money supply is larger than the increase in output….Printing more money does not necessarily lead to inflation and a debasement of the currency. In fact, if the increased money supply creates a disproportionate increase in output because the money is invested to finance investment projects with positive net present value.”

What does this mean in simple English? The Survey is essentially saying that if the printed money is well utilised and put into projects which are beneficial for the society, it benefits everyone, and doesn’t lead to inflation.

The trouble is a lot of things sound good in theory. One of the major things that the bad loans crisis of Indian banks teaches us is that the Indian system cannot take a sudden increase in investments. There is only so much that it can handle and that’s primarily because there is too much red tapism and bureaucracy involved in getting any investment project going. We are still dealing with the fallout of this a decade later.

Also, how do the government and bureaucrats ensure that the amount of money being printed is just enough and will not lead to inflation. (Central planning keeps coming back in different forms).

The government can print money and spend it. This can ensure one round of spending and the money will land up in the hands of people. Also, as men spend money, this money will land up with shopkeepers and businesses all over the country. The shopkeepers may hold back some of the cash that they earn depending on their needs.

The chances are that most of this money will be deposited back into bank accounts. In the normal scheme of things, the banks would lend this money out. In difficult times, banks are reluctant to lend. Hence, they end up depositing this money with the RBI. The RBI pays interest on this money. As of yesterday, banks had deposited Rs 5.6 lakh crore with the RBI. This is money they have no use for, or to put it in technical terms, this is the excess liquidity in the system.

Money printing will only add to this excess liquidity. Ultimately, for the economy to do well, people and corporates need to be in a state of mind to borrow and banks in the mood to lend. Printing money cannot ensure that.

Over and above this, money printing can and has led to massive financial and real estate bubbles, in the past few decades. This is asset price inflation. While this inflation doesn’t reflect in the normal everyday consumer price inflation, it is a form of inflation at the end of the day. And whenever such bubbles burst, which they eventually do, it creates its own set of problems.

Given these reasons, the chief economic advisor Krishnamurthy Subramanian’s recommendation of money printing by the government is a lazy idea which hasn’t been thought through. (For a detailed argument against money printing, please read this).

 

3) During the course of this financial year, banks have gone easy on borrowers who haven’t been in a position to repay.

Technically, this is referred to as regulatory forbearance. In this case, the central bank, comes up with rules and regulations which basically allows banks to treat borrowers in trouble with kids gloves. One of the learnings from the bad loans crisis of banks has been that regulatory forbearance of the Reserve Bank of India, India’s central bank, went on for too long.

The banks are yet to face the negative impact of the covid led contraction primarily because of regulatory forbearance. The banking system should be facing the first blows of the economic contraction. But that hasn’t happened, thanks to the Supreme Court and regulatory forbearance. The Supreme Court, in an interim order dated September 3, 2020, had directed the banks that loan accounts which hadn’t been declared as a bad loan as of August 31, shall not be declared as one, until further orders. Hence, the balance sheets of banks as revealed by their latest quarterly results, seem to be too good to be true.

The Survey suggests that an asset quality review of the balance sheets of banks may be in order. As it points out: “A clean-up of bank balance sheets is necessary when the forbearance is discontinued… An asset quality review exercise must be conducted immediately after the forbearance is withdrawn.”

This is one of the few good suggestions in the Survey this year and needs to be acted on quickly, so as to reveal the correct state of balance sheets of banks. The Survey further points out: “The asset quality review must account for all the creative ways in which banks can evergreen their loans.” Evergreening involves giving a new loan to the borrower so that he can pay the interest on the original loan or even repay it. And then everyone can just pretend that all is well.

In fact, even while making a suggestion for an asset quality review, the Survey takes potshots at Raghuram Rajan and the asset quality review he had initiated as the RBI governor in mid 2015.

4) Another point made in the Survey is to ignore the credit ratings agencies and their Indian ratings. As the Survey points out: “The Survey questioned whether India’s sovereign credit ratings reflect its fundamentals, and found evidence of a systemic under-assessment of India’s fundamentals as reflected in its low ratings over a period of at least two decades.”

This leads the Survey to conclude: “India’s fiscal policy must, therefore, not remain beholden to such a noisy/biased measure of India’s fundamentals and should instead reflect Gurudev Rabindranath Thakur’s sentiment of a mind without fear.”

