When Rahul Gandhi spoke with ex-RBI chief Raghuram Rajan and current Finance professor of the Chicago University on Covid-19 Pandemic and India’s future course of action to deal with the same and badly exposes India’s patriarchal male dominance. What is funnier is that even this time Rahul used the old buzzword of ‘inequality’ that he terribly misplaced during a previous historic interview with Arnab Goswami and sounded equally stupid.

Even though my intention was not to prove him stupid but every time I find Congress promoting him as future Indian PM and investing heavily on building his credentials, I get more worried as that exposes the patriarchal, male-dominant mindset of Congress leaders. This doesn’t give me any confidence because if this repeated failed attempt to rebuild Rahul’s image show us anything that is the dominance of some foolish people in Indian politics and leadership roles for simply being males. These setbacks actually hurt the men’s rights movement because these become examples of how incompetent males have crowded the prestigious positions, simply for being males.

In this recent interview on Covid-19 pandemic, Rahul spoke with Raghuram Rajan and both of them have successfully exposed this dominance of incompetent males in different spheres of life. Politics being the first one and Economics and Finance being the other ones as I shall explain now.

No, I will not talk about the fact that the Congress wanted to fudge the interview by calling it a live show while streaming an edited video. People did find that out easily by looking at the wall clock overhanging Raghuram. The ‘live’ video was streamed for about 25 minutes while the clock showed it took more than one hour to complete the talk. While ‘bhakts’ would assume that the entire stupidity of Rahul was edited by an embarrassed Congress, after watching the discussion, I am assured that equal stupidity was displayed by Raghuram if not more.

Now let’s look at how they have done this task of marring men’s capabilities in their own fields.

COVID Testing

Raghuram exposed himself by talking about Covid-19 testing and comparing India’s testing scenario with that of the USA. Though he was saying what medical experts had said, one would wonder why we should even bother to know what an economist thinks about Corona testing? His opinion that India should gain confidence like the USA while it was the US that was reeling under this pandemic and looking up to India for confidence was rather funny.

India not only handled the situation in a more ‘strategic’ (a buzzword that Rahul recently learnt and tried to use in one of his recent interactions and failed miserably) level within her limitations and emerged as a global leader in the Covid-19 pandemic.

Raghuram speaking about ‘mass testing’ as a vision for ‘strategic’ management of COVID pandemic was a mere reiteration of existing known rhetoric and was nothing new. The Indian government was already trying to increase India’s testing capabilities, but faulty Chinese kits and initial elapse time to develop suitable testing kits in the country took time. But India did have a concept of mass testing already followed when Raghuram commented the same.

Staggered Opening

Another ‘wisdom’ that came from Raghuram was that India needed a staggered opening of the lockdown and that was also followed. India has already divided the whole country into Red, Orange and Green zones with clearly defined criteria for each zone. Even in red zones, India has created containment zones, sealed zones etc. to tackle the pandemic at different levels.

India was also very quick to respond to the need of the poor and opened up the village economy and agricultural activities. This discussion happened at a time when India has already decided to open even non-essential services – like transport of non-essential goods, opening up small shops and even running public transport in green zones.

So, whatever Raghuram said was nothing new. Even children in India knew that India needed a staggered opening and that was already in place. We didn’t need an ex-RBI chief to say that.

Ration Card

Another point Raghuram Rajan has mentioned was that he had discussed with two Nobel Laureate economists Amartya Sen and Abhijit Bandyopadhyay and figured out that the poor in India who didn’t have access to ration cards, needed ration cards. This ‘great’ ‘futuristic’ advice came to us at a point when the poor without ration cards were already getting free ration in different parts of India including West Bengal, where we found a maximum number of ration frauds.

