When a particular society and the people as its components feel that something is inherently wrong with the on-going state of affairs, yet none is willing to change the accepted status quo which has been prevalent for a sufficiently long period, then that social order is said to be under Hypernormalisation. This idea was coined by the Leningrad born anthropologist Alexei Yurchak in his 2006 book ‘Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation’. He describes it as an elaborate system of lies that gets codified in the order of things that needs to be maintained to hide an underlying sinister phenomenon.
Renowned documentary film-maker, Adam Curtis lays out the hypernormalisation phenomenon over a wide range of backdrops ranging from middle-east politics, the collapse of the USSR, austerity drive in the New York of 1970s inter alia. But this idea is gradually becoming ubiquitous in the largest democracy of the world in south Asia-India.
It would be imprudent to a certain extent to say that the condition of Hypernormalisation had been absent in India before the 2014 polls. But, at present, the situation is very different from the pre-2014 times. People seem to have gotten used to the idea that they are just the victims in the bigger picture. Newsrooms have been flooded with vitriolic debates on various scandals ranging from Coalgate scam to 2G, from CWG to KGD6 fiasco, banking sector crises, and most recently the Ayodhya issue. Yet, most people chose to sit in a desensitized way in front of their Television sets just helplessly becoming spectators to all the hell breaking loose around them. That most people have accepted the gory socio-economic condition is reflected in how anyone gets bashed in this rabble-rousing fancy newsroom debates when he or she presents a different point of view presenting his or her concern.

The situation on the large national scale is scary if one looks at it from the perspectives of economists, sociologists, and aspiring industrialists. Take the case of the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, ONGC, which was once a prime example of a super successful public sector enterprise. The functioning of a large Oil and Gas corporation requires a substantial amount of cash reserves which helps it in capital expenditure. As observed by Bloomberg, the cash reserves of ONGC were in the range of 110 to 115 billion rupees in FY2013-14, and it fell to an abysmal figure of around 10 billion rupees in FY 2017-18. This happened as the Oil giant had to pay out huge dividends to its employees. More importantly, it had to rescue the Gujarat state petroleum corporation by essentially purchasing its 80% stake in the Krishna-Godavari block. This was due to the non-functioning of the KG site of the Gujarat oil firm till 2015, which was acquired by GSPC under the New Exploration Licensing Policy. ONGC had to pay huge amounts of yearly interests to service the debt of GSPC which dried out its stock of cash. It is poignant to watch as the Maharatna had to lose its sheen and the ones who are mentally bankrupt in terms of financial knowledge celebrated the acquisition of a dead elephant. All is well for those who have accepted the new reality imposed on them.
Another side of the story is regarding the banks in India, which once used to bring confidence to the people who kept their savings and deposits in them and high hopes in the entrepreneurs who took loans. Gradually India witnessed the cases of Vijaya Mallya, Mehul Choksi, and Nirav Modi who fled the land by swindling billions. The Carnegie research fellows can get entire gamut of information on the scams perpetrated by these three people and will be amazed to find that they in a way matched up to the infamous Kabul Bank scamster Sherkhan Farnood. We also witnessed the literal fall of the Yes bank and the PMC bank which brought frenzied public who held deposits and savings in these banks on the roads. Experts sitting in the RBI headquarters and Ministry of Finance know well how the twin balance sheet problems have been aggravated in the last six years. They also know it in their bones how the demonetization has mangled the economy by dealing a body blow to the small, medium, and micro industries. People comfortably glanced through news dailies, scrolled down the news apps, circulated memes and Whatsapp forwards, listening to the endless hours of debates justifying the panic-inducing move, and had nice discussions over their Chai and Pakodas. That was the beginning and the end of public reaction to that move. For weeks after the ‘8:00 pm out of the blue Demo phenomenon’, many people were actually enjoying standing in the endless queues to get their own money from the bank at the Connaught place, New Delhi. This should not discount that many others were angered over the move. The move was supposed to weed out black money in the form of cash and promote digital transactions. The policymakers are still enamored by the old Bollywood narrative of the bad men hiding their ill-gotten wealth in walls, behind bathroom tiles, on the sofa, and other such places. While the cash flow has increased on the contrary, to an all-time high of 22.57 lakh crores Rupees as on November 1st last year, a record 25.63 % jump from the November 2016 value, most forgot the fatal impact the move had on the unorganized sector and the MSMEs. After all, numbers scare most people in this country, irrespective of how much they implore for attention on the Social media in front of the world to their connection to the land of Aryabhatta.