While invoking Tagore, the Survey basically recommends that India’s government borrows more money to spend, taking into account “considerations of growth and development rather than be restrained by biased and subjective sovereign credit ratings”. (On a slightly different note, who would have thought that one day an economist would invoke Rabindranath Thakur’s name to market higher government borrowing).

Whether, the ratings agencies correctly rate India based on its fundamentals is one issue, whereas, whether it makes sense for India to ignore these ratings and borrow more, is another.

As the Survey points out: “While sovereign credit ratings do not reflect the Indian economy’s fundamentals, noisy, opaque and biased credit ratings damage FPI flows.” (FPI = foreign portfolio inflows).

What this means is that any further cut in credit rating can impact the amount of money being brought in by the foreign investors into India’s stock and bond market. In particular, it can impact the long-term money being brought in by pension funds.

While, the Survey doesn’t say so, it can possibly impact even foreign direct investment.

So, the point is, why take unnecessary panga, for the lack of a better word, with the rating agencies, at a point where the economy is anyway going through a tough time.

In another part, the Survey points out: “Debt levels have reached historic highs, making the global economy particularly vulnerable to financial market stress.”

5) Given that, tax revenues have collapsed, government borrowing money to finance expenditure has gone up dramatically during the course of this year. As the Survey points out:

“As on January 8, 2021, the central government gross market borrowing for FY2020-21 reached Rs 10.72 lakh crore, while State Governments have raised Rs 5.71 lakh crore. While Centre’s borrowings are 65 per cent higher than the amount raised in the corresponding period of the previous year, state governments have seen a step up of 41 per cent. Since the COVID-19 outbreak depressed growth and revenues, a significant scale up of borrowings amply demonstrates the government’s commitment to provide sustained fiscal stimulus [emphasis added] by maintaining high public expenditure levels in the economy.”

Fiscal stimulus is when the government spends more money in order to pump up the economy in a scenario where individuals and corporates are going slow on spending. The total government spending during April to November 2020 stood at Rs 19.1 lakh crore. It has risen by just 4.9% in comparison to April to November 2019. Given that inflation has stood at more than 6% this year, this can hardly be called a fiscal stimulus.

To conclude, economic surveys in the past, other than offering a detailed assessment on the current state of the Indian economy, also used to do some solid thinking about the future or stuff that needs to be done on the economic front.

Over the past few years, a detailed reading of these Surveys suggests that they have become yet another policy document which feeds into government’s massive propaganda machinery, albeit in a slightly sophisticated way.