Question is, does it really take some Nobel laureate economists to figure out that the poor Indians need food during a pandemic? In my locality, some local boys are organizing food for poor families and they are not even literate. The only reason this kind of ‘visions’ coming out of Nobel prize winners and ex-RBI chief is concerning is that it raises serious question about their capability. What was needed at this point was a futuristic idea to revive the economy and not some crap that even children knew.

Garibon ko Madad (helping the poor)

So, Rahul delved into this topic of helping the poor that their Congress governments in the history of Independent India has failed to resolve but kept talking about. Not even when Raghuram was at the helm of RBI.

Raghuram, in this case, has given a figure (65,000 crores) as a bail-out package for Indian poor. While watching the interview, I kept thinking that If Rahul was so much worried about helping the poor, why doesn’t his family donate all their property to save the poor?

Whether India will get any benefit?

Then India’s Pappu wanted to know if India could get any benefit from the global pandemic. Raghuram, in this case, suggested that India could set up a dialogue in the global scenario and that could find India a better place in the multipolar global order post Covid-19 world.

This, however, came at a time when India was already leading the global fight against Covid-19, already declared an emergency fund for regional cooperation among SAARC countries to fight the pandemic and India had already established herself as a global leader in this fight. Also, at the time of interview Indians knew that about 1000 of companies were looking for an alternate operational base outside of China and 300 of those have almost finalized India as their next destination. So, there was no earth-shattering and revealing leadership insight that has come from Raghuram even on this topic. Rather he had reiterated what was already happening. No vision is shown again.

Decentralization

Next point was decentralization. Raghuram Rajan thought that decentralization could help in this pandemic situation. He specifically mentioned that the decisions were made centrally through Panchayati Raj could have helped more.

This kind of view during a pandemic situation only shows the political advertisement of Congress Party and nothing else. Handling a pandemic situation needs specific skills and expertise at multiple levels and the panchayats or even the states are not in a position to have that expertise at their disposal. This is the reason they need expert guidance coming from a central authority. Trying to decide the course of action at a local level in a pandemic situation would prove disastrous.

A big example of the failure of such ‘local administration’ came from West Bengal in handling the pandemic. West Bengal government decided to flout central orders, implemented many of their own whimsical practices and failed miserably in the fight against Corona. We have seen how after the central intervention the number of infected Covid-19 patients, Covid-19 deaths and the number of Red zones has increased. West Bengal govt has also started manipulating data of Coronavirus death that became public after the central intervention. So, in such pandemic situations when local bodies get too much authority in deciding beyond their capability, the decentralized model is sure to fail. Panchayats are in no way qualified enough to decide on testing method, process or any other high-level technical process.

Moreover, when Pandemic is a central subject, discussing how decentralization and Panchayati Raj could be more successful to advertise Rajive Gandhi and Congress only showed their lack of knowledge and respect for the existing laws. This raises another serious question about the sincerity and knowledge level of both and the interview became a poor show off Congress’ propaganda.

Liberal vs Authoritarian Model

Rahul Gandhi wanted to portray his model of governance (which is non-existent in reality) as a liberal model. Raghuram spoke the language of the conspiracy theorists while discussing the centralization attempt.

Raghuram’s thought that a decentralized governance model works better because the local government is also elected is not only funny in a pandemic situation but echoes more foolishness that Rahul Gandhi displayed. Simply because a government is democratically elected, does not mean that the government will be in a better position to know what is appropriate in a pandemic situation as explained earlier. If they were talking about maintaining local administration, there was never any interference. So, Raghuram’s comment didn’t mean anything.

Rahul speaking about the decentralization of power is also funny because, within his own party Congress, there is hardly any decentralization of power that exists. Nehru-Gandhi family still holds the power without any capability and the decentralized model seems not to be working there.

Social harmony as a Public Good

This interview showed Rahul brought some new jargon – ‘Infrastructure of division’ and ‘infrastructure of hatred’. Now you might not have heard those anywhere in your life before and will probably not hear in any place, but Raghuram seemed to be thrilled by those.

