Control and Carpe Diem

Control and Carpe Diem

Control the message and you end up controlling the medium, seems to be the update on Marshall McLuhan’s vision. And this is being practised in a see-saw motion by both the Government and the Opposition.

Witness how Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Ms.Mayawati, has thrown down the gauntlet to the UPA, of which her BSP is also a restive part, by proposing that her state be split into four. UP has long been a grand prize for any political dispensation in its present form, along with Bihar, even after being divested of Jharkhand. UP is vast, ungainly, populous, lawless, backward, communally sensitive, yes, but sends cohorts of MPs to both houses of Parliament. 

But broken up into four states, the political imperatives as well as the arithmetic will change, perhaps unpredictably. For the implied manageability, it is nevertheless a good idea chasing its time. Meanwhile, the proposal, and the timing of its propagation, has managed to set the cat among the pigeons. At a minimum, the resolution, passed swiftly by the UP Assembly, has put paid to the pressure being applied on Ms. Mayawati by the higher reaches of the Congress Party.

The UPA, caught on the back foot, has countered with a stirring of the quota politics cauldron. The new mischief is in terms of an 8% reservation for Muslims within the 27% OBC quota. Not to be outdone, the SP has dusted off its old proposal asking for an additional Muslim quota over and above the OBC 27% . The upper castes and Hindus are no doubt being asked to pay for the sins of their forefathers, a kind of karmic pitri dosh.

But all this is essentially political posturing.  As the numbers in UPA 2 are constituted, to get anything passed at the Centre, the UPA needs both the SP and BSP for its numbers, not to mention the DMK and the TMC as well. Likewise, the BSP with its split-the-state-into-four proposal. And provided Parliament is allowed to function long enough!

Some of these trial balloons will be adjudged as too complicated to grab the voter’s imagination, and other ideas will peak too soon. A case in point is the rage about the Land Acquisition norms, wherein what Mr. Rahul Gandhi proposed, post his visits to Bhatta-Parsaul, has been defused by quick political and administrative action as well as by the Allahabad High Court giving out a number of sagacious decisions on the matter.

This land acquisition topic did indeed help Ms. Mamta Bannerjee ride to power in Paschim Banga. But now she’s grappling (ironically) with her former pals, the Maoists, and out-retrograding the Communists by stoutly opposing FDI in retail. For Ms. Bannerjee now, it is a battle for credibility with the much pampered if nearly destitute grass-root voter, whatever the illogic.

Ms. Jayalalithaa, Chief Minister from Tamil Nadu, joins her in the chorus against FDI  in retail from Chennai, for good measure probably, and to avoid any labels of elitism from the watchful and active DMK, smarting from being thrown out of power in the state.

Chief Minister of Delhi, Madame Dikshit’s attempt to control the messaging is less effective. Her big idea is to try and tame the BJP dominated MCD by trifurcating it. The BJP, taken aback at first, has now waded into the fray armed with codicils and amendments. Mrs. Dikshit is carrying on regardless, but with consensus likely to elude her, she has moved on to testing the waters for full statehood for Delhi.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, besieged on all sides by corruption scandals, stubborn inflation, persistent terrorism from Maoists/Islamists, bullying from China, artful dodging from Pakistan, a slowing economy, governance paralysis, indiscipline, populism, a clamouring Opposition, global economic meltdown, high commodity prices, etc., has also had his eureka moment. Dr. Singh does tend to get one big idea per term of office that he tenaciously adheres to- remember the civil nuclear power deal from UPA 1?

This time, it has come in the form of a redemptive Cabinet decision to push through majority or wholly-owned FDI in multi-brand and single-brand retail with little or no restrictions, including the kind of babu-bred detailing that makes even a good idea a non-starter.

Suddenly, the 2G scam is old hat, the Opposition stands out-manoeuvred on black money and inflation, and anti-corruption Tsar Anna Hazare is scrambling to get his share of media space. Mr. Hazare may be growing desperate at being upstaged, if his ever more bizarre pronouncements about flogging alcoholics, slapping Mr. Pawar, more fasting, and a resurrected East India Company, is anything to go by.

The fact is, liberalising the retail space is going to benefit millions of farmers to get more for their produce. It already has in Punjab and Haryana, as pointed out by the farmers’ lobby, where the efforts of the desi retailers such as Reliance Fresh have delivered. It will also open up a lot of jobs and other supply opportunities all along the delivery chain and make for a degree of first world sophistication, instead of the waste, unhygienic conditions, sloppy management and general inefficiency that dogs our present efforts.

The Opposition, and various Luddites in the ruling party, are essentially defending, and that too with unnecessary paranoia, an outdated set of ideas. The consumer will also benefit from better prices and a surfeit of choice, as in much else since 1991. Not one Kirana store need necessarily shut down if it wants to work for a living in competition with the big chains. It is competition that has put India on the economic map since liberalisation began, and not protection and barriers to global free trade.

In 1991, Mr. Rahul Bajaj was a leading light of the “Bombay Club” lobbying relentlessly to prevent foreign competition with talk of an “even playing field”. Now the same Mr. Bajaj suggested Kingfisher Airlines should be allowed to die if it could not compete. And India, flagging in its growth story and lagging in its Reforms Programme, can certainly do with the dollar billions in FDI investment and the modernisation it will bring.

A similar defensiveness was evident when Mr. Rajiv Gandhi, first started to put computers in to improve the workings of the Government, Nationalised Banks and PSUs in the Eighties. Then too, there were a firestorm of flag-waving and slogan-shouting morchas, all hysterically yelling fear and saying the machines would end up taking those secure Government jobs.  

But remembering that silliness today makes one fairly confident that FDI in single and multi-brand retail cannot be stymied after all, despite the no-holds barred kabbadi match going on at present.

(1,102 words)

4^th December 2011

Gautam Mukherjee