Gyan

In my first job as a reporter, my boss was an relentless newshound. Since I am temperamentally the opposite of that, I relationship was rocky in the beginning, but once he saw my skills as a writer the sailing was smoother. I remember he would always caution me against interviewees who would give "gyan". By that, he meant their views on the Indian economy or the markets, instead of cold, hard news about the business they were running that could be turned into a new story. Since most bankers wanted to see their name print without revealing anything about their business, steering them away from gyan required some skill. 

Sometimes, I feel like in India we all treat gyan like a Bollywood movie. You (sometimes) enjoy it, but don't seek life guidance from it. As a markets reporter for a wire agency, I was at the centre of the gyan industry. A raft of professions are built around trying to predict where the markets will be a few days, weeks and months from now. But most people rely  on the same/similar models for their forecasts and essentially say the same thing in marginally different words. Being in that giant echo chamber began to grate on my nerves, and I left when it all began to get a little much. To be sure, not everyone is a muppet. There are some sharp commentators out there, but they are few and far between and one of them told me "My job is not to be right, it is to be entertaining".

I wonder what it would have been like if I didn't leave when I did. Would I have started to buy into the moonshine? Someone wise said "It is difficult to get a man to believe something when his salary depends on him not believing it". Who knows what would have happened to me.