A simplified guide to make sense of 21st century India’s economic tangle, that very much like our old man’s beard, only gets bushier and cloudier by the quarter.
As is the norm, before we begin, we start with a good old comforting homely disclaimer for the initiates, that this is a very serious and accurate blog put together by our resident moodinomists, and if you find yourself getting triggered at any point, we suggest you calmly buy yourself a donut, vent your point of contentions on a piece of paper, fold it neatly 7 times, place it carefully in the center of said donut, and keep reading.
To the veterans, we suggest that you, on the count of three, forget whatever you 3,2,1, think you know about economics – because as you will slowly see, Moodinomics is no way related to economics.
If that last statement left you confused, donut worry we only did that on purpose. It was a ploy to shock awe and dazzle you with blunt rammandir-sized half-truths, so by the time I actually get to the explanation, you’ll forget what you’re doing here. Plus, our bhakt-raderie will be so thick that when I say “Jack we hit recession”, you’ll actually hear “Jai shri ram”. And believe me mitro, this strategy is a crucial component, or the starting point of Moodinomics, which we call “the mandap”.
For this reason of undeniable cosmic level connection we would soon share, we initially felt calling it Mandirnomics would serve us better, but ever since the little smoke about our diarrhoeic doings in Ayodhya wafted to the opposition’s olfactory organs like fart, we’ve been trying our hardest to look the other way and pretend it wasn’t us. Yikes.
Nevertheless, fret not, we can still utilize the name for studying land scams, what think ye? Comment below.
Moodinomics on the other hand, as a wider encompassing term much like our dear all encompassing overlord himself, deals not just with land scams, but all sorts of scams. Defense procurement scams, UTI scam, there is a whole list from A-Z where each one is more magnificent than the next, we assure you.
Hopefully, with our alphabet learning course we have dazzled you children enough. Just don’t ask us how or when you’re getting that 10-lakh corpus fund if your parents die, bye.
Coming back on track with our Moodinomics- Economics kinship conundrum:
Are the two related? Yes, with frictional dynamics characterized by competition.
Are the two not related? Yes, absolutely not, because when you picture it you’ll hear the orthodox Iyer grandmother you never had yelling ‘ABISHTOO!’.
To put it simply, consider them to be parallel cousins instead of cross cousins. They can’t copulate and populate the world like cross cousins do (going by majority practice okay, remember the donut center), so they solely exist to provide competing benchmarks for report card scores and excreted dump loads. For better contextual understanding, read them as agency ratings and GDP.
As an additional illustration to reinforce some clarity, imagine a total freak bakwas scenario, where a novel virus suddenly grips our crash-diving economy by the neck Bruce Lee style, and snaps it in two smooth flexes. You would not only notice one old man’s beard grow a little longer as he sighs in relief, you would also get to witness one madam’s hocus pocus firsthand as she jumps right into the thick of Moodinomics. Both such telling gestures.
Such a situation extraordinaire would send any normal economist into a tailspin, and some classic yet boring restorative measures would be quickly put forth to salvage and resuscitate whatever is left of the economy – like focusing on the increasing job loss and falling incomes, regulating the walking inflation, and revving up the consumer demand maybe, instead of ambani’s ass.
But our Moodinomy meetings have a different inexplicable swaaag altogether.
MPC fresher: Madam so we whipped up some cool credit schemes for you to choose from. How many do you want?
Madam: Yes.
Old Sir: Look, I say we need to regulate this “The Walking Inflation” thing for seditious elements first. No zombie apocalypse story can be good for our optics at this stage…
Young sir: Milord sir, I don’t think they mean the OTT series here sir
MPC fresher: Yes king, it is actually what economists these days call your fuel cess
Old sir: …
Young sir: I’ll draw up a new amendment for the Cinematograph Act sir! It’s always been on our agenda and I think this crisis would be a brilliant opportunity to push it through the ordinance route. It’s like you always say sir, aapda ko-
Old sir: Aapda ko avsar mein badalna hai
Madam: Aapda ko avsar mein badalna hai
Young sir: Yes sir, aapda ko avsar mein badalna hai
…
…
…
MPC fresher: … ditto sir.
…
MPC fresher: Aapda ko avsar mein badalna hai.
Next, consider Moodinomics as that pavam mausi’s baccha – kannadi wearing, good-for-nothing but good-natured – whom you fondly refer to as ‘chaiwala’ because he always makes tea for you when you visit him; the sort you’d instinctively never take as serious competition. Now here’s some general wisdom too, but stay away from that fucker because he’s exactly the sort who’d one day just casually ruin your life by becoming a billionaire, because he invested in crypto, ON YOUR ADVICE.
This hard hitting gut wrenching stomach burning metaphor is actually, the be-all and end-all of Moodinomics, and one of the core takeaways of today’s decoding class. We call this component, “the garb griha.”
Moodinomics at its core, envisions this classic capitalist version of cousin-eats-chad, chad-eats-virgin, virgin-eats-shit world, where it doesn’t matter if the poverty doubles (6Cr to 13.4Cr) and people become dog-food decomposing on the ganges, as long as billionaires get to feed their gluttony in non-newtonian, non-sensical market bubbles.
Socialism in one country or One Country One Socialism (OCOS) as we smart’uns like to call it, is best left with Stalins, as we in Moodinomy don’t have the patience for that sort of nonsense.
What we do have the patience for however, are…*drumroll* toolkits.
Ever since that annoying Sverige barnet showed us what they can do, our propaganda machines have been churning one hit kit after kit, and we must admit, we couldn’t have been more proud of ourselves when our shit finally hit the opposition’s fan. A brilliant stroke of genius, for which of course Twitter took all credit and blame for. We’re not complaining, but some occasional appreciation of our Dr. Doof level evil genius would be nice, thank you.
