Words of Wisdom from Finance Minister

It is not surprising that even after the Govt.’s many failures, especially on the Inflation front, Chidambaram, instead of focusing on doing what he is supposed to do, keeps dishing out at the slightest opportunity his glib talk trying to justify the situation.

Of the many ministers in the Cabinet, this popinjay is the only one who cannot stop talking about how he has achieved so much despite the whole world virtually conspiring to frustrate his good work.

Some of his remarks and homilies in a recent statement are worth noting, if only because they highlight how he is trying to perfect the art of blaming others and of self-approbation.

The common thread in his statement, as usual has been one of woes brought about by global factors:”India has been hit by the global financial, food and fuel crises and anybody who thought the country would not be affected by the global turbulence would be "naive".”

Sure, India would be affected by global factors but if the economy is managed well, timely actions are taken instead of basking in false glory and the Govt. policies are judicious enough, the effects would be far less than what the country is facing now. It is no use saying that other countries are even worse off than India. If that argument is stretched to absurdity, our pompous Finance Minister could even say “Look at Zimbabwe… we are much better off”.

In his statement, he has highlighted world food crisis, saying “the world food prices have increased by over 100 per cent but India is the only country where the food rates are relatively stable.” This point hardly needs mention as a factor in our present plight because the country is not so much reliant on imports as some other countries. This point is made only to add to his arsenal to mislead the people.

Apart from this he has mentioned in one breadth, the global financial crisis, the fuel crisis and other global turbulence. He has blamed the sub-prime crisis in the USA as having affected India, although exactly in what manner and to what extent, remains uinclear. The country, he added, could have "weathered even that storm as it did in the second half of 2007-08. But then beginning March there was a food crisis and fuel crisis, adding to financial sector crisis.” By the "food crisis" he is referring to the domestic crisis due to the Agriculture ministry's mishandling.

"Rising Sensex is the be all and end all of economic development." - By a present day genius.

The rest of his statement as already mentioned above, is meant to show that all the progress that the country may have made is implicitly due to him. He also said that if the country achieves 8% growth, it is like getting a silver medal at the Olympics.

His next homily was “We will have some good years, we will have some difficult years. We must learn to manage our economy through good times and not-so good times." That's quite a revelation Mr. Finance Minister, we never knew! Finally he made one more profound statement: "Growth would slow down this year, inflation will be more than the tolerable level and that is why we are going through difficult times”. He seems to be last person in this country upon whom this realization has dawned.

In spite of whatever he might keep saying, he has lost credibility of himself and the Govt. of which he is part, amongst the people. Anything more or less he says will not change the ground realities either. It will help if the Prime Minister told him to just shut up before he becomes more of an embarrassment. People are getting fed up with his boasts and words of wisdom.