The Masquerade in the Reformer's Habit

The Masquerade in the Reformer’s Habit

“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.” 
Christopher Hitchens

Staring down the barrel at a 6.9% GDP Growth annual forecast for the fiscal in February 2012, down from an erstwhile 9%, does not look like the handiwork of a cracker-jack economist-in-chief. Nor does it look like the report card of a reputedly reformist two consecutive terms in office prime minister.

Dr. Manmohan Singh’s turn at the top has been sadly undistinguished, weak, ineffectual, feeble and helplessly time-serving. This is not surprising, given his Faustian pact to “run” the Government without being, in electoral, organisational or power-broking terms, either the one who can bring in the votes or the money.

Dr. Singh, on his part, seems content with the form of being in-charge while being divested of most of the substance. But of course now he is having trouble staying above the fray too, as he is catching a good deal of the opprobrium from the most corrupt Government of India since 15^th August 1947.

Dr. Manmohan Singh’s longish tenure in office is marked, at best, by personal honesty though not blamelessness. Because like Dhritarashtra, the blind but covetous king from The Mahabharata, his enigmatic silences, and hurt, stage-managed though plausible denials, don’t quite wash.

He does come across as the whipping boy for other’s sins, but we are well aware he signed up for it, and is taking his knocks willingly enough. But presiding over a hugely corrupt Government, in drift, has quite eclipsed expectations of vision, clarity and a continuation of the new India Dr. Singh is credited with launching in 1991.

Dr. Singh, for a highly intelligent Oxford educated economist, has swallowed pride and ignominy through two consecutive terms of underachievement and belied hopes, and still has not lost his appetite for the remainder. But his track record is certainly not a good advertisement for “Manmohanomics”, whatever the silly coinage actually means. Because this box, supposedly containing wondrous gifts and boons for the Indian economy, seems to be empty, even of the expected jack-in-the-box on a spring and blowing a raspberry. And it is not empty because someone stole the contents either.  

But are we, in effect, criticising the mild-mannered erstwhile professor, flip-flopping between Socialism and the free market as the occasion and situation demands, for our own flawed perceptions? Has Prime Minister Singh been wrongly invested with the mantle and habit that properly belongs to his deliberately eclipsed predecessor in the job? Is the true author of Manmohanomics the Chanakya-like Telegu bidda Mr. PV Narasimha Rao, who pushed it all through while running a minority Government in just five years?

Was Dr. Singh ever really the great liberaliser of 1991 in his own right, or the mere front man for the ever poker-faced PV? Could he have been flying independent kites as Finance Minister then, given his evident timidity of temperament and penchant for expedient survival?

Or were both PV and Dr. Singh taking instruction from abroad? Was Dr. Singh actually brought in from the World Bank to carry out America’s bidding, and under their dictation at the point of our national near bankruptcy?

Or was Dr. Singh a closet Socialist even then, merely doing his job at the behest of the prime minister, or the World Bank, but without conviction? After all,  even now, our Government representatives never fail to say market-friendly things at Davos, at Washington, London, Tokyo, Paris, Moscow and Singapore too, projecting India as a worthwhile investment destination. And this, while being extremely obstructionist back home, obsessed with voter-friendliness and massive welfare programmes to the exclusion of most other elements of governance, let alone development.

UPA I and II have so far seemed oblivious of foreign complaints of red tape and bureaucracy at every step and how difficult it is to do business in India. This has apparently not changed appreciably from the protectionist/socialist Indira Gandhi era. But this fact does not seem to bother anyone important in the Government. The pertinent question is why, and particularly with the same man in charge, who allegedly changed things irrevocably in 1991.

Perhaps the Government of India under the UPA, Dr. Singh included, don’t want double-digit growth after all, and has the collective psyche of the poor man who grows richer but is embarrassed by it. Besides, there are plenty, some would argue far too many, Leftist commentators, who talk endlessly of inclusive growth, the gap between the rich and the poor, how GDP growth is not enough, how “India Shining” is a joke etc.

A retrograde, nostalgic, robotic, loss-making HMT style watch and ward step, worn inwards to the wrist, and backwards in one’s soul, holds powerful appeal in a century plus old Congress Party built on Socialism. The poor are the purpose of the Congress Party Chief, plus the mysteriously not yet quite mature heir apparent, with his aam aadmi shibboleth, and the absurdly powerful and unaccountable cabal called the National Advisory Council (NAC).

