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Opinion: In(app)ropriate Survey, Socratic Style!
Over the last week, I learnt two new mathematical equations from the central government’s publicity bigwigs. 5 lakh = 1.3 billion. And 5 lakh = 93 per cent of 1.3 billion. So a majority of citizens back the Prime Minister’s scheme to erradicate black money. But before I rap the app survey on demonetisation, I must confess that it reflected the classic Socratic strategy of communication.
By
migrator
migrator
Chennai
Get your respondents to just focus on the things they agree with you by tailoring your questions to elicit only ‘yes’ replies. So when your app has posers on whether we need to tackle the black money menace or if it is hurting the economy, how can anyone possibly answer ‘No’?
How about a more credible survey to accurately depict the ‘queue’ reality? Had the survey been conducted not just through an app but also through printed questionaires given to people standing in bank or ATM queues, a truthful and credible picture would have emerged. Here’s what the government really needs to ask the common man:
- Are you getting change for two thousand rupee notes?
- Are petrol pumps and pharmacies accepting the old five hundred and thousand rupee notes and giving you change or forcing you to make purchases in multiples of 500 or 1000?
- Should we have demonetised one denomination at a time?
- Should the RBI have printed new 500 rupee notes instead of 2000 rupee ones?
- Should the new notes have been of the same size to obviate the need to recalibrate ATMs?
- Is the daily cash withdrawal limit adequate?
- Did you have to take leave to stand in the queue?
- Do you use a debit or credit card or online banking and own a smart phone?
- Did you get treatment at hospitals, manage wedding expenses, payments to maids and small shop keepers?
- Do you think there were people who knew about demonetisation before the televised announcement and deposited or invested large sums of money?
- Is this measure foolproof; to catch the big sharks instead of small fish?
- Do you think most of the black money is kept in Indian currency and not stashed away in benami real estate or foreign investments in swiss banks?
- Should we ban cash donations to political parties to root out black money?
- Is criticism of this measure a sign of people suffering or because they are ‘pro black money’, ‘anti national’, ‘anti modi’ or ‘presstitutes’?
These ‘Yes-No’ questions would have afforded the powers that be a genuine chance to feel the real pulse of the nation.
Postscript:
I too need to get my shoe stitched but only have a two thousand rupee note. Let me donate it to the cobbler and have a picture published! What if I can eat in a subsidised canteen for ten or twenty rupees! Howzatt for a surgical strike?
— The writer is Advocate, columnist, author and former Resident Editor, NDTV 24x7
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