Dialing the Wrong Number

 

Was having a beer with the guys who have rented my spare room last night, when they suggested that I watch PK, a lovely Bollywood sketch staring Amir Khan as the titular character, PK an alien that ends up stranded on earth.

The crux of the story is simple. The alien gets stranded on each and finds out that “God” is the only person whom earthlings look to solve their problems. So, in order to solve his problems, he ends up looking for God by practicing every religion in earnest so that he can meet God and ask God for help. The alien’s spiritual journey brings him into conflict with the head of a large Hindu sect who labels him a “Muslim Extremist.” Every time the “Holy Man” talks about doing miracles, the alien tells him that he is “dialing the wrong number to God.”

One of the best scenes in the entire movie comes when he gets people to dress up in different religious costumes and challenges to the Holy Man who identify them. When the Holy Man fails to identify people correctly, the alien shows us that when we see a man with a turban, we assume he’s a Sikh, then when the turban is removed, that man is a Hindu and when his moustache is removed, he becomes a Muslim. The scene can be seen below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoXx_gKSCjA

 

The alien in the movie makes the point that many of the labels of religion and politics that we used to identify ourselves with, are in fact man-made. There is even a scene in the movie when he he’s caught in ward looking for the label of religion on a new born baby. After discovering that the baby does not have a label to identify itself as belonging to a certain religion, he challenges people to strip naked to see if they have a label that compels them to be followers of any particular religion and he comes to the conclusion that the religious leaders are using fear to get people to donate to the “God created” by the religious leaders rather than the “God that created humanity.” The alien in the movie keeps calling the “Holy Man” for “dialing the wrong number to God.”

This is probably one of my favourite Amir Khan movies in as much it makes a very valuable social point through comedy and the phrase “Dialing the wrong number,” makes me wonder if we are consistently dialing the wrong number. Furthermore, instead of questioning whether we’re dialing the right number, we insist on carrying on the conversation instead of checking if we’re in the right conversation in the first place.

The most prominent example of this always comes up during budget day, especially when there’s the imminent prospect of an increase of a tax of sorts. The standard conversation that the government has is that it needs to increase tax in order to pay for welfare programs. Our current finance minister, Mr. Lawrence Wong has repeatedly stressed that any increase in the Goods and Services Tax (GST) will not hurt the poor because they will receive all sorts of subsidies. The opposition will then point out that the government is has plenty in the reserves and does not need to raise tax.

This is, in fact the wrong conversation on the topic. I believe that the right conversation should be on whether people should be receiving any subsidies in the first place. Unfortunately, if we started on that conversation, we may get plenty of answers that would make people uncomfortable – saying you are giving a subsidy to help people is just so much easier to say than the fact that you’re encouraging employers to look for the cheapest possible option when it comes to salaries and admitting that the poor might be bearing a higher brunt of the tax burden than the well to do.

As the alien in the movie points out – fear of the unknown is a very powerful tool in keeping people in order. Think about it – we accept certain truths without questioning them because a world without those truths can be frightening. Let’s look at another constant in Singapore – namely the reminder of the benefits of one-party rule or “why a two-party system won’t work in Singapore.” Let’s just look at who is using this line and question why they’re using this line.

It's been comfortable sticking to “the conversation” on many of the hot topic issues of the day. However, between the internet and Covid, we’re signs that we’ve been dialing the wrong number and been indulging in the wrong conversation. However, instead of admitting that we’ve dialed the wrong number, we’re carrying on in the wrong conversation.

Look at our traditional model of looking at pay. When it comes to white collar work, we pay top dollar for people like politicians, bankers, stock traders and so on. We argue that it’s all about attracting talent. However, when it comes to people like street sweepers and rubbish collectors, the argument as that we can’t pay more because it would be uncompetitive.

Covid showed us that we need people to collect rubbish. It also showed us that having the world’s billionaires buy expensive property didn’t really make life better for the rest of us. We should have known that we had dialed the wrong number.

However, the only admission that we’ve dialed the wrong number has been the formation of government committees to look into raising the wages of poor people.

Questioning established norms isn’t unpatriotic. Its common sense. Constant questioning is how you ensure that the path you’re on is the right one and if you’re not, how do you get on the right one. Let’s stop sticking to the wrong number and look to get the right one.