• Home
• /
• Opinion

April 1 is just another day in a fool's paradise

Today is April Fool's Day. I am not sure how the world came to observing it. But I am convinced it's a day worth all its boo-boos, blushes, jokes, laughs and pranks. We owe it to the sanest of the fools who thought it's sensible to keep a day for ourselves. Because we are all fools. Homosepians have been inscrutably foolish since their origin. From the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's preposterous poll slogan 'achhe din aane waale hain' (good days are coming soon), it's all the same story of man's inherent stupidity. The fact that year after year we recycle the same old jokes is a testament to our intellectual vasospasm.
In the beginning, we were made to believe communism stands for a better life for all. My father never told me killing is an essential feature of communism. We believed the ideology would make persons selfless and lead to peace and prosperity. We were fools. By the American count, 35 million to 45 million people were killed in the Soviet Union, 34 million to 62.5 million in Communist China and two million to three million in Cambodia. We still romanced the blood-soaking ideology. What fools we were!
After World War II, a military and ideological barrier which Winston Churchill referred to as Iron Curtain, was erected by Joseph Stalin to seal off the Soviet bloc from the non-communist European states. There was another concrete wall that physically divided Berlin. While the Americans called the Soviet Union an Evil Empire, glossy magazines that Moscow's propaganda machines churned out portrayed life on their side as paradise. We were fools. When the USSR collapsed in 1989, what the world witnessed was horrendous. The rot underneath the outward signs of strength was malignant and uncontrollable. The economy was in a deplorable state. Corruption within the state was rampant. Independent civil society was non-existent. What fools we were!
The Gulf War should have ended in 1991 but the Americans and British went ahead with the agenda of removing Saddam Hussein. The administrations of George W. Bush and Tony Blair told a sceptical international community that the Baath leader was still building weapons of mass destruction and that large stockpiles of WMDs were hidden in Iraq. Despite the UN Security Council's refusal to pass a new resolution authorising the use of force, the Bush-Blair team not only overthrew the Iraqi regime in 2003 in a bloody invasion but also unleashed the monster of Islamic extremism that would ravage the entire world for decades to come. The Bush-Blair combine brought terrorism to Europe, which had till then insulated itself from the scourge. Their invading forces were unable to unearth any WMD stockpiles in Iraq. The well-orchestrated fearmongering was a cover to invade the Arab nation. What fools we were!
The West is presently preoccupied with a war on terrorism. Leaders across the world seem to have no time to govern as terrorism comes banging on their doors. The Taleban was known to be a Frankenstein created by the Americans, though no one openly admits it. But Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman won't mince his words. He is ready to call a spade a spade. In an interview with The Washington Post recently, he said the spread of Wahhabism began at the behest of Western countries. He said investments in mosques and madrassas overseas were rooted in the Cold War, when allies asked Saudi Arabia to use its resources to prevent inroads in Muslim countries by the Soviet Union. He said successive Saudi governments lost track of the effort, and now "we have to get it all back". Is America, which blames Muslims for all its ills, listening?  What fools we were!
Political war mongering by the just-crowned president of India's Congress Party is one of the best jokes we can preserve for any April Fool's Day. Rahul Gandhi is a scion of the Nehru clan that governed India for over 60 years, which means the history of Congress ran almost in parallel with the history of the nation itself. Jawaharlal Nehru's honeymoon with industrialisation as a short cut to material prosperity only marginalised the poor. There is no one else to blame except the Congress for the endemic corruption, nepotism poverty and red tape India is still saddled with. It was the Congress which first played the communal card in Indian politics. It was mostly the Congress governments that banned cow slaughter in about 24 states. Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party was not even in existence when the Congress banned cow slaughter in Bihar in 1955. The dream of inclusive growth that the Congress and Nehru offered never materialised. We wasted our valuable years expecting the grand old party to deliver. What fools we were!
"You gave 60 years to the Congress, they gave you nothing but misrule. Give me 60 months to fix the nation's ills," Modi thundered at campaign rallies before the general elections. The 60 months we gave him would soon end, but Modi is finding it hard to make good on the promise of economic growth. Despite a projected growth of 7.4 per cent in 2018-19, economy hasn't created enough jobs because of lack of investment. India will have to create jobs on a scale that can absorb 10-12 million every year. But only 416,000 new jobs were created in 2016-17 despite the government's professed emphasis on job creation.
Income inequality has grown and farm distress has soared as the disruptive demonetisation of 2016 squeezed the largely cash-only agriculture sector. According to the Ashok Dalwai committee, the agriculture sector, which witnessed the highest growth during the2004-14 Congress-led rule, has slipped back to near-zero growth despite normal monsoons and bumper yields under the Modi government. The Indian Express points out that the National Food Security Act promised Rs6,000 to pregnant and lactating mothers. However, in its first year of implementation, only about two per cent of the women received this benefit. The BJP, which had roasted the previous government over fuel prices, removed subsidies and aligned the prices with international market. But prices only increase never comes down when international markets tumble. In his election speeches, Modi promised to bring back in 100 days trillions of black money stacked away in foreign banks and distribute Rs1.5 million to each individual. Today we realise they were all promises to hoodwink the electorate. What fools we were!
When we gleefully download all those apps into our smartphone, we know there is no such thing as a free lunch. Scores of them sit in our phone feasting on all info about ourselves: our workplace, our likes and dislikes, our friends, relatives and acquaintances, our political ideology, our personal habits and vices and our travel history. They harvest the data and make a fortune by selling them to a third party who uses them for things, which we don't want to be party to. According to a study, seven in 10 smartphone apps share our data with third-party services. Like Facebook did by letting Cambridge Analytica harvest data from its millions of costumers and use them to influence American voters. With a smartphone in our hand, our personal life is a public space. We knew it, still we cosy up to those apps. What fools we were!
Fools of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your dreams. Let's celebrate the day.
-suresh@khaleejtimes.com