Cold hard facts have eluded the understanding of these people who expect a divine intervention to take their land to the proverbial pedestal of Vishwaguru. That is one of the reasons why they feel ecstatic while clamoring over one another hailing out the name of their messianic hero, or rather avtaar to be precise. Sensible and rational citizens will not be able to open the eyes of such followers to the plight of the states being denied their GST dues. When the centre argues through its attorney general that it is not an obligation to compensate the states for their GST dues and asks them to take loans from RBI, it speaks volumes about the deplorable state of the fiscal federalism. Most will simply not agree that there is a Kafkaesque state of arrangements present in the institutions in India if you want to set up a manufacturing firm or want to get treatment under the various Yojanas implemented, or want to get your family member’s data updated in the state-owned banks or post offices. The reality of the complex medical infrastructure in India has been laid bare during the Pandemic and the reactionary unplanned lockdown. The welfare state has been reduced to a perfunctory footnote in the files and speeches of the legislators. Despite this, the majority will not agree that there is something terribly wrong in the larger national landscape. When an important link to the 2001 assault on Indian parliament gets exposed as someone who is part of the very system which is When a particular society and the people as its components feel that something is inherently wrong with the on-going state of affairs, yet none is willing to change the accepted status quo which has been prevalent for a sufficiently long period, then that social order is said to be under Hypernormalisation. This idea was coined by the Leningrad born anthropologist Alexei Yurchak in his 2006 book ‘Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation’. He describes it as an elaborate system of lies that gets codified in the order of things that needs to be maintained to hide an underlying sinister phenomenon.

Renowned documentary film-maker, Adam Curtis lays out the hypernormalisation phenomenon over a wide range of backdrops ranging from middle-east politics, the collapse of the USSR, austerity drive in the New York of 1970s inter alia. But this idea is gradually becoming ubiquitous in the largest democracy of the world in south Asia-India.

It would be imprudent to a certain extent to say that the condition of Hypernormalisation had been absent in India before the 2014 polls. But, at present, the situation is very different from the pre-2014 times. People seem to have gotten used to the idea that they are just the victims in the bigger picture. Newsrooms have been flooded with vitriolic debates on various scandals ranging from Coalgate scam to 2G, from CWG to KGD6 fiasco, banking sector crises, and most recently the Ayodhya issue. Yet, most people chose to sit in a desensitized way in front of their Television sets just helplessly becoming spectators to all the hell breaking loose around them. That most people have accepted the gory socio-economic condition is reflected in how anyone gets bashed in this rabble-rousing fancy newsroom debates when he or she presents a different point of view presenting his or her concern.

The situation on the large national scale is scary if one looks at it from the perspectives of economists, sociologists, and aspiring industrialists. Take the case of the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, ONGC, which was once a prime example of a super successful public sector enterprise. The functioning of a large Oil and Gas corporation requires a substantial amount of cash reserves which helps it in capital expenditure. As observed by Bloomberg, the cash reserves of ONGC were in the range of 110 to 115 billion rupees in FY2013-14, and it fell to an abysmal figure of around 10 billion rupees in FY 2017-18. This happened as the Oil giant had to pay out huge dividends to its employees. More importantly, it had to rescue the Gujarat state petroleum corporation by essentially purchasing its 80% stake in the Krishna-Godavari block. This was due to the non-functioning of the KG site of the Gujarat oil firm till 2015, which was acquired by GSPC under the New Exploration Licensing Policy. ONGC had to pay huge amounts of yearly interests to service the debt of GSPC which dried out its stock of cash. It is poignant to watch as the Maharatna had to lose its sheen and the ones who are mentally bankrupt in terms of financial knowledge celebrated the acquisition of a dead elephant. All is well for those who have accepted the new reality imposed on them.

