Daily Ek Jhoot - Who Was Lying: Mauni Baba Or The Pradhan Sewak?

Raman Swamy

Narendra Modi is at his best when he is making fun of his opponents. Here is what he said at a rally a few months after his Note Bandi bombshell - “Kya kya bole. Parliament me bola, gaon, galliyon me jaakar chillaya, Bharat barbaad ho jayega. GDP 2 per cent kam ho jayega, koi kehta kisan barbaad, fasal barbaad, berozgaari aajayegi. Daily ek jhoot.

(What all they have been saying.  They've spoken in Parliament, they've shouted in the villages and streets that India will be destroyed, GDP will dip by 2 per cent, they have said farmers and crops will be destroyed and unemployment will rise. Daily one lie)".

Modi’s supporters and spin doctors had a good laugh. They knew exactly who their leader was talking about – it was former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh alias Mauni Baba.  

On November 24, 2016,  Mauni Baba -  indisputably the worst Prime Minister India has ever had -  had broken his maun vrat and made a short speech (just 700 words)  on the floor of the Rajya Sabha.  

It would have better if Mauni Baba had remained silent – because every word he spoke was nonsensical and utterly ridiculous. It was 700 words of verbal diarrhea. He actually predicted that Demonetization would lead to a two per cent fall in GDP. He really called the boldest ever reform by the greatest ever Prime Minister a “monumental blunder”!  Imagine that.  

Not only that, he also had the gall and temerity to allege that note bandi was nothing more than “organized loot and plunder”.  

He then went on to prove what a fake economist he is by saying - “In my opinion, the way the demonetization scheme has been implemented will hurt Agricultural growth in our country, will hurt Small Industry, will hurt all those people who are in the Informal Sector of the economy”.

End of flashback. Cut to nien months later, September 2017.

Official figures (released by the Modi government) show that GDP has actually slumped by two per cent. To be precise, the fall is 2.2 per cent -  in April-May-June 2016 GDP growth was 7.9 per cent, whereas it has slowed down to 5.7 per cent in the same quarter this year.  

Manmohan Singh’s exact words on November 24 had been: “My own feeling is that the national income, that is the GDP, can decline by about 2 per cent as a result of what has been done. This is an underestimate, not an overestimate”. 

BJP ministers and spin doctors are in a state of shock. Was Mauni Baba right after all? How can that be?  Because that would mean Modiji was wrong and Arun Jaitleyji was wrong. It would also mean that Modiji was the one who was telling lies - “daily ek jhoot”.    

Would it also mean that there is truth in the allegation that demonetization was nothing but “organized loot and plunder”? 

No it can’t be so. Modiji is an honourable man. He is honest and all congressees are corrupt. He is the Pradhan Sewak working day and night for the 125 crore people of the country.  

It is true that black money has not been flushed out – 99 percent of all the old currency has been deposited. It is true that counterfeit notes have not disappeared. It is true that terrorists are more active than ever before and Indian soldiers are still be killed on the borders. It is also true that unemployment has increased and the informal economy is in ruins, industry is stagnant and agriculture has become a losing business – just as Mauni baba had said it would.

But that does not mean demonetization was a failure. Jaitley has assured us that the real objective was to make India into a cashless economy. If that has not happened, it is the people who must be blamed, not Modiji. 

Also, it is too early to judge the success or failure of demonetization. Only nine or ten months have passed. Jaitleyji has assured us that by next year or the year after that the situation will improve.  Modiji was not thinking of the short term – his eye was on long term transformation of India into a vibrant full digital economy in which there will be no corruption and every citizen will be prosperous.

Mauni baba referred to that too?  What did he say?  He said:  “Even those who say that this measure will do harm or cause distress in the short term but be in the interests of the country in the long run should be reminded of what John Keynes said once, ‘In the long run all of us are dead’.”

Sep 3, 2017