Let's ban Tagore and get done with it

tagore
 
Vivek Kaul
Didi, Didi,”the man Friday came running into her room at the Reuters building. “I got the censor board to ensure that movie was not cleared.”
“Oh. Very good,” replied Didi
. “It was all Maoist propaganda against me anyway. Making fun of me like that.”
“Yes Didi
,” he replied looking at the bouquet of blue roses lying in front of her and wondering how the roses had turned blue.
“I got them specially made,” replied Didi sensing his doubt.
“I have never seen blue roses before this,” said the man Friday.
“Red signifies Maoism, so I got special blue plastic roses made for myself,” she explained.
“What a good idea Didi!” exclaimed the man Friday.
“And I have asked the state agriculture department to start working on developing real blue roses,” Didi continued. “Till then I will have make do with these artificial ones though.”
“I hope they are able to crack the formula for blue roses soon!”
Acha call that police commissioner,” said Didi. “He seems to have arrested some of our boys.”
“Yes Didi,” the man Friday said. As he was leaving he gave her a left hand salute.
Didi reciprocated with the same left hand salute.
The police commissioner came ten minutes later and knocked on the door.
“Come in,” shouted Didi.
The police commissioner came into the room and made himself comfortable in the chair in front of Didi.
Meanwhile, Didi continued to stand with the fingers of her left hand touching her forehead.
“Do you have fever?” asked the police commissioner slightly worried. “Shall I get a thermometer? I normally have one in my car.”
Ki moshai,” replied Didi. “You seem to have forgotten.”
“What?” asked the police commissioner, trying to figure out what this was all about.
“This is the 
neela salaam. The blue salute in English,” Didi explained patiently.
“Oh!” said the police commissioner, gradually getting up from his seat.
“And this is how you do it,” said Didi, lifting her left hand and bringing her fingers very close to her forehead.
“It is the exact opposite of the 
lal salaam Didi,” the police commissioner said, trying to state the obvious.
“How dare you say that?” shouted Didi. “I will suspend you.”
“Sorry Didi,” pleaded the police commissioner. “This won’t happen again.”
“Good. Anyway, lets get down to working.”
“Yes Didi.”
“I hear you have caught some of my boys in Jadhavpur.”
“Your boys?” asked the police commissioner. “But Didi…”
“Your police force has caught some workers of my party in Jadhavpur,” trying to get to the point.
“Oh. I did not know they belonged to your party,” explained the police commissioner. “I was just trying to maintain some law and order.”
“My boys are not at fault. Some students, you know how these intellectual types are, opened up a Facebook page.”
“Oh. They really shouldn’t have,” interrupted the police commissioner.
“First let me complete. There is nothing wrong with opening a Facebook page. After all we are an advanced state. What we think today, the rest of India will think fifty years from now.”
“Yes Didi. Of course Didi,” said the police commissioner. “So what is the problem?”
“Oh. The background of their Facebook page was red. And so some of party workers went to them and suggested they change it to blue. And you know how these intellectual types are, they started shouting 
cholbe na cholbe na.
“Oh Didi. But that used to be your line. They stole it. They shouldn’t have. Do you want to file a copyright infringement complaint?” asked the police commissioner. “I still remember you walking down 
Chowringee in your white cotton saree with a slight grey border on that rainy day in the mid 1980s.”
“Yes. How can I forget that day. You really beat us black and blue.”
“Orders from above,” said the police commissioner. “But I was always with your cause.”
“So getting back to the point. These intellectual students started shouting 
cholbe na cholbe na and refused to change the colour of their Facebook page to blue. So my workers were left with no other option but to beat them up, like you did on that rainy day in the 1980s.”
“Oh!”
“And to tell you the truth I am so used to shouting 
cholbe na cholbe na, if I don’t shout it five hundred times a day, I don’t get sleep at night.”
“Foolish students. They just had to change the colour of a Facebook page. Why invite trouble?”
“And they didn’t relent at that,” continued Didi.
“As in?” asked the police commissioner.
“They started singing a song,” replied Mamata.
“It must be one of those revolutionary songs written and sung by your party MP Kabeer Rumon.”
“Na, Na!”
“It was a new song from a Hindi movie.”
“Oh, which one?”
“Some new song which Amitabh Bachchan recently sung for this Kahani movie.”
“You know, I don’t watch new movies anymore,” said the police commissioner. “The last movie I saw was Manik Da’sHirek Rajar Deshe in 1980, after that I lost interest.”
“Manik Da?” asked Didi. “Who’s he?”
The police commissioner thought it was best not to answer that.
“So madam you were telling me about that Amitabh Bachchan song.”
“Can’t remember it,” said Didi. “Let me call Proteek, he might know.”
“Yeah, please do.”
“Ae Proteeeeeeeek,” shouted Didi for her man Friday who came running in.
“Yes madam. I was just getting your Nano painted blue.”
“Never mind that,” said Didi. “What was that Amitabh Bachchan song which you had set as your ringtone and those students were also singing?”
“Ah madam, that one. It went like 
Jodi Tor Dak Shune Keu Na Ase Tobe Ekla Cholo Re (If no one responds to your call, then go your own way alone),” replied the man Friday. “Mr Bachchan has sung it very well.”
“Yes, but I don’t like it,” Didi yelled. “It smells of revolution. It smells of Maoism. Plus it shows women in the midst of
 sindoor khela during Durga Puja and that reminds me of red. And red reminds me of Maoism.”
“Oh!” exclaimed the man Friday.
“Also, remind me to issue an ordinance to change the colour of 
sindoor to blue,” said Didi.
“But Didi…” the police commissioner tried to intervene. “Women love the red colour Didi. So many of their beautiful sarees will go waste Didi,” the bureaucrat said, trying to rescue the situation.
“Never mind! The women of this state have made sacrifices in the past and they will continue to make sacrifices. Look at Bipasha she makes so many sacrifices to stay fit and bring out that DVD of hers,” Didi said vociferously.
“Yes, yes!” the men in the room agreed.
“Also getting back to the point lets arrest Amitabh Bachchan,” said Didi.
“But he has just sung the song Didi,” the police commissioner tried to explain. “And he lives in Mumbai, so we won’t be able to arrest him.”
“Yes, doesn’t come under our jurisdiction,” Didi conceded. “So let’s arrest the person who wrote it.”
“It was written by Robi Thakur, Didi,” said the police commissioner.
“Lets arrest him,” said Didi.
“Robi Thakur as in Rabindranath Tagore,” said the police commissioner.
“I don’t care. Put your entire police force behind this man and arrest him,” said Didi. “I want him by the evening. Or I will suspend you. And remember that if I could make Tatas leave the state…” Didi, threatened and walked out of the room.
The police commissioner sat there wondering what had hit him and felt blessed that the sky was already blue.
The article appeared on www.theunrealtimes.com on March 4, 2013

