Love's Labour's Lost

I am not plagiarizing Shakespeare with the header. Much as his title above had little to do with the actual play, our economic policies seem steeped in mystery

- RAJEEV NARAYAN

I have contracted the ‘Mobile-Phone-in-Mouth’ syndrome. I can think of no other Earthly reason that I jumped out of bed at 3 am the other night and grabbed my phone, clicked on WhatsApp and sent a quote (above) to myself. Have I lost it? If you are nodding sagely in the ‘Yes’, I thank you a zillion times, for you assume that I indeed had it in the first place. Let’s face it, we have all lost it, every last soul among us. Me, I was reacting to a news clip I saw earlier that evening, one that updated me about the global oil scenario and falling crude prices. Every barrel of the slick, black gold was cheaper by 21 per cent, I was informed. That should have been ooh-la-la for me and 1.5 billion others, but I could find no one laughing all the way to the fuel pump. Because the benefits of lower crude prices have not been passed on to the consumer.

Why is that? Well, it appears to be much like the headline of this column, where the aromatic banner of pakwaan in the policy kitchen isn’t quite making its way to the economic dining table. Just as William Shakespeare did with his play above, where his title had little to do with the plot, our policies too are steeped in mystery, misleading to deceive, not whetting the appetite or tantalizing the cash turnstiles. Shakespeare’s play and our policies defy not just our literary senses, they flout even the laws of physics and biology, which say what goes up must come down.

This is not the only instance of such vagaries happening.

Demystifying the ‘Oil Pool’