Monday, the harbinger of bad news, a gateway to distressing and grim work schedule, hated by one and all hasn’t missed an opportunity to disappoint us this week, too.
Staying true to its character, Monday gave some pretty bad news to the world, in particular, to India.
Monday started off with Dalal Street (Stock market) turning into a Halaal street (Fish market) with stocks performing kamikazes, plunging down to all-time lows; courtesy to falling oil prices, coronavirus making serious headways into the Indian subcontinent and Yes Bank finally saying No to its customers.
Indian stock market did exceptionally well in plunging down spirally, almost on par with its American and European counterparts, whose markets are also plummeting due to similar reasons, which really points towards 2008 Esq Global Economic Depression. It can potentially push Indian investors into depression who’re already heartbroken about losing almost 7 lakh crores in market cap due to the biggest single-day fall ever in Sensex.
With a crude oil price war going on between Saudi Arabia and Russia, matters will only get worse with the passage of time.
Coronavirus cases have crossed the 1 lakh mark, which has caused a massive global hysteria, which in turn has caused a domino effect. Rising Coronavirus cases means widespread global panic which in turn means reduced global crude demand, which started a price war between two of the leading oil exporters; Saudi Arabia and Russia. Hence, plummeting oil prices, which led to the crashing of all leading stock markets.
Fascinating tragedy? Isn’t it?
With Coronavirus spreading like a wildfire, defying man-made boundaries of fences and walls and no cure insight, we’re probably looking at a prolonged global pandemic coupled with economic tragedy.
It’s surprising that none of the cures mentioned and shared tremendously via WhatsApp didn’t work in containing this deadly pandemic. What’s more surprising is that after the outbreak, sales of masks, handwashes and hand sanitizers went up exponentially, but Gau Mutra sales stayed almost the same, which really shows the deep-rooted westernisation of our Indian society.
Monday wasn’t also particularly forgiving with Yes Bank, whose systems were responsible for carrying our UPI transaction for major payment carriers and e-commerce websites. Its online operations were taken over by ICICI bank, 49% bought out by SBI Bank. New directors and its founder are getting charged with money laundering. It played its part and contributed to the major crash at Dalal Street.
Television media, unable to find a Hindu-Muslim angle in this unfortunate turn of events, has been forced to discuss economic issues, which involves blaming previous UPA governments and the Gandhi family, but lucky for them, they don’t have to do this arduous job of discussing economics anymore, as Madhya Pradesh government’s instability has provided new fodder for them which will keep them engaged for the next few weeks.
Madhya Pradesh’s political circus could be effective in entertaining masses, just the way the whole country enjoyed the political circus of Maharashtra. The only difference, however, in this circus is, we, the citizens, are the clowns who’ve bestowed the right to govern ourselves to fools who put their petty interests over the governance of masses.
Let’s just hope that better sense prevails, corona pandemic gets contained, cured and crude prices stabilise. Future doesn’t seem particularly bright, but we’ve survived Baaghi 3, so, I guess, we should be fine.