The Eyes Of God

The Eyes Of God

God is, by definition, omnipresent, omniscient. He knows and sees everything. In India, with multiple religions, a plurality of gods, there are, bolstered by the belief and faith of billions, many, thousands of divine eyes, presumably watching over us.

And most Indians in this teeming populace, believe and trust, in this most religious of nations, that at least a pair or two of these divine gazes, perhaps of our choice, fall benignly upon us individually, sometimes.

We the People, as the great jurist Nani Palkhiwala liked to refer to us,  are currently in particular need of divine protection.

This, of course, because the guardians of our mundane fate, our Government, seems to be making an alarming mess of things with the greatest unconcern.

Everything in the economy is falling apart, destroyed, as in a roaring fire, like a house of cards. And nothing at all is being done about it as part of the Government’s scorched earth strategy.

The inheritors after the general election, if they are not the UPA, will get the blame for every action of the UPA II dispensation today, because a lot of it is being legislated into a sovereign commitment, and the wherewithal is being torched.

If they come in themselves, they will think about the Economy and Reform then and if their rivals reverse any of the disastrous populism, they  will have to pay a political price.

The Congress Party, let us admit, cannot be underestimated ever for its grip on realpolitik. It is the most experienced at it, the longest in power over the last 66 going on 67 years since Independence.

This burn every standing crop, destroy every house and bridge, metaphorically speaking, is a vicious strategy, born of the cynicism of power and untold wealth, stolen and accumulated from an endless procession of scams.

The Congress Party  holds the people of India, those who are most grievously affected; in utter contempt. The people in question are unwashed, illiterate masses, peasants, and urban slum dwellers alike, who can be cheated by the political classes anytime.

The politicos can afford to do this because of the indirect way our parliamentary electoral system elects its ultimate leaders. Eventually, after all the votes are counted, it is a closed shop of parties and elected MPs, and not the voting public.

Thus,  the need to befool and confound the public, before dismissing them from all consideration thereafter.

They, the revered Gods, and Goddesses for that matter, know all this,  but are helpless, despite their immortality and omniscience. They know the wages of sin, but also that there is no going back, no rewinding Time, in order to keep the firmament and fabric of the universe intact.

It is an eternal, inviolable truth, this forward motion, that even Time Machines when they truly come, can’t really subvert. Though a few surprising and unintended consequences can, and no doubt will, result as an outcome.

Unforeseen effects, not unlike those brought about by the march of cutting- edge science, such as in-vitro fertilization, sometimes using eggs and sperm from selected donors, strangers to the parental couple, buying into lab specimens, to manipulate genetic outcomes.

There is the rampant, supposedly traceless, maternal surrogacy. There is stem-cell therapy giving hope to the crippled   and the decrepit. There is gene splicing and preventive surgery- the list is getting longer than the formulas proving the Law of Relativity.

Albert Einstein did however say that, “God does not play dice;” and the reassurance obtained, on order over chaos, in that elegantly put statement, is most reassuring at this time.

 So, they, the Gods, must believe PM Manmohan Singh when he says he is not taking the country back to 1991 in 2013.

And P Chidambaram, when he says not to panic over a nearly 800 point drop in the Sensex; some 250 points on the Nifty the day after Independence Day.

Dr. Subbarao, retiring on September 5^th,said nothing at all about an all- time low on the Rupee at over Rs. 62 to the dollar. Analysts are predicting 65, then 75 to the  US dollar, with brazen confidence.

The wags think nothing of 1991. They think we are going further back, to the hesitant eighties, to the impoverished seventies. 

Legacy questions apart, not counting the redoubtable octogenerarian PM, twice by-passed when  it comes to his sorely tested heart;  plans to turn up gamely to shoulder his familiar burden for UPA 3 once more. He is perhaps thinking, I began our growth along with Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao in 1991, and I am pulling down the curtains on it all in 2014.  

Back, poet TS Eliot fashion, as in his Little Gidding from The Four Quartets: “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time”.

The rest of us mere mortals may be forgiven for remembering talk of India as the second fastest growing economy in the world. It was a chimera, a waking dream, dreamed by madmen, that is now suddenly gone.

There were great expectations, and many expert commentaries and projections, but no more. Now some are calling India the worst investment destination of all EMs, a terrible place to do business even otherwise. It is as if the last 25 years never really happened.

The even more depressing idea is not that we have to endure the horrendous mismanagement of the economy for the remaining few months before the elections.

But because of the infighting in the BJP, and the resurgence in the regional parties, UPA could come back to inflict UPA III upon us and carry on where they left off.

Manmohanji would be kept/ stay on, and mumble and sleep-walk  through another complete five year term. He is the lucky mascot of the UPA , and the most non-threatening prime minister in history.

Nothing could be worse for India. Nothing could be better for the Congress Party.

(997 words)

August 18^th, 2013

Gautam Mukherjee