Montek Singh Ahluwalia

Your Tarantula is disappointed like every other true Indian, at today’s announcement of 2011 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, which is often mistakenly referred as Nobel Prize in Economics. While it is unfair to blame Nobel Prize Committee members, one cannot help wondering how our Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia missed a berth. Perhaps his nominations missed the deadlines set by the committee and it is the only plausible explanation!

We are all greatly indebted to Motek for his yeomen service to the nation and in particular to all the downtrodden Indians, who unfortunately comprise of nearly 80% of 1.23 billions. Other nations, including the so called advanced countries pay a lip sympathy to those below poverty line, as defined by the respective countries, and some throw alms in the form of social security, health benefit, food coupons and so on as they fancy or deem fit. The simple, untold and least understood Truth is there is no economy without poverty!!! There is hardly any nation which has ever attempted to eradicate the poverty in toto but India nearly achieved it now!

Thus far, no Economist, Politician, or Babu in the world has achieved what Montek did, and that too overnight! It is true that the rest of the world is struggling to define a commonly acceptable definition for Poverty Line (and even re-revised downwards and diluted the proposed definitions ‘n’ number of times to address the political aspirations of the politicians of ‘developing’ nations). Our Montek single handedly achieved the herculean task of lifting few tens of crores (i.e., few hundreds of millions) of Indians above the evasive and elusive poverty line with his super-human effort. The benefited number of Indian people simply outnumber the total combined population of dozens of mid-sized and smaller countries at one go!

On behalf of its readers, your Tarantula strongly commends Montek for Nobel prize in Economics for the year 2012 and he at least deserves the coveted Ig Nobel Prize in 2012.