Nothing is permanent

With reference to T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan’s lively column, “Political confidence is not business confidence” (November 4), the Narendra Modi government should remove the fear of erratic and arbitrary demands from the minds of buyers and sellers. 

As the writer rightly observes in the headline, the current government has displayed more than enough confidence in the political sphere; where but seems to lag is in the equally significant domain of business.

Considering that the writer quotes key parameters in economics, it would not be out of place to point out that the government’s theories are based on the premise of “other things remaining the same” — this makes it hypothetical rather than realistic by any norm or logic.

There is one more interesting economic theory — the law of diminishing marginal utility. This expressly provides that after reaching a certain optimal level the utility of everything is bound to decline, indicating that the usefulness of anything has an upper limit.

If the same concept is applied to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the saturation point of its political popularity is yet to be reached. But if its top brass believes that its “demand” (read growing acceptability) graph will continue to surge in any case, it is perhaps mistaken. The law of diminishing marginal utility is likely to catch up with the BJP, too. Of course, the BJP is making all-out efforts to carve out for itself an unimaginable political space — capturing power in non-BJP-ruled states. 

The future holds the key to the BJP’s success. The fact, though, is that nothing is permanent in politics.

Kumar Gupt   Panchkula

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