Another side of the story is regarding the banks in India, which once used to bring confidence to the people who kept their savings and deposits in them and high hopes in the entrepreneurs who took loans. Gradually India witnessed the cases of Vijaya Mallya, Mehul Choksi, and Nirav Modi who fled the land by swindling billions. The Carnegie research fellows can get entire gamut of information on the scams perpetrated by these three people and will be amazed to find that they in a way matched up to the infamous Kabul Bank scamster Sherkhan Farnood. We also witnessed the literal fall of the Yes bank and the PMC bank which brought frenzied public who held deposits and savings in these banks on the roads. Experts sitting in the RBI headquarters and Ministry of Finance know well how the twin balance sheet problems have been aggravated in the last six years. They also know it in their bones how the demonetization has mangled the economy by dealing a body blow to the small, medium, and micro industries. People comfortably glanced through news dailies, scrolled down the news apps, circulated memes and Whatsapp forwards, listening to the endless hours of debates justifying the panic-inducing move, and had nice discussions over their Chai and Pakodas. That was the beginning and the end of public reaction to that move. For weeks after the ‘8:00 pm out of the blue Demo phenomenon’, many people were actually enjoying standing in the endless queues to get their own money from the bank at the Connaught place, New Delhi. This should not discount that many others were angered over the move. The move was supposed to weed out black money in the form of cash and promote digital transactions. The policymakers are still enamored by the old Bollywood narrative of the bad men hiding their ill-gotten wealth in walls, behind bathroom tiles, on the sofa, and other such places. While the cash flow has increased on the contrary, to an all-time high of 22.57 lakh crores Rupees as on November 1st last year, a record 25.63 % jump from the November 2016 value, most forgot the fatal impact the move had on the unorganized sector and the MSMEs. After all, numbers scare most people in this country, irrespective of how much they implore for attention on the Social media in front of the world to their connection to the land of Aryabhatta.

Cold hard facts have eluded the understanding of these people who expect a divine intervention to take their land to the proverbial pedestal of Vishwaguru. That is one of the reasons why they feel ecstatic while clamoring over one another hailing out the name of their messianic hero, or rather avtaar to be precise.

Sensible and rational citizens will not be able to open the eyes of such followers to the plight of the states being denied their GST dues. When the centre argues through its attorney general that it is not an obligation to compensate the states for their GST dues and asks them to take loans from RBI, it speaks volumes about the deplorable state of the fiscal federalism. Most will simply not agree that there is a Kafkaesque state of arrangements present in the institutions in India if you want to set up a manufacturing firm or want to get treatment under the various Yojanas implemented, or want to get your family member’s data updated in the state-owned banks or post offices. The reality of the complex medical infrastructure in India has been laid bare during the Pandemic and the reactionary unplanned lockdown. The welfare state has been reduced to a perfunctory footnote in the files and speeches of the legislators. Despite this, the majority will not agree that there is something terribly wrong in the larger national landscape. When an important link to the 2001 assault on Indian parliament gets exposed as someone who is part of the very system which is meant to protect, the reaction of the people, in general, is that of an armchair pipe holding critic at best.

People seem to have acknowledged and embraced the narrative placed before them by the system. They are euphorically internalizing the description painted for them by the hogwash media houses. In reality, the superstructure is crumbling taking its toll on the ones at the very bottom of the pyramid. The wealth and income inequality is rising to such an extent that has turned the heads of Oxfam and the United Nations. India’s Global Hunger Index score is abysmally low which means that the poor and destitute face an existential crisis in this country. Most of the populace is likely to be okay with a publicly touted story that is dripped in falsifications, idolizations, deification, and skulduggery. The apathy of the majority of people towards the plight of the migrant workers trapped in the lockdown was symptomatic of a Hypernormalized condition where most people are fine with a broken edifice much like what was happening in the USSR in the 1970s and 80s or the New York of 1976.