Opportunity Going Waste?

When the RBI announced that pretty much all the money (98.86%) returned to the system, it led to the inevitable question as to whether demonetization achieved anything useful at all in the fight against black money. It’s a valid question. So what just happened?

-         The top guys had probably converted most of the black money into assets like forex, gold and real estate long back anyway.

-         But that just means the black money got transferred to someone else’s hands. Did the last person(s) in such a chain of transference bring it all back into the system?

-         And so that last person in the chain can (theoretically) be questioned by the IT department: where did he get so much cash? Why doesn’t that tally with his declared income and tax paid over the years?

Let’s next consider the political impact of all this. Chidambaram has gone to town with his criticism. Given how articulate Chidambaram is, it’s better to have him criticize than dumb-while-I-was-PM Manmohan. So is this the opportunity for the Opposition to rise again? Logically, that should be the case… but you can see how unlikely that is based on this cricketing tweet by Chidambaram:

“Bangladesh defeats Australia, West Indies defeats England. Lesson: nothing is impossible.”

So GDP growth falls to below 6% and all the black money came back into the system and yet the Opposition doesn’t sense an opportunity to be relevant, to resurrect itself, and still has to motivate itself with slogans like “nothing is impossible”? Is that how much in disarray they are?

If the only reasons for such pessimism were that people would have forgotten about all this by 2019, the possibility that IT raids could follow and yield some returns after all, and of course, the BJP will put its spin on things, I would say I got it. But the real problems seem to be:

-         Lack of any unity within the opposition. Remember Nitish?

-         The opposition don’t have anything in common, except hatred for the BJP and love for pseudo-secularism. If Mamata goes somewhere, the Left will skip it. If Akhilesh goes, Mayawati won’t. You get the drift.

-         And under whose banner will they march anyway? There is no clarity who amongst the opposition will win the most seats, and without that, how can anyone be considered their leader? Until recently, that banner was the Congress… which brings me to my last point.

-         Rahul Gandhi. No mass appeal or electrifying presence, and completely incompetent as a backend maneuverer, and yet the undisputed heir to the Congress throne. Hell, even Bahadur Shah Zafar tried harder and took a chance during the Revolt of 1857.

Just goes to show that you don’t just need to be prepared for an opportunity to come your way; you also need leaders who can seize that opportunity…