Saturday, August 31, 2013

Prime Minister's flawed logic

At last the Hon.PM has condescended to speak out on the falling rupee. Economic Times quotes him as telling the Parliament, "To some extent, depreciation of the rupee can be good for the economy, as it helps to increase export-competitiveness and discourage imports. Inflation in India has been much higher compared to advanced economies, and therefore, it is natural that there has to be correction in the exchange rates to account for this difference".

Apparently, a statement of fact. This is like a surgeon justifying death of a patient on the operation table, saying that the unhygienic environment in the operation theatre has naturally resulted in the tragedy. Does this factually correct reason free the surgeon from his responsibility? Should he not ensure cleanliness?

Does the prime minister think he is not responsible for the galloping inflation? Yes, he thinks so because in the same statement he has also claimed he is not the custodian of files (and therefore he is not answerable for the missing files relating to coal allocation!). A very responsible prime minister, indeed!

Prime Minister's job is not to explain the cause-consequence relationship. Everyone knows the relationship. His mandate is to remove the causes that lead to adverse consequences like what has befallen our currency now.

We may expect the economist-prime minister to educate us anytime soon that uncontrolled inflation is good to some extent because we will then learn to live with greater challenges.

Ratan Tata has recently observed that India has lost the respect of other nations. When the opposition parties in the parliament lamented that Singh has lost the confidence of both domestic and global investors because of policy paralysis, the prime minister claimed he commanded respect of his ministerial colleagues. This fatuous response is incredible and makes us speechless.

Are we talking about "Prime minister's flawed logic" or "Flawed Prime Minister's logic"?

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