 (Vivek Kaul is a writer. He tweets at @kaul_vivek)

What Karnad just found out: India is a nation of holy cows

 
 
Vivek Kaul
Two-thirds of the way through singing Kolaveri Di, Dhanush sings a few words which you notice if you are the kind who listens to the lyrics of songs very carefully. He sings “cow-cow holy cow, I want to hear now”.
These few words can be used to best describe the situation which prevails after Girish Karnad said “Tagore was a great poet but a mediocre and second-rate playwright.” Not surprisingly the Bengali bhadralok are up in arms.
There are five holy cows that the bhadralok have and it’s best that people stay away from criticising or critiquing them. Here is the list.
Mohun Bagan is the best football club: This is not much of a holy cow now but in the eighties and till the mid nineties any criticism of this football club could have got you lynched. Then came ESPN-Star Sports and Bengal realised that their football is a slow motion version of the real football played in Europe.
Rossogulla/Sondesh is the best sweet: This can lead to minor battles especially if you have a bong girl friend who loves her food. She will never come around to appreciating the pleasures of eating Mysore Pak. Another version of this debate is whether the Hilsa is the best mach i.e. fish in the world?
Sourav Ganguly is the best cricketer: I realised how strong this holy cow was when in the late nineties India was struggling to find a good wicket keeper and a Bengali colleague of my father suggested that “Sourav se wicket keeping kyon nahi karata hai?(why don’t we get Sourav to keep wickets?” In a land of few heroes Sourav could do no wrong.
Manika Da is the best director: Manik Da was the daak naam or nickname of the great Satyajit Ray. I have watched almost all of what Ray directed and watching his movies has been a brilliant experience. But Pather Panchali isn’t my favourite Ray movie (Now did I do a Karnad here?).
In fact I loved the sequels Aparjito and Apur Sansar much more. My favourite Ray movies are the ones he made in the seventies. The Calcutta trilogy of Pratidwandi (1970), Seemabaddha (1971) and Jana Aranya (1976), and Aranyer Din Ratri (1970) remain perennial favourites. And I can watch Shatranj ke Khiladi (1977) over and over again.
Ray was a rare director whose movies were much better than the books and stories he based them on. Anyone who has read Sunil Gangopadhyay’s Pratidwandi and Aranyer Din Ratri and watched Ray’s movies based on the books would realise that. The same is true for Sankar’s Seemabadha and Jana Aranya, and Prem Chand’s short story Shatranj ke Khiladi. Also I am not getting into the debate of whether Ray’s Charulata was better than the original novel written by Rabindranath Tagore.
Nevertheless, a lot of what Ray directed after Hirok Rajar Deshe in 1980 was very mediocre and nowhere near his best. But I wouldn’t recommend you say anything like that in and around Kolkata.
Rabindranath Tagore is the foremost intellectual: This is the holiest of holy cows for the Bengali bhadralok. Tagore cannot be criticised. Any criticism of Tagore, reasonable and unreasonable, is totally unwelcome. Girish Karnad is finding that out now. A stream of Bengali intellectuals and politicians have queued up to criticise Karnad. The basic argument is that what does Karnad know of Bengal? Even the criticism on Twitter and Facebook has been scathing. A struggling actor who happens to be a Bengali had this to say on his Facebook page “Karnad calls The tagore a second rate playwright!!coming from a mediocre actor and a boring playwright..I have said it..!moving on..”
Another interesting comment that I came across on my Facebook page was “Even Poonam Pandey and Sherlyn Chopra know how to seek attention. Girish Karnad would do better in taking a lesson from them.”
The backlash on Karnad’s comments raises several questions. Is any creative person above criticism? Even Tagore. Also Tagore was not a one dimensioned intellectual. He was a poet. A novelist. A playwright. A musician and even a painter. His interests were not limited to one particular domain. But that does not mean he was the best at all the things he did. And that’s precisely the point that Karnad was trying to make.
As he said “He was a great poet certainly, one of our greatest. And he got the Nobel Prize in 1913 when most of our modern literature was still in the state of formation. His greatness as a poet is there, his greatness as a thinker is there… he wrote plays, he certainly was a pioneer in breaking away from the unexciting commercial plays…he didn’t direct great plays. The point is he was a mediocre playwright.”
And Karnad does know a thing or two about writing plays having written several plays himself. He also won the Jnapith award in 1998, which is the highest literary award conferred in India.