In our latest greatest toolkit, we have curated a gold standard, or rather saffron standard checklist to achieve our common goal of Moodinomy; so you can cherrypick one or make combos yourself depending on your corruption prowess or how far you’ve managed to communalise your populace. Oh and do not take it lightly – communalisation is de facto an important step of the process; a precursor likened to preheating your oven. The hotter the oven, the better your cake will be. Got it?
Or like our old sir prefers, you can even go traditional by picking all ingredients and making a nice kichdi out of them called “Ease of doing Business”. Or halwa if you prefer sweets like madam does.
So without further ado, we present the 10 point, minimalist Moodinomy toolkit:
1) Lower corporate tax because every good deed must begin with a sweet sacrifice, and we go big by costing our exchequer Rs 1.45 lakh crore annually. Don’t panic because this pain is maya. What is real are those kickbacks landing in your pockets faster than the philosopher’s stone ever landed in Harry’s.
2) Enter electoral bonds, aka the muggle logon ka paaras patthar. Make sure you galvanize those corporates to not be pappus and disappoint our parivar by going 7.5%, when they can go full throttle at 100%. It is time to put those shell companies to good use and your foreign friends to even better use.
3) Increase indirect tax because someone has to put money into our treasury and it’s not going to be us. Think extra tax if the commodity is extra essential; complement it with chilling statements of a possible doomsday if you reduce it by any chance; and postpone all GST council meetings to infinity +1. This is your failsafe tool to loot and scoot.
4) Bonus magenta gandhis if you increase cess across the board, and blame the smol opposition-ruled states and international prices for causing inflation.
5) Privatisation and asset monetization has got to be by far, the easiest trick to pull off if you want to make a quick buck. Start off by portioning a majority land as wasteland, including old defence lands, islands etcetera and strategically marking whole institutions or equity chunks for sale.
Then establish your unquestionable ethos by squishing some unfriendly bugs under the boots of UAPA; appeal to the herd logic of other frightened bugs by throwing in some fancy words like “government owned corporatization”, “neo-liberalisation” etc and finally, let your pathos sing by questioning the government’s relevance of being in business when it can’t even do basic governance.
6) Set up a bongu trust with a super corny name like iCARES or something to honeytrap desperate philanthropists/ sugar daddies and by the time they realize they got catfished and that you’re actually an old man, hit them with a storm of benefits like CSR, FCRA and tax exemptions until they see stars.
When you feel piggy enough, you can take it up a notch by making it compulsory for all the ungrateful servants working under you to pay up as well.
7) A master-stroke like demonetisation that does none of its stated objectives, but serves to establish your new role as the ultimate unpredictable, supreme master.
8) A master-spank like GST, to keep those states screaming federalism, on the leash. Show them the stick by refusing to pay their share and occasionally dangle carrots as a reward for their good behavior (when they cooperate with your game of incentivisation), like a good master should.
9) A master-fuck like passing random rubbish, but problematic ordinances to keep plebeians tensed and distracted from your ulterior motives of asli swachh bharat – the clean sweep of all of bharat’s finances.
10) A master-climax like Atmanirbhar bharat, where the monetary policy gets pumped dry and the fiscal policy fakes it all.
Because think about it, why must you suffer great pain and give DBTs at all, when you can, with far greater ease, reclassify any entity as an MSME so it can avail itself credit under ECLGS scheme (Extremely Comical because you Lads aren’t Getting Shit Scheme)? At the moment, we’ve got some of our best brains debating if we should in fact reclassify pregnant women under MSMEs as well, just so we can be spared of this whole headache of maternity benefit schemes…
Lads we assure you, you can bank on us and this toolkit more than you ever banked on any PNB, we mean PSB, if you ever feel like the system is letting you down okay; especially when you get all these mixed signals with increasing surgical strikes on banks these days, like random slicings and amalgamations with no kundali matchings done, and the sudden entry of this new bad guy, the bad bank.
One reservation you unctuous initiates might be too afraid to voice out at this point, would be on the matters concerning vikas. Don’t worry we hear you, and we are here to clear it up.
While on the surface, a Moodinomy’s GDP would appear to be tanking vis-à-vis a normal economy, say Bangladesh, we strictly recommend that you look inward and ask yourself right now if the only real GDP that matters here, the real vikas – Gleaning Diamonds and Profits, has ever let you down. We rest our case.
However, the only thing we would advice you not to do, is go around trumpeting your spoils and rubbing it on every commie’s face. The last thing you want is a revolution, and you need to make sure these guys are either kept in the loop or completely distracted, because believe your balderdash, these red ants have only been watching themed movies during the lockdown and are somehow more spirited and itching for real life replications, than ever.
So you need to rein in some urges and stay true to the name of moodi-nomics, the economics of ultimate opacity and high albedo, where even if someone probes you with light, they see nothing but your gleaming saintly snow-white beard. Preferably project yourself as a peace loving, peacock feeding pappu too to enthrall the enforcement directorate.
Coming to our last but crucial component, we cannot stress enough on the importance of this because everything else fails if you fail to grasp this simple strategy. We call this “the vimana” or final nail in the coffin, and it is but mindset.
The simplicity of the concept educes just one last advice from us – Don’t use your mind, and set yourself up for blindly following the aforementioned toolkit.
When you feel you’ve fallen between the cracks of competing ideologies, and believe us when we say it is perfectly normal, remember a general rule of thumb to pull yourself out – ‘stack tax over tax till it taxes our lower classes and maxes our finances.’
Keep repeating that mantra till you go into autopilot mode again. We aren’t minimum chads, don’t be one.
Now say it with me,
JACK WE HIT RECESSION!🚩