There is nothing wrong with this emphasis on the poor in itself, but it becomes very difficult for any reformer, if the spending on the poor is divorced from the income side of the balance sheet. Perhaps it is this cavalier attitude that may have put paid to Manmohanomics the day he first became prime minister, let alone now, when the whole ball of twine - governance, corruption, terrorism, communalism, indiscipline, revolt in the coalition and so on, is beginning to unravel.

Or was it Mr. Rao all along, erudite in several languages, highly urbane, minister of everything for 30 years in precedent to the top job, who was the actual architect of the courageous decisions and the bold departure from our pathetically underperforming past?

And didn’t Mr. P. Chidambaram, in a happier incarnation as Finance Minister, sitting in the cavernous Raj era room in North Block he has occupied thrice so far, not also do his bit with his landmark “Dream Budget” of 1997?

Besides, some of the recent past in economic terms, that period when we were cranking out 9%, was part of the time and tide of momentum, caused by the global steeple chase between 2003 and 2008. Our stock and property markets also boomed between 2003 and 2008, but the pity is we were able to absorb barely a couple of percentage points of global investment capital because, in the end, our market and economy are too small in absolute terms at about USD 1 trillion each.

The growth statistics of UPA I, with its tantalising promise of breaching the double digit barrier, has been achieved only in Opposition ruled Gujarat so far, at 12% p.a. recently, under the stewardship of Mr. Narendra Modi.

And yes, Dr. Manmohan Singh did get the civil nuclear power deal through during UPA I, though it remains sadly unimplemented on the ground to date. Why he did it, with a certain verve never before displayed seems a bit of a puzzle. Perhaps, it is because it was one initiative he could call his own, along with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President George W Bush,  the latter starved of foreign policy successes too.

UPA II, by way of contrast, has been hit by the converse blight of international economic collapse, flight of FII capital from India, and ham-fisted local efforts at inflation control that nearly garrotted the economy altogether. It has also seen the antics of rebellious minor partners get in the way. It is as if the Left from UPA I has been replaced by others with the same thinking but another name. 

  

In the midst of this difficult global scenario, there has been an expansion of the welfare agenda such as the looming Food Security Bill which will need lakhs of crores to fund, in addition to the ongoing NREGS, the NREGA, the subsidies on diesel, cooking gas, fertilizer and so on.

Ironically, though some people have grown rich off such programmes, the poor, not surprisingly, have stayed “deserving” as ever. Do the Leftists who back these initiatives to the hilt have any answer for the leakages and corruption that rules such welfare programming? The answer is a resounding no. And never mind that this, the nation’s present and future income, is being handled with such utter profligacy leading to a runaway debt situation.

Socialism has after all been unable, even in its Welfarism avatar, in small, under-populated and rich countries like Norway and Kuwait, to square its circle. So, there is no point on dwelling on its inequities, including the tens of millions of people killed in its name in Stalinist Russia and Maoist China. Never has there been a lie so frequently repeated, nor one as seductive to the young and naïve, or old and venal alike.

But a country such as ours, in bold, zealous and relentlessly reformist mode, could literally catapult itself into prominence, even as the statist and Communist-in-name China has demonstrated.

On the ground however, the matter of our progress has always been tangled up in the swamp of our political will and perhaps the recalcitrance of our karma. It is as if the politicians will render themselves redundant if there is all round prosperity. So, in a keep them barefoot and pregnant kind of cynical ploy, the powers that be  may want the masses to stay fecund, poverty stricken, and dependent.

We have, of course, disappointed all those who were rooting for a resurgent BRIC of a country. But maybe the cheer leaders still have some relevance. What is evident is that the Manmohanamics of the 1990s, whether of the man’s own write or not, is alive and well and has indeed changed India forever.

The current and long-standing malaise is to do with the blockages and stoppages that we see in every aspect of governance today. But this also implies that one day, who knows, it could be soon, we will be unshackled from our dungeons afresh and let out into the sunlight, free to move away and ahead once more.

When we do so, as inevitably we must, because there is no congenital defect to prevent or thwart such outcome, we will meet that very destiny unveiled with the first deft moves after near bankruptcy in 1991.

The same man was manning the financial levers of the country then, and so he must be more than aware of what needs to be done now. The only problem is, does he have the power, the intention, or the will to get it going in the remaining two years of his current term? Otherwise, one can safely send Manmohanomics, such as it is, to the history books, and talk of it as a brilliant beginning and foundation that may have to be built upon by some one else in future.

(1,800 words)

9^th February 2012

Gautam Mukherjee

Published as Cover Story in AGENDA of The Sunday Pioneer on 19th February 2012 as "Manmohanomics shackled" and online at www.dailypioneer.com