Tagore was a great poet. But whether he was a great musician, painter or playwright remains debatable? And this debate or discussion one cannot have with the Bengali bhadralok. As George Soros’ Theory of Reflexivity states “People’s understanding is inherently imperfect because they are a part of reality and a part cannot fully comprehend the whole.”But why blame only the Bengalis. India as a nation is full of holy cows who cannot be critiqued. And here are some of the bigger holy cows whose criticism can get you into trouble.
Narendra Modi is the best leader:  There are three ways to get people to read things on the internet in India. Criticise the Congress party and the UPA. Praise Narendra Modi (or NaMo as his fans like to call him). And the third and the best way is to criticise NaMo. That will unleash a barrage of negative comments on the website, with a lot of them bordering on abuse. But yes the website will get a huge number of hits, something that it has never seen before. The broader point being that any criticism or even an objective evaluation of his persona is immediately run down. But there are chinks even in NaMo’s armour starting with an abandoned wife and the fact that he doesn’t really come across as a team man and likes operating on his own most of the time.
Mahatma Gandhi: The father of the nation was a great man. But he had his weaknesses. The Mahatma did not have a great family life. And his eldest son Harilal converted to Islam. His opinions on sex for a family man were slightly weird. As an article in The Independent points out “It was no secret that Mohandas Gandhi had an unusual sex life. He spoke constantly of sex and gave detailed, often provocative, instructions to his followers as to how to they might best observe chastity. And his views were not always popular; “abnormal and unnatural” was how the first Prime Minister of independent India, Jawaharlal Nehru, described Gandhi’s advice to newlyweds to stay celibate for the sake of their souls.”
But any discussion or debate which does not show Gandhi in positive light is likely to create trouble.
Jawahar Lal Nehru and his relationship with Edwina Mountbatten: As Ramachandra Guha wrote in The Hindua few years back “The Indian public in general, and the Indian press in particular, has shown a keen and perhaps excessive interest in the relationship between Jawaharlal Nehru and Edwina Mountbatten. That they were intimate is not to be doubted — but did the bonds ever move from the merely emotional to the tellingly physical?”
Universal Studios was supposed to make a movie on the relationship but they later shelved the project. As The Telegraph reported “The Indian government had given permission for the movie, Indian Summer, starring Cate Blanchett and Hugh Grant, to be filmed on location there but only if physically intimate scenes were removed.” This is another holy cow which cannot be questioned.
Shivaji Maharaj: In the state of Maharashtra any critique of the great king who fought the Moghuls like no one else did can get you into a lot of trouble. As James Laine who wrote the book Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India found out a few years back. Those who wanted the book banned felt that the book insulted Shivaji. Those who read the book felt that it was not a book about Shivaji but more a book about how Shivaji’s legacy has been hijacked by various castes and communities in Maharashtra to further their own ends.
Sachin Tendulkar is the best cricketer:  This for a very long time was even holier than the holy cow. Any criticism of the great man was likely to attract trouble irrespective of the fact whether you were in Mumbai or Muradabad. But things have changed over the years and people are more open to the God being criticised. Nevertheless, any criticism of Sachin can get you a lot of abuse, as I found out when I wrote this.
Islam: Any criticism of the religion can create major trouble as Salman Rushdie found out. Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses was released on September 26, 1988 in the United Kingdom. Madhu Jain, a journalist working for India Today reviewed the book for the magazine. As she wrote in a recent column in the Openmagazine “It all began with my review of The Satanic Verses, published on 15th September 1988 in India Today­ (probably the first review of the novel.)…Unfortunately, the editor of the books pages of the magazine at the time, who later went on to edit a national daily, plucked some of the more volatile extracts from the novel—those about the Prophet’s wives—and inserted them into the book review. Not too long after the IFS bureaucrat-turned-politician Syed Shahabuddin read the excerpts (not the book as he admitted ) and demanded that The Satanic Versesbe banned. Protests erupted in India and Pakistan. In Karachi, a few protesters died when they were fired upon. It is believed that Ayatollah Khomeini watched this on television and ordered the fatwa.”
