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Is the glass half empty or half full?

Olga Tellis

Pessimism, acco-rding to Wikipedia, is from the Latin word pessimus. It means a decision to evaluate, perceive and view life in a generally negative light. Value judgements, it says, may vary dramatically betw-een individuals, even when judgments of fact are undisputed. The most common example of this phenomenon is the "is the glass half empty or half full" situation.

India seems to be hitting a high note on pessimism at this present juncture. The Union finance minister, P. Chidambaram, has said that the country will have to live with double digit growth for some time. Now he says that growth will be slower. Everyone seems to sound like doomsday just becau-se the stock market is do-wn and the economy may not gallop at nine and ten per cent. So what if it is eight per cent or even 7.5 per cent? It does not mean that the economy has collapsed.

There was an unwarranted euphoria and as Dr R.H.Patil, a leading economist and chairman Clearing Corporation of India, said, "Last year when the market touched 20,000, speculators with vested interests said that it would go up to 30,000. They lost all sense of proportion. And on the way down, people are blowing things out of proportion."

The pessimism is really in the context of the unprecedented euphoria created by the stock market in the middle of last year which gave a golden glow to the economy wh-ich caters primarily to the upper, upper middle class and middle class India of about 30 to 40 crore people. But the situation is not as pessimistic as is made out to be. "I don’t see pessimism around. Walk into any shopping malls or entertainment place. They are good barometers  of the market, " said Mr Sudip Bandyopadhyaya,  director and chief executive officer, Reliance Money. He adds that there is not doubt that the market is down, inflation is high, crude oil prices are high, but what we see is a "sobering effect on the euphoria." These phases of pessimism are cylical, says Dr R.H. Patil.

"We have been through worst times. In 1990-91 we were facing a major disaster with barely a few days of foreign exchange in the kitty. There are so many solutions to today’s problems and the situation has never been so good. Our foreign exchange reserves are at over $300.74 billion, the private sector is doing far better than at any other time, but the government has to act, " says Dr Patil. People have sobered up to the reality the government’s finances have gone out of control. The government should at least pass on the price of petrol to the car owners, say several economists and oil companies. Mr Deven Choksey, managing director of K.R. Choksy, says the pessimism is highly exaggerated and that the media is putting out numbers without also talking abo-ut fundamentals. This makes the markets nervous, even though the problems are not all that serious. The government, he feels, must come out with confidence-building measures.

Arthur Schopenhauer, the 19th century German philosopher, held "evil is just what is positive; it makes its own existence felt." It’s the same with pessimism. Looked at differently, pessimism can be changed to a positive force to get the economy on the right track, to reality and away from euphoria.