More baby elephants, enough EC: It makes no sense to consume bad news, a world that feels good about good news should only stick to it

I never truly understood the natural inclination of market sentiment until I encountered the baby elephant. You know, that baby elephant rescued by Mithu and Rajesh Das and a few other fishermen from the engorged waters of the Teesta last week in West Bengal's Siliguri. It was like the whole country had taken a giant mushy endorphin shot, topped up with a lovely line of snow.

Only a few days later came the damning news report in The Indian Express about, among other things, the chief election commissioner hiding key decisions taken on the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral roll exercise from his two other colleagues who comprise the top brass of EC. It's the sort of news you, as an upstanding citizen who pays his taxes and sings the sixth stanza of every song, don't want to believe, until confronted with facts. And then, you wish you had a giant mushy endorphin shot topped up with a comforting line of snow.

But both points of high and low raise a larger issue. Knowing that good news makes us happy and bad news makes us unhappy, why the heck do we not just abolish or block bad news? I mean, we chuck food that's inedible. We don't look into the sun. We desist from playing Rabindrasangeet in rave parties.


I suspect we still latch on to it because bad news is good news for some - and vice and virtue versa.

There is delicious pleasure in 'I told you so,' or bursting the balloon of someone, or a type of people, you don't like. This is something that permabulls and eternal optimists simply won't get. Wanting an asteroid to come crashing down, even if that means squishing the person wishing it, isn't that perverse when you consider how seriously he or she may want to disprove the coming of 'achhe din' mentioned in the other Book of Revelations.

But it's strange that a strand of Darwinian evolution - survival of the happiest - hasn't extinguished our appetite for bad, unpleasant, or disconcerting news, thereby still providing demand for supply of bad news from the media, entertainment, and knowledge industries. For every romcom, there's more than one trag-mahal.

Thankfully, the modern political-economy has established beyond reasonable doubt that good news is, well, good. Sometimes even when it's not good. Under all circumstances, good sentiment hona chahiye. Stock markets run on it. Consumer confidence depends on it. Property prices enjoy it. Governments insist upon it. Startups get their seedy money from it.

'Sentiment' is perhaps capitalism's greatest invention after limited liability. Nothing actually needs to improve. People just need to feel that things will. This explains the magnificent elasticity of financial optimism. Interest rates fall: bullish. Interest rates rise: the central bank is fighting inflation, also bullish. Unemployment falls: strong economy, bullish. Unemployment rises slightly: rate cuts may come sooner, bullish. A company loses ₹320 cr instead of the expected ₹420 cr, and its shares jump 11%.

The rupee has not fallen; it has created exciting opportunities for exporters. Oil has reached $150, demonstrating robust global demand. A crash is only an 'accelerated price discovery'. Bankruptcy is 'a zero-debt lifestyle'.

We all know 'negativity bias'. Place 10 harmless objects and 1 cobra in a room, and the brain will spend an unreasonable amount of time thinking about the cobra, instead of appreciating the furniture. But if you already knew your brain is biased negatively, surely you would compensate for that hardwired prejudice and inculcate and evangelise 'positivity bias'?

Bad news may traditionally have stronger customer retention, higher engagement, better recall. But it's not just the markets that cajole us to be happy by following only happy news, while dismissing the rest. There's that delightfully cheerful character in the 1979 quasi-Biblical black comedy, Monty Python's Life of Brian, who sings while he's nailed to the cross: 'When you're feeling in the dumps, don't be silly chumps/ Just purse your lips and whistle, that's the thing, and/ Always look on the bright side of life...'

So enough of bickering and surreptitious election commissioners, please. More rescued baby elephants, my friend.