Our mood swings

Why this kolav-eri, kolav-eri di?” warbled young India last April, in sympathy with the heart-broken Tamil underclass lad of the soup song. It has now come to light that even the not-so-young and not-so-poor urban India was singing its own elegy at the same time.

The recently published findings of the survey conducted in March-April this year by the respected Pew Research Centre of Washington, DC, US, showcase an India in a decidedly blue funk about its economy.
Until about a year ago, the one thing Indians in their multitudinous diversity agreed upon was the country’s manifest economic destiny. Everyone from Congress functionaries to anti-corruption crusaders, corporate bigwigs to small neighbourhood shopkeepers believed that India was on the threshold of double-digit annual growth which would catapult it to near the very top of the global economy within a generation.
The euphoria made us dream of not just overtaking our bugbear China in growth rates, but excel and dominate the world in other areas as well. High on the flat world hype, a columnist for a leading media house dreamt that India’s leading English daily would soon be the global leader and private Indian airlines would dominate the sky.
Economic data coming out from mid-2011 onwards — overall and sectoral growth rates, inflation, budget and trade deficits, among others — have all painted a worrisome picture of an economy losing its momentum. Our famed policymakers have resembled an animal on the highway at night frozen in blazing headlights of an oncoming car, unable to move. This column has often drawn attention to this over the past several months. Many pundits, including the aforesaid columnist, abandoned their cheerleader roles. Business leaders became increasingly vocal in stating their concerns. Now even the foreign press, whose testimonials meant the world to our leaders, has joined the native Cassandras. Critical coverage in the Economist, Time and the Washington Post has caused much discomfiture in official circles.
The Pew survey shows how deeply the general public has been affected by the prevailing pessimism. Pew interviewed a sample of over 4,000, chosen to represent 86 per cent of India. Three out of five respondents were not satisfied with the country’s direction. The previous year, about half the people were satisfied. Similarly, only 45 per cent (previous year 60 per cent) expressed confidence that the economy would improve the next year. By contrast, over 80 per cent of the Chinese retained a positive outlook on all economic aspects, which was only marginally worse than in the previous year. Relatively large majorities in Europe and America continued to worry about their economies, as was to be expected, but the outlook had decidedly improved over the year according to about 10 per cent of the American respondents.
A more worrisome factor is the prognosis for the future. While two-thirds of Indians said that they were better off than their parents, an equal proportion felt that they did not expect their children to do as well.
In a recent conversation with a leading economic daily of India, Bruce Stokes, director of Global Economic Attitudes at Pew, observed on the basis of the survey conducted in 21 countries that “Indians’ exuberant expectations about their economy have turned to foreboding. Economic attitudes have soured in most countries, but almost nowhere more than in India”
Even as the pendulum of Indian public opinion swings, some things remain constant. The rash of opinion polls aired by news channels recently all identified unemployment, inflation, corruption and crime being major worries for most Indians. These usual suspects made it to the rogues’ gallery in the Pew survey also. Over 70 per cent of the people were bothered by them.
We are far more fickle about our heroes. Yesterday’s demigods often bite the dust today. Politicians routinely suffer this fate. An electoral triumph leads to hosannas, but the halo fades over time. Mayawati was breathlessly mentioned as a possible Prime Minister for three years following her victory in the Uttar Pradesh elections in 2007. Some opinion leaders even compared her to Barack Obama after the American President’s ascendancy. Mulayam Singh Yadav and his party, Samajwadi Party, were consigned to the dustbin for five years, yet are today considered veritable king-makers. The same reversal of fortunes has affected M. Karunanidhi and J. Jayalalithaa. The shining armour of those knights of last year, Team Anna, now appears a tad rusted and their wearers more quixotic than heroic.
Our idols from cricket and films are not spared this fate either. The successive test defeats after the World Cup victory in 2011 turned M.S. Dhoni and company from everyone’s darlings to favourite whipping boys. That great granddaddy of superstardom, Sachin Tendulkar, recently hailed as the best thing to happen to world cricket, is now pilloried with questions about retirement. The original Bollywood superstar, Rajesh Khanna, was exhumed out of oblivion only after his demise.
As one who has long conducted and used sample surveys, I have learnt both to respect the validity of clearly defined trends and not to read too much into them. Most polling suffers from two major problems: a top-of-the-mind recall, and an attempt at second-guessing the expected answer. If inflation, corruption and crime show up as issues troubling a large proportion of respondents, they are doubtless real concerns. Similarly, if a party is favoured by half the sample or more, we should safely place bets on its winning the election comfortably, rather than claim that the sample is rigged or worse.
Where we go wrong is in attaching greater significance to these outcomes. The standard comment after every election is “the people have spoken!” If true, then surely we speak with forked tongues. But saying that the voters are fickle and capricious in their behaviour does not make a good sound bite. Reading universal meanings, on the other hand, makes one a pundit and assures invitations to talking-heads shows.
So what would be the official response to the Pew findings? Charge Pew with sedition, or register a diplomatic protest (with whom)? Or treat them as a clarion call for action? Your guess is as good as mine.

The writer taught at IIM Ahmedabad and helped set up the Institute of Rural Management, Anand. He writes on economic and policy issues.