So, Raghuram brought another jargon ‘Social harmony is a public good’. Use of such jargons at a time when they were giving bogus ideas made them look like fools. They, however, might think that use of jargons would make them look like intellectuals. Also, we are yet to see such social harmony existing within the Congress party even after Adhir Chowdhury became their leader in the Lok Sabha. It is unlikely we can have any sense of this until the Nehru-Gandhi family is completely removed from Congress.

Elements of the new vision

So, when Rahul wanted to portray that the current system needed a change, he also needed a new vision. He gave cues to Raghuram about the elements of new vision from his notes. Rahul said, “of course you mentioned about infrastructure, education and healthcare…” whereas in reality, Raghuram had not mentioned about education or healthcare in this discussion previously. Nevertheless, Raghuram could take the cues and showed great merit there.

Rahul also spoke about ‘infrastructure of hatred’ and seemed visibly disturbed by the fact people discuss history which more often blurs Congress’ and his family’s contribution. However, in the Covid-19 pandemic situation, the significance of discussion of history was only known to RaGa.

Trust Issue

Rahul started talking about trust issues but suddenly switches over to ‘fear’ in the system and mixed them conveniently. When Raghuram could not give any answer how to handle trust issues, he threw the question back (maybe that is what Rahul came prepared with). 😊

Then Raghuram asked Rahul his views on differences between governing in the west and in India. This question was completely out of place as Rahul has neither governed any country in the west nor was never even a CM of any Indian state. It is unlikely to think of him as a good leader either because he has failed Congress on many occasions. This not only looked stupid but exposed the desperate attempt by the party to put him forward as a visionary.

Inequality

When Rahul took up the conversation and went back to the old ‘buzzword’ ‘inequality’ that he tried using in a historic interview with Arnab Goswami and failed miserably, he failed again.

His theory that we needed to model our solution around the vast differences in people’s behaviour across different geographies. One would wonder how a differential approach to tackle a pandemic in different parts of the country will even work when the Virus or the disease do not discriminate anyone based on any parameter. So, we fail to understand even if people of Tamil Nadu behave differently than the people of Uttar Pradesh and how would a differential approach even work to contain the pandemic?

Rahul in his wisdom told us that poor are being treated differently than the rich in COVID situation. Such a stupid inference that it would not need any comment or analysis. The poor are always in every situation treated differently than the rich and mighty. Covid-19 is no different that way.

But the funniest conclusion on Inequality came from Raghuram Rajan. He said Indians needed quality jobs to eradicate inequality. This came at a time when Indians and millions worldwide are on the brink of losing their jobs, Rajan wanted quality jobs for them but didn’t give any strategic mantra to meet that goal. Any sensible person even without a good degree or position would know that people need quality jobs, but how a government can ensure that or what avenues to explore is the wisdom an ex-RBI chief and a present Finance Professor of an organization of repute was supposed to say.

Conclusion

Overall in this discussion, it was Raghuram Rajan who was proved to be a bigger Pappu than Pappu himself. He proved to be another pappu without even basic knowledge about any situation. One would wonder how did he become the governor of RBI and a professor in the University of Chicago? Also, the Nobel laureates of economics deciding that India’s poor needed ration card is another funny wisdom that has come.

An important question arises out of the findings of this discussion from the gender justice parlance and that is surely against the men’s rights and confirms feminist demand. How did these people even get to these positions? Simply because of their gender? And that would surely show male dominance (dominance of even idiotic males) not only in Indian politics and in Indian economics, but also in getting Nobel prizes.

Question is, don’t we deserve better candidates for these positions? Do we continue to accept morons as our leaders and then how would anyone defend that men have indeed contributed? Well, I am sure feminists are celebrating today because people like Rahul and Raghuram exist, and as MRAs we are ashamed. No, when we talk about opportunities for men, we only talk about qualified and dignified men of value and not about some incompetent people promoted to the helm for political purpose.

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