India became the first nation to ban the book on October 5, 1988, after Syed Shabbudin, a member of parliament, petitioned the government to ban the book. Rajiv Gandhi, the political novice that he was, banned the book immediately.  Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa on Feb 14, 1989, Valentine’s Day.. Rushdie had to go into hiding after that and his been unwelcome in India since then. He had to pull out of the Jaipur Literature Festival last year.
MF Hussain: This is an interesting story. Hussain had to live a large part of his later life in exile given the large number of court cases pending against him in various parts of the country for hurting the sentiments of Hindus through his paintings. This included drawing several Hindu gods and goddesses in the nude. Those in his favour say that artists need to have their freedom of expression, which is true.
But let me reproduce a paragraph from a piece  that Shobhaa De wrote on him in The Times of India during his exile in Qatar. “Dressed in traditional Emirati gear, the painter is wearing socks , but no shoes. Mustafa, his handsome third son explains this is to respect local sensibilities regarding bare feet,” wrote De. Hussain had always walked bare foot but he was respecting the local sensibilities in Qatar and wearing socks. If he could respect local sensibilities in Qatar, couldn’t he do that in India as well? But any criticism of Hussain can get the so called intellectual class in Delhi and Mumbai ganging up against the person who dares to criticise Hussain.
The Gandhi family: During her peak any criticism of Indira Gandhi was unwelcome. Nayantara Sahgal, her first cousin, wrote a book Indira Gandhi: Tryst with Power, which was   very critical account of Indira’s tenure as India’s Prime Minister. The book written in 1982 was only released in India earlier this year. This trend has continued and any criticism of the Gandhi family is largely unwelcome. Arvind Kejriwal recently broke this trend by taking on Robert Vadra, Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law headon.
Rajinikanth: Try criticising India’s highest paid actor anywhere south of the Vindhyas and see what happens. Manu Joseph the editor of Openwrote a column on the superstar in which he said “He has no talent, an unremarkable body, and has had no hair for much longer than we realise. When he puts his right elbow on his left palm and the left elbow on the right palm, he demands that everyone accepts it as dance. And his ability to toss a cigarette in the air and grab it with his mouth is attainable even to my mother. Have no doubts, even to Tamilians he looks grotesque in leather shirts and pants and previously unseen shoes. I have watched his films in the cheapest theatres in Madras and know exactly what happens when he makes his grand entry, boots first. The screams and whistles in the theatre are not the awe of respect, but an expression of love for a beloved clown. Nobody in those theatres knew why they were reacting in that manner to him.”
Almost all of what Joseph wrote is true but read the comments that followed his article to see how the people reacted to his critique of the star.
Ambedkar and reservation: BR Ambedkar and the reservation policy first initiated first by VP Singh and then carried forward by the United Progressive Alliance government is a bigger holy cow than even Rajinikanth. You might get away by critiquing Rajinikanth but expect no such mercy if you get around to criticising Ambedkar or the reservation policy.  Arun Shourie, wrote a book titled Worshipping False Gods in which he challenged. Ambedkar’s contribution to Indian Independence. As Shourie wrote “There is not one instance, not one single, solitary instance in which Ambedkar participated in any activity connected with that struggle to free the country. Quite the contrary–at every possible turn he opposed the campaigns of the National Movement, at every setback to the Movement he was among those cheering the failure.”
Of course this did not go down well with people. As Rediff reported “Some Congress MPs did, however, burn copies of the book outside Parliament House, and called for a ban.”
The Holy Cow: Yes. The holy cow is the ultimate holy cow in the country. And every few years close to the elections the issue is resurrected with demands to ban their slaughter. Ironically enough India is set to emerge as the largest exporter of beef in the world.
The moral of the story is that India as a country has too many holy cows that one cannot critique and criticise. We make heroes, we worship them but we never get around to analysing them. As the Channel V ad went in the good old days, we are like this only.
The article first appeared on www.firstpost.com on November 10, 2012.
(Vivek Kaul is a writer. He can be reached at [email protected])