These days everywhere I look and everyone I come across is heavily influenced and to a certain extent, madly provoked by populist ideals. It made me confused and worried at the same time, following something just because it is popular is risky business. Populist ideals and beliefs could be widely accepted but neither does it make it absolutely right nor absolutely good.
Taking the case of demonetization of 500 and 1000 INR currency notes for instance. As soon as demonetization was brought into effect, all the empty-headed populists started glorifying it stating that it was a masterstroke and that it will greatly prevent black money from heating up the economy. While it did temporarily keep a check on counterfeit currency and corrupt black money hoarders, its long-term effects are more adverse than favorable. In a bid to outsmart the wrongdoers, the plan did widespread collateral damage to the ordinary citizens of the country. Apart from the direct impact of having millions of working-class citizens and small businesses financially suffer and the impact of the economy going for a trend reversing slump; there was an unbelievable change in order that was witnessed. By controlling how much money one can take from the ATM per day, the Government was essentially intruding into the basic freedom of its citizens to spend as much they want on any given day, with so much reserve cash locked up in the banks, imagine the sitting interest and thereby power that banks would have gained out of this. This whole 'going cashless' and Digitization saga gained mileage for corporates like PayTm and Jio Money. So the point I am trying to make is, the demonetization exercise essentially removed quite some monetary power from its ordinary citizens and gave it to the corporates- exactly what a right-leaning Government would do. It also heavily regulated the freedom to use and dispense hard-earned cash at will, a shocking thing to do from a democratically elected Government. But our populists, oblivious to this fact, mindlessly declared demonetization as a blessing and abused anyone who opposed it.
So what would have sane individuals (not populists) done! I'll drive home the point with this work-related example: Whenever we try to pitch/ sell a solution or a recommendation to our Management/ Clients, the first thing we do is a detailed Impact Analysis on how this solution would affect the conversion and revenue numbers, even if it makes a positive impact, how much good would my delta be. This is needed so that the Management can take an informed decision, regardless of however meager the impact may be. This is exactly the question that a sane individual like me would have for the ruling Government when trying to sell the decision to demonetize 14.18 trillion INR to the sane citizens of this country, what impact analysis did the Government give, so that we sane citizens of this country be at-least informed with civility of the impending effects of demonetization that'll rain over our parade. Though one can argue that the outlook for the economy here on now is optimistic, we now have the populists back again trying to re-monetize the country by informing people of our duty to spend more and go cashless wherever possible. "Well yes sure, whatever you say!"
Another instance where Populism provoked a cultural propaganda was the SC ruling over the Jallikattu ban. Populists went ahead to declare war on PETA and AWBI for destroying Tamil culture and that these populists have been Indians for just 70 years but were Tamils for 7000 years. PETA and AWBI as organizations could be corrupt and malaise, which is something but a totally different story. Their job has now and has always been in creating awareness about every form of animal cruelty as it happens, which is exactly what happened with Jallikattu as well. To be fair and honest, PETA does criticize even drinking milk as inhumane and as animal cruelty. Strangely the Jallikattu issue alone rubbed off our populists in a wrong way who then started a widespread populist movement on the same, which caught up like wildfire. Appealing to the lowest common denominator, the propaganda targeted all Tamils to unite to support Jallikattu and spread hate campaigns on those who try to diminish the Tamil identity. I mean what was that!
My point to drive home here is not one that speaks for or against Jallikattu, but rather on the emotional edginess of populists, rather than being sensible and taking things in the right stride, they paint a rosy picture of populist ideals and vilify everything else. The SC ruling could either be right or wrong or neither, so populists, please study it first before becoming judgmental freaks jumping to hasty conclusions and spreading hate.
Another instance of populism is the omnipresent social media. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram have become platforms for narcissistic self-promoters and populists who find shallow solace in the number of likes and comments they get for their pictures- which BTW rarely is an accurate depiction of their actual lives. While social media has been an extraordinary leap and it sure does put the power of voice into the hands of ordinary people, rarely have I seen people use it to showcase highly inspired content. While some populist content like motivational quotes or entertainment memes or interesting videos do actually benefit people, the potential to use Facebook for far more intellectual and creative stuff still remains underutilized.
The point am trying to drive home here is that populists have turned wonderful platforms such as Facebook into disgusting and vulgar peek holes into their private lives, where they check into airports and hotels, happily lose privacy, post boring and endless selfies, over share mindless details about their life, congratulate themselves on their mediocrity (Status: Finished 10th out of 20 people by running the 10 km fun marathon in 2 hours.. Yay!- "Well congratulations on your mediocrity!!"), publicly defame co-passengers for littering the train/ tracks by posting a picture of him/ them doing the same ("Well ya he may have made a bad choice to litter the train, but who gave you the right to play God and why did you not give him the benefit of doubt!"), et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. What the populists fail to understand is that they are unknowingly giving so much power to the Data Scientists and Social Media Analysts who are wielding it and inching closer toward figuring every minute piece of information that is out there to know about these populists and wrap that data into powerful data assets- assets that will drive many thousands of recommendation engines, personalization products, spying machines, and targeted marketing campaigns. On the contrary, imagine how much of a power vehicle, Facebook or Twitter would be for us, the ordinary people, and the populists if we could only use it to voice an informed opinion, share an intelligent piece of information, creatively engage with connections, put forth a seed of thought and most of all, step up and inspire people. That's where all of this drama needs to head.
The examples are endless. Brexit was a mere populist choice than anything else as well. EU kept the UK and Europe out of war for 70 years now, yet populist parties leveraged and fueled citizens' increasing Euro-skepticism which ultimately led to the staging of the referendum to leave the EU.
So the closing thoughts would be: Whenever you come face to face with a populist ideal, don't trust it. Don't trust it at all. Rather trust your own good judgment. Argue both sides of the case and go by what seems right not by what seems popular. That's the only road to sanity.
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