Let’s go back. Modi comes to power in 2014. Things are going fine in 2016, although Modi govt has already started their attack on democracy. Out of nowhere, Modi appears on TV on an evening of November 2016 and announces demonetization!
What followed his announcement on state television is serious chaos, never ending queues outside banks and ATMs, people struggling to get money out of their banks, poor bank staff overworking. The entire country’s bank staff had to overwork to exchange the notes and had to answer the tough questions asked by the citizens. One leader makes a hasty decision and the entire country suffers. The banking sector had to suffer. In the end, what was the result of this huge exercise? Were we sucessful in ending the problem of black money? No.
What’s the lesson we can learn from this incident? We can understand the mentality of leaders. Leaders somehow reach the position of power, though they do not deserve or are not qualified for that position. After getting the positions of power, if they realise their ignorance (like Socrates says: I know, I do not know everything), and rely on experts for advice, all are going to be fine. The problem is that, they have bad advisors and appreciating people around them who say that everything the leader thinks is right. So they take important bad decisions without thinking and make the people suffer.
What follows will be chaos. Will the leader take responsibility for the chaos? No. They blame it on their officials. Do officials suffer too much? No. Then who are the ones who suffer the most? It’s the poorest of the poor or the most underprivileged sections who suffer the most.
The people in power also know that the underprivileged do not have the time and power needed to raise their voice. So they’ll comply. The privileged are busy with their own work and even they will not raise their voices. People will somehow adjust and manage and move on. This forgiving attitude of the citizens to adjust with the bad decisions of the political leaders is what gives the confidence to the people in power to make more and more nonsensical decisions.
One line lesson from all this:
“a leader is the one who wants to do something extraordinary, just to show his power. In this pursuit of madness, he disturbs the status quo which was going fine and peaceful. And then say that because of him, something great happened”
Even if their decisions give bad results, they’ll justify saying that – “at least we tried something innovative and new!”
Notice carefully and you’ll see such nonsensical decisions coming out of leaders everywhere, which are dubbed and appreciated as being innovative!
Leaders are those special creatures who observe that everything is going peacefully, people are doing their work as told. So they feel bored and uncomfortable. Their minds are filled with too much noise and chaos. They cannot see so much peace around. They cannot see that their workers or citizens are doing everything well without their interference. They want to see what is the extent of their power, how they can spoil the peace of their citizens or workers. And they take bad decisions to spoil everything that was working fine.
