Two years of coronavirus pandemic followed by Russia’s war on Ukraine not only had the world economy in a tailspin but also left a traumatising scar on the psyche of the people. India has been no exception to the adverse impact the pandemic and Ukraine crisis had on the economy and the population’s mental well-being.
Amidst this gloom and doom, there have been some altruist individuals who have taken it upon themselves to dispel the clouds of despair and entertain and amuse people with their hot takes on matters concerning economy. One such Good Samaritan is Bloomberg columnist Andy Mukherjee, whose opinion gems lately have been a source of amusement and distraction for the pandemic and war-weary population.
Here are some of the gems by Andy Mukherjee:-
Rupay can’t overthrow Visa and Mastercard and therefore, India should internationalise UPI
For instance, in March 2022, Andy Mukherjee wrote a column arguing if India can really overthrow Visa and Mastercard with its homegrown Rupay payment services. In his opinion piece, Andy asserted that Rupay must have an international approach instead of its current domestic-centric focus. However, while contending so, Mukherjee ironically also denigrated Rupay’a foreign tie-ups with Discover and Japan’s JCB International Co., stating that if the goal is to lower nation’s reliance on foreign payment services, partnering with overseas companies is not a good solution.
He further added that India should instead internationalise Unified Payments Interface or UPI as it is widely known, rather than pushing its card payments services to the Indian masses. Of course, for Mukherjee, UPI and card payments services are perhaps exact substitutes, which is why he is so confidently pontificating to the Indian government to export UPI instead of developing indigenous card payments services.
While the West guzzles up Russian oil, India should refrain from importing energy at discounted rates from Moscow
In another article titled “India Shouldn’t Fall for Putin’s Rupees-for-Rubles Deal”, dated March 31, 2022, Andy Mukherjee made a case against India buying discounted Russian oil in rupees, contending that such a transactional relationship between Moscow and New Delhi could irk the West.
Mukherjee was willing to forgo a steep $35 per barrel discount Russia was offering along with millions of rupees saved in dollar conversion just because such a mercantilist setting would annoy the West, which, by the way, did not mind guzzling up gazillions of Russian oil to power houses and factories despite imposing sanctions against Moscow in the wake of its war on Ukraine.
RBI is raising interest rates to recoup its “lost credibility”
In still another article, Mukherjee advised the Central Bank of India to raise rates more to “regain credibility”. The article that was published on 5 May 2022 said the Reserve Bank of India’s unhurried approach toward inflation has caused damage to the Indian economy, and its decision to hike 40 basis point in benchmark rates will be a hard slog.
What Andy conveniently glosses over in his article is that aggressive action by the Central Bank could have led to the risk of setting in recessionary pressures, especially on the heels of the coronavirus pandemic that had the businesses and economy in its throes due to sweeping restrictions.
Andy Mukherjee says curbing wheat exports amid disruption from Ukraine war is akin to brewing food crisis in home
Andy Mukherjee, a doomsayer of sorts but rarely gets it accurate, had also penned an article about looming wheat crisis in India. The author claimed that India has flip-flopped on its decision to feed the world with its ban on wheat export as it was facing a “chapati crisis” at home.
India’s decision to stop wheat exports, Andy alleged, was due to stunted grain formation caused by climate change that had sent the mercury rising to unprecedented levels. However, the Indian government clarified its stance, stating that it had imposed a ban on wheat to ensure food security amidst the global crisis touched off by the Russian war on Ukraine.
India should buy Chinese made vaccines to fight COVID-19: Andy Mukherjee
However, the best piece of advice Andy Mukherjee had for the government of India was about importing Chinese coronavirus vaccines. In May 2021, barely four months after India kickstarted its inoculation campaign, Mukherjee authored an article declaring that India’s vaccine strategy had failed. Amid delays in vaccine production, Andy suggested the government procure Chinese-made vaccines to inoculate its over 1.4 billion population to blunt the impact of the pandemic and foster immunity to fight future variants of the ever-evolving coronavirus.
Thankfully, the Indian government did not heed his advice and ploughed on with its vaccination drive, which recently reached the milestone of jabbing 200 crore vaccine doses. On the contrary, China, which boasted its authoritarian system in swift vaccine production and administration, is still reeling under chronic waves of coronavirus pandemic despite having administered its population with Chinese-made vaccines.
At present, when a semblance of normality is beginning to return across the world, China has still imposed sweeping curbs in some parts of the country to tackle the spread of the coronavirus outbreak.
Andy Mukherjee loses hope in India
In November 2020, Andy Mukherjee wrote an opinion piece in Bloomberg titled “Why I am losing hope in India.” The piece apparently led to a global rethink about India and even a headline in Scroll that ran“Why columnist Andy Mukherjee is losing hope in India…” Eventually, the Society of Publishers in Asia decided to give an award to this piece for “Excellence in Global Writing.”
What did Andy Mukherjee get from Indians in return for his grand intellectual contribution? Trolling, mostly.
But there was a fundamental problem with Andy’s piece. It did not jibe with the available data. While he continued to lament over losing hope in India, the data suggested that India was powered by strong growth that kept it on the path to the world’s fastest growth. Real investors continue to invest real money in India. In the most recent quarter of that year, it was $22.5 billion.
As for FDI equity inflows in Apr-Jun 2021, that was up by 168 per cent. Somehow the opinion pandits know something that the real investors just don’t seem to grasp. India’s economy was failing, according to Andy, and it was collapsing even before the pandemic struck.
Two years since the pandemic swept India, the country remains among the fastest growing economy, as per the IMF. But perhaps, the IMF does not have the “divine foresight” that Andy Mukherjee appears to possess, who continues to make apocalyptic predictions for the Indian economy.
Unfortunately, such treasured quality that Andy Mukherjee possesses should not remain restricted behind a paywall, as is the case with his pieces on the Bloomberg website. In the interest of humanity, Bloomberg should grant free access to Andy Mukherjee’s column, whose opinion pieces should perhaps be preserved in a museum for not just public consumption for the current generation but for posterity as well. After all, there are few economic analysts and geopolitical observers who have been as consistent in being terribly wrong as Andy Mukherjee has been.
To borrow a quote from George Orwell and modify it to pay tribute to Andy Mukherjee’s invaluable contribution, one can say “In the times of universal distress, writing amusing pieces is a revolutionary act”, and there should not be any restriction to access revolutionary acts.
