Democracy's annoying obsession with narratives has been more inexplicable than vexing; why should there always be a narrative and what is meant by the war of narratives. I have tried to argue the theory of narratives, being sarcastic here since clearly no such theory exists, with proponents of free speech and democracy and concluded that one party to the debate seemingly was unwilling to fire up all their brain cylinders. Facts don't need a narrative, they are facts.
"Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance" a book by Robert Proctor, perhaps best explains why narratives are needed and why democracy can only survive on narratives. When facts are fatal, creating doubt is the only hope; and creating doubts requires a good story, in fact a great narrative. Proctor's prime example is the tobacco industry's narrative to fictionalize the fact the smoking is cancerous. Perhaps starkly better examples of Agnotology can be found in democracy's many narratives; government for, by and of the people; the immense power of the one vote, freedom for all!
And building narratives is undoubtedly super easy. All that is needed is little bit of imagination, the ability to scream at the top of your voice and absence of conscience for lying through the teeth. The other fundamental ingredient for narratives to succeed, an uninformed lazy audience, is a given, curtsey social media in the information age.
How difficult would it be for political parties to agree upon an independent authority for counting the number of persons attending their respective political gathering; technology can do that easily. But faced with hard core facts, the narrative of a million and the counter narrative of only 25,000 would become useless. Dear Reader, listen to prime time news for half an hour, and then honestly analyse, how much of what was said, according to your rational mind, was, or could be supported with facts. By my count; absolutely nothing!
With this background, I now revert to demonetisation, and my first comment is, et tu Financial Times! I recently came across their published article, which claimed that India, for fish's sake, can show neighbours the way out of tax trap and in the same breath claimed that demonetisation was a success. My immediate interest had dual causation; firstly, purely academically, demonetisation had been a failure since 99% of the money was deposited back and in the process hell was unleashed on the poor and middle classes of India; and secondly, more importantly, worried that someone on this side of the border might have a bright idea of jumping in on the bandwagon.
Having read the article, I am happy to report that it does contain one fact that 99% of the notes were successfully deposited back in the banking system. The rest is a great story, oops narrative, built around increased number of tax filers and GST imposed on small businesses which somehow should prove demonetisation worked and everybody else should follow that route.
Arguably, the narrative was built and is propagated to cover up the great disaster unleashed by the out to lunch government next door. And the reason that they want everyone else in the neighbourhood to follow suit is even simpler; if you have wasted money on a trashy movie, you want all your friends, more so non friends, to do so as well!
And finally, debt is good! Again courtesy the information age, came across a narrative which argued that the only available option for Pakistan's infrastructure development and consequent economic growth was getting more debt. Only a fertile imagination could attribute more debt as a solution for anything, let alone a developing economy. But let me not argue this fact on my own; since we all believe IMF, let's see what they have to say about debt.
"The world's $164 trillion debt pile is bigger than at the height of the financial crisis a decade ago, the IMF has warned, sounding the alarm on excessive global borrowing...The fund urged policymakers to stop providing "unnecessary stimulus when economic activity is already pacing up" and called on the US to "recalibrate" its fiscal policy and increase taxes to start cutting its debt", Financial Times, April 18, 2018. Irony aside, IMF wants the world to increase taxes and reduce government spending!
We want to do the opposite. And while the State Bank has still not updated its Pakistan Debt and Liabilities schedule, but based on updated numbers for Central Government Debt, we are probably batting around Rs 28,000 billion, and going strong. Albeit, on its own, this means nothing; the key indicator for determining the right amount of debt is definitely not the ability to borrow more, it is the ability to pay back debt in the future. And Pakistan has perhaps exhausted that limit.
Beware of narratives, demonetisation and debt.
(The writer is a chartered accountant based in Islamabad. Email: [email protected])
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