As my flight touched down in the wee hours of the Raksha Bandhan morning, a particular Black Berry Message caught my eye. “Dollar on an escalator, Rupee on ventilator, nation in ICU, we are in coma….Onion in showroom, God bless India…”
“…The only way to save the Rupee is to have it tie the rakhi to the Dollar and say, Meri Raksha Karna!” my friend had written, straying into economics for the first time that I could recall. He probably copied the script from someone else on the social media, but by afternoon the wisecrack has viralled, buoyed by pop economist @TheShilpaShetty who had passed it around as her own!
Soon, others weaved in a third character in the cast, ie, the British Pound, after the “poor Rupee” touched 100. At this point, self-deprecating humour turned acidic. The menage a trois on who is doing what to the Rupee is unworthy of printing in a family newspaper. But one could see how so lakhs of people are wringing their hands over a very serious economics subject.
“Everyday a new record. Truly the Sergei Bubka of currencies,” popular tweeple @rameshsrivats quipped, weaving in the champion who made a habit of breaking his own records. If I had thought of the imagery, the Dollar would have been Bubka. But point well made by Srivats all the same. “Rupee is a peace-loving currency, but the Dollar should not mistake it for weakness. India will give a fitting reply,” came @chennaikaran’s comment, playing on St Antony’s stock answer each time Pakistan punches him on the nose. Only this time, it’s fallen upon Raghuram Rajan to play the unwilling defender.
Which led to the delightful spoof by the guys who do @fakingnews. “Pakistan stops printing fake 500 INR notes due to falling value of Indian Rupee,” the website declared! Quoting a Pakistani official, the writer explained: “A few years back, an INR 500 note was worth US$12.5, but now its value is just $8.5. At the same time, costs have gone up because of rising paper costs, rising HR costs as employees, fearing terror attacks, leave Pakistan as soon as they save some money, and general inflation.”
“The 1,000 Rupee note also becomes unviable soon!” this Pak official said! ROFl, as new-age folks might say. On a serious note, isn’t it time that the Government’s social media minders stopped plugging mindless statements and focussed on this berating of national sentimentIJ How about an equally simple and interesting counter narrative that the Rupee isn’t worth defending at all costs.
Or factors that flow into intrinsic value of our currencyIJ That it is silly if not outrightly childish to be benchmarking a drop against the Dollar to national prideIJ Why isn’t any minister, say @shashitharoor, told to implode the myth viralling on the social media that in 1947 that the British left the Rupee at par with the US DollarIJ The fact, as Business Standard pointed out on Monday, is that at the time of Independence, India’s currency was pegged to Pound Sterling, and the exchange rate was a shilling and six pence for a Rupee - which worked out to Rs 13.33 to the pound. The Dollar-pound exchange rate then was $4.03 to the pound, which in effect gave a Rupee-Dollar rate in 1947 of around Rs 3.30**.
Is it too much to expect Press Information Bureau (@PIB_India) triggering a robust debate that while imports get costlier due to this sort of fall, exports gainIJ Or the fact that while students planning courses in Australia will burn a bigger hole in their parents’ pockets for a dubious degrees, old parents of non-resident Indians receiving Dollars or Pounds have been gaining. Sigh, despite an economist as the PM, the guilt of misgovernance is such that even Economics 101 is in freeze-frame mode. ResultIJ Manmohan Singh continues to “star as 007 in the mythical blockbuster: Freefall….The only time the Rupee rises is during the toss…And those in this government continue to be described like the Rupee, Rs ekdum gire hue!’”
(The columnist is CEO & Co-Founder, India Strategy Group, Hammurabi & Solomon Consulting. Tweets @therohitbansal).
** http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/let-s-get-the-facts-right-113081800647_1.html