Even as the busy
professionals of the local news channel get about making feature/interview
stories on the nosediving Indian rupee against the US dollar in their inner
minds they get perturbed too. They get the bytes of experts disturbing them
further that the freefall is likely to continue for months and it would cross
even the 80 rupees per dollar mark. Their meager salaries too threaten to mire
them in the devaluation sludge.
Schemes for the
poor like the Food Security Bill that promises to make staple grains available
at 1-2-3 rupees per kilo bring out the contrast of the devaluation. They wonder
aloud as the amused editor takes note:
“My goodness!
See what just a single dollar can buy now in India! 68 kilos of coarse grains,
34 kilos of wheat and nearly 23 kilos of rice (at current rupee-dollar rate)!”
“Right! I have
one solution. Pay salaries to all of us Indians in terms of dollars! Then you
won’t need to implement any pro-poor schemes or programs ever.”
Of course, they
laugh away the incredibility of the whole thing. Some other brainy buddies
suggest other options as the amused editor looks on:
“High time we
leave India!”
“Where? America? You
are hardly welcome there nowadays, pal!”
“Well, we can
still choose other countries where they pay you in dollars. And we must settle
there. See, you go to study there your costs increase now by nearly 30 percent.”
“Okay…let us
discuss this with our elders and parents. Maybe something acceptable emerges
out!”
Of course, they
grin away the impracticality of the whole thing. However, they get some news
immediately that only corroborates their mutual consternation. A 68-year-old
lonely Indian settled in the USA
wants to get married and gives out matrimonial ads hoping to find a few
applications from maybe 45+ or 50+ Indian ladies. But whoa! He gets more than
150 applications and counting that include even young girls in their twenties.
In view of the
dollar-psychosis threatening to go viral it would be in America’s
national interests to do something positive from their side too to boost the
value of the hapless rupee or else face the biggest exodus of the Indian kind
of the millennium!
