The Prince & Conceptism

The Prince and Conceptism

“ If you get to learn something even from the worst of creatures don’t hesitate.”

Chanakya

One of the most famous primers on realpolitik was written by a wannabe courtier in involuntary retirement. It did not win Niccolo Machiavelli his summons back to the charmed circle, but his suggestions, written like aphorisms, in then modern and colloquial Italian rather than the formal Latin, persist in the popular imagination to this day.

After all, the slim little book called The Prince, in preference to his lengthier explorations, written in 1513, is why “Machiavellian” is a contemporary description of expediency. Witness this: “Entrepreneurs are simply those who understand that there is little difference between obstacle and opportunity and are able to turn both to their advantage.”

Machiavelli had his turn in the sun during the Renaissance, and the intrigue laden world of the Medicis he was cultivating. There were other people, in those times, cast in a similar mould, all with their entreating, persuasive, often elegantly written primers. It was the age of patronage, and you had to peddle your wares before the mighty.

Notably, amongst the others, there was Balthasar Gracian, a Jesuit priest, with his slim and witty insights written in the 1600s, his style and content dubbed an ism before many others emerged. Gracian’s work was called “conceptism”, epitomised in his “The Art of Worldly Wisdom”, a book of 300 maxims plus commentary.

And then there was Giacomo Casanova, the renowned modernist lover and chronicler, who wrote himself into posterity in the 1700s, with not a little to say to the Doges of Venice, but also as it turned out, to the world. Casanova wrote to capture a world he knew would disappear, like his youth and vitality, and this, his memoirs, instructs us still.

Here in India, we had dear old Chanakya of course, and he preceded all in the West by centuries. Chanakya advised Emperor Chandragupta Maurya, the first King of a united India to rival anything the British or the Mughals accomplished many centuries later. Chanakya, something of a Shakesperean Richard the IIIrd; ungainly, ugly, but most acute, predated Machiavelli by 1,800 years.

But where oh where is the political theorist worth his salt or semantics nowadays? He or she is not only missing in action here in India, but across the world stage too. And this at a time when long held civilisation bolts and moorings, certainly those fashioned after the Industrial Revolution, are under severe strain.

There is no Adam Smith, Marx and Engels, no Hobbes, or Locke or Rousseau, not even Harold Laski in today’s world! The Gurus have exited en masse, replaced by a lot of technology on autopilot without anyone in the Captain’s Seat.

There are no political theorist cum practioners of the calibre of Genghis Khan or Mao (remember his little red book) or Stalin, or Deng, or Charles De Gaulle, or Jawaharlal Nehru for that matter. Today’s mistakes are sins of omission and commission with villains pulling strings from behind the arras.

The world is ruled by political pygmies, in a sequel to the decline and fall of the eponymous Roman Empire, but minus Julius, minus Augustus, Marcus Aurelius, minus all the ones remembered favourably by history.

Unless, that is, one insists on mentioning the failures, such as Bahadur Shah Zafar, beatified despite his disgrace, his ineffectual and mortified memory being attached to our own desi Fleet Street, in an act of municipal flatulence. Or the villains, that strutted across the stage for brief seasons, gorging on blood and human suffering and now reduced to caricatures reeking with blame.

 All the political colossuses though, like the legendary one at Rhodes, a lost wonder, have been erased from the face of the earth. But why, when the challenges the modern world is facing are grave enough to threaten the extinction the Mayans predicted, for this very year 2012? Where are the super heroes when you need them?

Still, we can perhaps take comfort that the end of the world is far from nigh. But the occurrence of flounder-worthy icebergs and elaborate, disguising orchestras seems to be proliferating. All it takes, after all, is one little mistake.

Oddly, there is nothing frenetic about our impending sense of doom, assuaged as it is with aspirational baubles and a stiff libation or two. But that may be no more than post modernist sang froid, the gristle and grist stuff of denial.

India, waiting for good times, will, alas, have to wait a little longer, like a deserving bride without a worthwhile groom in sight. It takes nothing away from our eligibility except a sneaking fear of wilting on the vine.

But why is this, with so much intelligence and ability going a begging here and around the world? Is it because we need pygmies rather than giants to transform the world into a more equitable and just entity? Could it be because it is the rule of mediocrity that ultimately nurtures, whereas a larger presence etiolates and enervates?

Is it time for the State to be tamed by the meek?  Did Marx have it right when he predicted the Capitalist State would “fade” and “crumble”, even as the Communism he spawned and inspired died a premature death? Will the world collapse under the weight of its “contradictions”, or its innate debauchery? Or is this much ado about nothing and just rank, paranoid exaggeration, a dirty nightmare caused by ill digested information?

 How can a Hollande and Merkel work together without imploding? But in doing so, yoked together like a bull and a horse, do they benefit the poor, as the riff raff in The Tale of Two Cities, presentimenting La Revolution.

Is it time for all of Europe to collect free wine from a spilt barrel? Sans culottes is not sans sense after all, and a dirge composer can also fashion a waltz. When dawn comes, it will clear the heads and eyes of both victor and vanquished, and all those queuing up on either side of the tug of war, for the churning.

