The Number Carnival, i mean Mela.....

This post got triggered in my imagination by the hysteria followed by the biggest Stock market crash in Indian history.....just had to write this today....

We are a nation obsessed with numbers, we throw numbers when we nothing better to do and we console ourselves with numbers…..whether that’s a legacy of our ancient mathematicians, I don’t know…..I don't even know whether our wise ancient mathematicians would be exactly beaming with pride with the kind of numbers we play around these days…..

Right then, numbers and our obsession with it…..

Hockey is still taught to our children as India’s national sport though hockey has long ago abdicated its position, and it and football seriously had never a chance against cricket….cricket is a number cruncher’s paradise…..each ball and the reaction to it can generate reams of statistics which can then be taken up and debated endlessly….when we divide ourselves in a debate, we throw sophisticated computer generated numbers and statistics at each other….hockey and football pale to insignificance against this onslaught….

Though come world cup soccer, cricket is almost forgotten but once that one month is gone, cricket rises like a phoenix to reign for 3 years and 11 months again…the reason for that is of course the very identifiable Indian trait…our love for a good worldwide spectacle (that’s food for a later article eh??!!!)….and so numbers rules the roost again….

But what are cricket statistics compared to the greatest Indian sport of all….our great dance with democracy and all its nitty gritties….number obsessed as we are, we have managed, very skillfully, to convert an ancient custom of governance to mere numbers…..each person is quantified into a number (each vote = 1), many votes become an electorate and a seat and gives one MP and so on…..

Just a recent illustration….West Bengal just had the assembly elections….the months before that, the newspapers were filled with so many numbers that it made my mind spin….but what took the cake was the day the results were declared….

I was in my office but not working and also not working were lots of people…..a third party unaware of the election thingy would have imagined it’s a good game of cricket going on…..someone would saunter over to a guy looking intently at his computer screen and say “koto holo?” (how much?), the way we would ask about Dada’s score (sadly don’t think that’s going to happen again in a hurry, if at all), especially when he was down in the dumps and each run was celebrated as a century by every true Bong;))…..

But of course he was asking about the seat tally that CPM or Trinamool got (of course the koto holo became reserved for CPM only as the day wore on!!!)….. and then a mini adda would form in the middle of the room where each screen (auto-refreshed for our convenience) was debate and the numbers pondered over….

Knowing about the obsession of the people of this ancient land and modern democracy with numbers, the various websites had posted tantalizing numbers on their main page inviting you inside to savour the various numbers on display…how many seats to be won, which district with how much percentage of which party and candidate, the relative percentage of number of votes between opposing candidates and the added data about their previous election results….and some websites had a calculator which predicted how much your favourite party would win (more and more numbers)…..phew!!!!

Each seat won or lost was cheered or mourned depending on which side you were on…..there was almost an atmosphere that you might expect at a horse race, with one horse coming on top in one minute and the second horse in the next minute….

The Greek democrats must have looked quaint and boring debating in their forums compared to the carnival that we have managed to make it!!!!

And look at the most recent number carnival that has gripped the nation in the last few years as surely as sudoku has conquered the world (except the Americans I suppose;))……stock market journeys of ups and downs….

Doesn't matter that barely 1% of our population indulge in this speculative sport, doesn't matter that retail investors (the individual guy on the street) have barely a presence compared to the mutual fund giants and other speculators, doesn't matter that what the stock market does has barely a ripple effect on the larger economy, doesn’t matter that the stock market almost never reflect ground realities, doesn't matter that very very few people know how the stock market actually works…(lots of doesn't matters there eh??!!!)

Regardless, the Indians have latched on to the climb or fall of the sensex for dear life….we wait with bated breath the next move of the curve, the newspapers cheer us on whenever the sensex breaks a record (of course it has just broken the record of registering the biggest fall ever….) and the breaking story flashed on our screen when the sensex breached the 5 figure mark….almost as if we won the world cup (the cricket one of course)….one must wonder how many of us knew what caused to it go up high like a rocket breaking the escape velocity (or for that matter why it came down like a stone) but we cheered it on…you know why? Because we just loved to see those numbers flitting across our screens…..

And when the sensex lost 2000 points in 3 days, pictures of devastations were shown as if it was the next biggest tragedy after the tsunami….but then the people who lost money were the ones who were most in love with numbers (without knowing where the numbers came from)……

So that’s how we defy the logic….we have become to love numbers so much and yet forgot to develop the analysis part….we just forget to apply it….

I guess Numbers have just become a part of the great Indian spectacle…..

Ah Indians!!!!