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Grey swan moment in Gujarat

By IndianMandarins- 04 Nov 2017
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grey-swan-moment-in-gujarat-gujarat-elections-assembly-elections-rahul-gandhi-in-gujarat-narendra-modi-nda-upaThe return of the UPA regime to power in 2009 created what may fit the description of a black swan event - the idea pioneered by world-famed finance professor, writer, and former Wall Street quant trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb. According to him, a black swan is an event or occurrence that deviates beyond what is normally expected of a situation and is extremely difficult to predict. The unexpected return to power of Congress and its allies in 2009 made the UPA-2 indulge itself with scams after scams whose magnitude no one had ever even dreamt of until then. Wise man that he is, former PM Manmohan Singh, who must have drawn a lesson or two from the 2008 financial crisis, allowed the country's broken political system to fail. Taleb has argued that if you let a broken system fail in the face of a black swan event, the system actually gets stronger to face the catastrophe of a future black swan event. So, in the 2014 national election, Narendra Modi and his NDA alliance swept to power in a clear vindication of Taleb's theory. Indeed, Dr. Singh's wise move to let the system collapse on the black swan event of 2009-2014 had actually strengthened the country's political system to get ready for an honest and efficient government. Three years out of power, Congress is now trying to create what may be described as a grey swan event in the context of the Gujarat assembly elections using the dead phantom of demonetization and the teething technical difficulties triggered in the conduct of business following the introduction of GST. For those unfamiliar with the term, it suffices to know that a grey swan event is unlike a black swan event whose total impact is difficult to predict. Despite the possibility of determining the properties and potential impact of such an event, it is difficult to create precise calculations regarding the total impact. Since it is difficult to assess the impact of demonetization and GST on a business and entrepreneurial state like Gujarat, it is equally difficult to work out how the Congress may benefit by ranting about these two issues during Rahul Gandhi's election campaigning. It may be so that Congress' electoral strategists themselves may be extremely unsure about the impact of haranguing the voters on these issues. So they have been seen plotting secret or not-so-secret alliances with desperate, disparate, and conflicting groups led by Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakore, and Jignesh Mevani. Looks like PM Narendra Modi has figured out the designs of the Congress Party and its grand strategy to create a grey swan event in Gujarat. So, through a video that has gone viral, he has warned the voters that if they get carried away by the rhetoric of the Congress Party and its leaders forgetting what they did during the UPA-2 regime to deplete the country's wealth, they should get ready to face the fact that no one like him would ever dare fight political corruption. It's a kind of a threat; it may work, or it may not work at all. It's time, though, the PM faced facts, too. Who has injected so much aggressiveness in Rahul Gandhi? It's NaMo himself and his impractical economic programs - particularly in respect of agriculture. If he had not ignored farmers - it's not enough to call them annadatas when the annadatas themselves are famished and have no means to take care of their family and societal responsibilities, Rahul wouldn't have got the opportunity to rant about the plight of farmers, much less arousing sympathy for his decadent and corrupt party. One doesn't have to inform NaMo that the art of politics is to hijack the agenda of the opposition and make them look like dumbos.And what did NaMo do? Exactly the opposite - despite the best advice from the Sangh and its several offshoots. From 2014-15 itself when an avoidable problem like inordinate delays in urea imports hit farmers left and right on top of a bad monsoon, this website has argued consistently that the one issue that may and w

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