It is ironic and anachronistic to have a Finance Minister from the Indira Gandhi era that is too indispensable to be trusted is it not? And the wonder of it is that the polity we live in thinks nothing of it.

The power of mediocrity is that it can readily and invariably put intelligence to shame.  But as Balthasar Gracian put it long ago: “Always leave something to wish for; otherwise you will be miserable from your very happiness.” Gracian had a way with words, but we should be so lucky.

(1,102 words)

29^th May 2012

Gautam Mukherjee


Published on  31st May 2012 as Leader on the Edit Page entitled "Rule of the mediocre" and online at www.dailypioneer.com

Beautiful & Slight

BOOK REVIEW

Title: Difficult Pleasures

Author: Anjum Hasan

Publisher: Penguin Viking 2012

Price: Rs. 399/-

Beautiful and Slight

The “Difficult Pleasures” of the title lops into view on page 111 of this handsomely produced book in a story entitled “Immanuel Kant in Shillong”. Hasan has the protagonist say: “It’s such a difficult pleasure-talking,” right in the middle of the page, when confronted with an emotion laden confession/apology on the part of a long ago transgressor. 

This short story also grapples with the Kantian idea of the “Categorical imperative- act only on that maxim through which you can, at the same time, will that it should be a universal law”. The charming thing is that Kant is decidedly not for the intellectually challenged. But not getting it can, and in this instance does, have some poignant consequences. Consequences that also ironically visit the best student of Immanuel Kant in the class.

All Anjum Hasan’s stories in this volume are interiorscapes in the main, and one enjoys being let into other people’s heads with such skill. But, and this is the rub- nothing very much happens. The evocation of moods and emotions is good but the plotting is weak.

When this young writer marries her considerable talent for honest description and controlled language with strong plot lines, she will have no difficulty winning the prizes she has already been shortlisted for, and I dare say, bigger ones too. The question, as is often the case with poet-writers who naturally incline to visualising, is whether they can muster enough detachment from the beautiful image to tell a riveting story.  

Anjum Hasan is undoubtedly an elegant writer and considerably acknowledged for being so. Her previous book of poetry Street on the Hill located in her erstwhile hometown of Shillong, was heralded as a fresh new and original voice from the North East, where her parents, originally from Uttar Pradesh, were professors.

Hasan now lives in Bangalore. Her debut novel, Lunatic in my Head, yes, with a character enamoured of Seventies mystic rockers Pink Floyd,  was shortlisted for the Crossword Book Award. This was followed by Neti Neti, also shortlisted by the Hindu Best Fiction Award.

I personally like the story named “Saturday Night,” in which a frustrated house maid steals the baby in her charge as something her blasé employers absolutely cannot take in their stride, but only to foist it surreptitiously on another couple randomly encountered.

A couple, where the man wants to start a family after a year of marriage but his careerist wife does not. The two stories of the maid in her efficient but taken-for-granted existence, looking after the home and son of her employers, and that of the yuppie couple, run in parallel. That is, until they dramatically intersect. The couple gives the signalling maid a lift during their headlong dash to the Bangalore airport. And she leaves the baby behind in the car when she gets off at an intersection.

Hasan demonstrates masterful insight into the ambivalence of the careerist wife, one with a ticking body clock. It is she who is subconsciously motivated to have her husband stop the car to give the fleeing maid and baby a lift. This, even though she is late on the way to a conference abroad. This story is an illustration of what Anjum Hasan can do when she combines plot and the dexterity of her writing style.

It is fashionable nowadays to write palimpsests with muted tonalities. But there should be something more to remember a book like this beyond the pleasure of well crafted prose. Except, of course, the encomiums of the already initiated, those literary types with refined sensibilities that populate the edit departments of publishing houses.

And yet post-modernism, into which genre this set of short stories might be classified, does not wish to do a Maupassant or O. Henry. That kind of writing is now considered old hat, despite their highly memorable stories that delighted and continue to delight millions. Neither would the posher elements of the current literary establishment welcome what it considers “obvious” writing.

After all, it is indeed a function of good literary prose to explore frontiers, and not be afraid to experiment with both style and content. Anjum Hasan’s Difficult Pleasures does contribute to all of this. But the parallel point that might be considered is best illustrated by the erstwhile “art cinema” of decades past now become far more accessible. It is today a genre of mainstream, particularly in the urban multiplexes. The bold new hybrids retain their ability to break new ground while proving commercially successful at the same time.

The dwindling reading public in the digital age, is largely middle-brow in temperament. It generally wants its healthy diet of intellectual stimulation with a few condiments for the salivatory glands. Or am I using the Kantian “Categorical Imperative” here to fly my own kite at Anjum Hasan’s expense?

(800 words)

20^th May 2012

Gautam Mukherjee

Published on Sunday 27th May 2012 in The Sunday Pioneer AGENDA Section BOOKS Page as "Beautiful & Slight" and online at www.dailypioneer.com

Precious

Precious

Precious means valuable and to be guarded to be sure. But it also means, in another context, a self regard disproportionate to circumstance. A stance which is irritating and irksome to others, but the person in question, and in this context the country he or she represents, is oblivious to the discomfort his or her attitude is causing.

