attempting to write...is that even the correct spelling??: Macroeconomics

Well, firstly to all my friends who might be thinking I've invented some new kinky and exotic sexual position or any other thing of that sort for that matter, let me not give you any more hopes as i might really disappoint you this time. Had I invented something like that, i would have rather become some sort of a tantric or guru, preaching and practicing it than to be sitting up past midnight and writing an article about it.

I’ve been staying all by myself in this new house that i moved into from the past few months. I must mention that it does tend to get a little too lonely at times. I get reminded of my days in the North and the huge differences in cultures. People around are all too busy with their own lives and nobody really has the time to even know who the neighbour is, unlike in ‘smaller’ towns where everybody knows each other. However, the social instinct in me hasn’t yet died out completely and i've ended up making 3 new friends in the neighbourhood.

Well, these three new friends of mine happen to be all dogs. I am literally living the expression that man is after all a ‘social animal’. And before you start wondering again, this isn’t about them trying out kinky stuff that i might seem to have become obsessed with either. In fact, this is about these three really smart and intellectual dogs who have become my gurus of late. I seek to get answers to everything using them as prisms. Yes, times have really changed so much that dogs are the real masters. I am in fact trying to get some answers on government policies from them.

I have named these three dogs as well, ironically, after people i'm not particularly fond of, but that’s another story in itself and i'll save it for some other time.

Macroeconomics has really been one subject that has fascinated me quite a bit. They really have graphs and all sorts of figures for literally everything. At times, i fear if you ask an economist her/his name, she/he might show you a graph for that as well. But now that i finally begin to understand certain macro-economic factors (in the true sense and unlike mentioned above), i can comprehend, to a certain extent, the recent developments in the government policies and some of the other economic variables. And perhaps being the pedantic person i am, and having already established that the neighbourhood would not bother to listen to my theories, i run to my new friends, the doggies (whose names i’m not revealing, as you might be one of them), and try and preach to them, just to show them that how ‘smart’ i might have become and how good or bad our country might be doing.

I then began my really ‘intellectual’ conversation with the dogs. At first i was a little condescending with them, bragging that i have a good finance related job and don't just loiter around like them. I asked them – “do you even understand finance?”

“WUFF” came the unanimous response with a very stern look.

Considering the ‘smart’ person that i have become, it didn't take me any time to interpret what they were really trying to say to me – "We Understand Finance Fu***er"(W.U.F.F.).

Their looks started becoming even grimmer and i knew for a fact that they really meant business, and that i should not mess around with them. At that moment, i could not help but remember the video of the recent track by Swedish House Mafia called “Save the World” in which dogs try and save the world for us. And so i continued my really ‘intellectual’ conversation with the dogs.

I went in great depth’s describing about the declining GDP, the falling value of the rupee as against the dollar, the impact of the Greek Crisis, about how the Reserve Bank had left the Repo Rates and the CRR unchanged at 8% and 4.75% respectively, even though everybody expected a reduction in these rates by the RBI, etc. The dogs were listening to me with the kind of devotion that i had never managed to show towards my teachers or books and it felt like even they knew that the RBI and the government have not been doing enough to prevent any further damages.

And so, I continued the ‘discussion’ if i could say so, and criticized a lot of the other policies and some factors in general relating to the society in large. The rising LPG and fuel prices, the climbing inflation and CPI indexes, the list is just endless. But the one noteworthy thing is that despite the high rise in prices and the decline in the value of the rupee, the Planning commission, recently in March this year, released a report stating that anyone with a daily consumption expenditure of Rs 28.35 and Rs 22.42 in urban and rural areas respectively is to be considered above the poverty line and therefore, not considered to be poor.

I could now sense a certain degree of smugness amongst the dogs, as even they must have realized that we actually do spend more money on them, and therefore, if they were humans, they would be considered above the poverty line.

The only way this report actually helped the government was by showing a decline in the number of people below the poverty line by 7.3%. After facing a very high degree of criticism, the Planning Commission, had said in its affidavit before the Supreme Court that the “ poverty line as per the June 2011 price level can be placed provisionally at Rs 965 (Rs 32 per day) per capita per month in urban areas and Rs 781 (26 per day) in rural areas”.

I am no economist. I am no smart intellect. All I really have is the conscience of a little child, clear as it can be. It is this conscience that is enough to distinguish what it right form what is wrong. And i know something is definitely wrong when an individual is expected to be above poverty line and therefore not poor if he / she earns more than the upper band of 965 a month. The benchmark that we use seems wrong in itself, as it does not account for expenses relating to healthcare and education. Ask yourself how much do you spend on feeding your dog, let alone veterinary or other ‘fancy’ expenditures and whether that amount is more than rupees 965? How can a person who barely survives on rupees 966 a month be considered not poor? If you have the answers, please do enlighten me.

This ‘discussion’ had clearly made even the dogs wonder as to where our destiny was headed as i could see them staring in disbelief. I could almost sense their sympathy for us as was evident from their gloomy faces. At the end of it, they all walked away without saying a word. It really made me wonder as to whether i was so boring or had the government’s policies become so insensitive. One thing was for sure, that either i should make myself more interesting or either the government should seem to be more concerned and make better decisions so that at least the dogs won't have to look down upon us or sympathize with us.