Five AM. The phone rang, its tone so harsh at that ungodly hour. But, I somehow stumbled awake and took the call from my buddy, ‘Mr NRI’, from New York.
NRI (cheerfully): “Good morning! I am so confused by your government’s stimulus package that I just had to call you. Modi says it’s 20 lakh crore rupees, but Chidambaram puts it at less than a tenth of that. Tell me, has Modi slogged it over the boundary for a big six, or just tamely holed out to mid-wicket?”
It took me a while to figure out his analogy from the pre-COVID age, when India was mad about an extinct game called cricket. Just how do I tell my friend that in the post-COVID digital era, we’re all hooked on to online Ludo.
I (still a bit groggy): “Well, since you are talking cricket, let me ask you – if a batswoman takes six dull singles in one over, and her captain proclaims grandly that ‘she’s scored a six’, what would you call that? Being truthful?”
NRI (confused): “It’s a 'technical truth', but in spirit, it’s a half-truth.”
I: “That, my friend, is what the Modi 20 lakh crore ‘stimulus' package is! It’s mixed up guarantees of three lakh crore, back-stops, tax refunds, free foodgrains, guarantees to give guarantees of another one lakh crore, and cash transfers of a few thousand crores, all of which is somehow adding up to the magical number.”