A lot of our babudom and politico inspired schemes and proposals that hover in the air threatening to turn into laws bear such description. User friendliness is not their objective. Perhaps an urge to bully and dominate born out of a neo-colonial rule book animates their conception.

And this preciousness of attitude has been there from the start of our journey as an independent nation. Remember the infamous Krishna Menon harangues from an assumed Socialist pulpit that lasted for a record number of hours at the United Nations? Or Mr. Nehru lecturing the United States on non-alignment. Even as we begged them for military assistance as China overwhelmed our forces in 1962. And remember the food assistance from JFK as we ran short?

Though we have come a long way, the preciousness persists to date, now into the second decade of the 21^st century, in place of  the reasonable global outlook that would have made better sense. Foreigners and NRIs find it very difficult to do business with it, but our Government seems to need it for its own self esteem. Or is it the imperial influence of sitting in the North and South Blocks, up on Raisina Hill, flanking the way to Rashtrapati Bhavan, where the very stones breathe of ICS satraps and Viceroys?

And it isn’t as if everyone who is a citizen and “ordinarily resident” is entirely at peace with the routine highhandedness, arrogance and pomposity of Indian governance either, even though we may be used to it and perhaps resigned to our lot.

The preciousness does incalculable harm, both to our near-term and longer horizoned prospects, and damages our reputation as a country. The flip flop on GAAR (General anti-avoidance rules) with its burden of proof shifting from the tax authorities to the tax payer  and back again, along with its grandiose postponement for a year as a concession to the protests it sparked, is a case in point.

Happily, postponement of implementation in the Indian context may mean dropping the notion altogether. The strenuous argument that several other countries have clauses in their tax laws similar to GAAR and impose them retrospectively did not cut much ice. Besides do we want the investment we don’t have in-country, estimated at several trillion US dollars, for infrastructure development alone, or don’t we? And if we do, it makes sense to be attractive about it, does it not?

 But meanwhile, because we took our time over calling it off for the time being, global observers have had a field day questioning the “India Growth Story” afresh, in the absence of a “dependable economic environment” for FDI (Foreign direct investment).  

US rating agency Standard and Poor (S&P), too have dropped our sovereign rating a notch to “negative” from “stable” based on the drooping state of our economy, the precipitous fall in our annual GDP forecasts, our burgeoning deficits, our stalled industry and business climate, our falling agricultural outputs etc. As it is India’s rating is BBB- which is the lowest investment grade rating offered by S&P.

Of course, the carping aside, the foreigners will come, because of the substantial opportunities offered by the huge and growing Indian market, in a world that is stagnating in many of its parts. But the GAAR attracted so much criticism because of its jingoistic tone and its retrospective focus. Besides having a natural advantage is not an excuse for gracelessness.

Another irritant in the same vein is the law-making in Delhi with regard to GPA (General Power of Attorney) transfers of property with retrospective effect from October 2011, when the Supreme Court of India pronounced on the matter. It might set off a quick-fix revenue garnering option in other states too.  

Property and its development in the face of considerable demand is a propellant of both employment and the industries it draws upon. And yet, even in an economy buffeted by high oil prices, high interest rates, and rampant inflation, the Court and Government proceeds to score yet another self-goal.

In a property market slowed by high-interest rates and tight credit, making transfers tough and more expensive is probably ill-timed. But then, the Supreme Court upholds the law without much regard for ground realities when it gets around to it, and the Government seems to flex its muscles and set about putting pressure on others particularly whenever its own performance leaves much to be desired. At other times, it amends the law to suit itself and outflank the judiciary.

The GPA transfers of leasehold, or indeed freehold property, has gone on for years with the transfers duly registered by the Government without murmur. Why then should it open up a can of such succulent worms all of a sudden, that too retrospectively, using a Supreme Court order to protect itself? It wants the extra revenue by way of stamp duty of course. Hence a new attempt to right a neglected wrong.

Never mind that the finding, let alone obtaining the cooperation of people whom one has bought the property from on an irrevocable GPA, may be difficult. This notwithstanding, the Government wants not only that we should do so, but first have the seller pay to convert the properties to freehold if they qualify per criterion of “authorised” and “unauthorised”, and then effect a sale with the buyer paying for the Government’s applicable stamp duties.

The bogey of “unauthorised” construction has always been good for extractions of tribute. It gets built in the first place because of such lubrication, and then it comes apart because of eventual court orders.

The demolition squads come by years after the fact, on “unauthorised” properties or extensions. One may well ask why so much unauthorised construction comes up regularly. But we all know it does so with the connivance of the relevant authorities, and under their protective watch.

One may also ask why no attempt is made to punish those in the Government who have connived at such law-breaking. And why only the owners of the unauthorised construction should have their property demolished, that too at their own expense.

One can ask, but don’t hold your breath if you want any replies, because the bribery and corruption trail leading towards the authorities is not anything if not fairly inpenetrable.

 

(1,108 words)

10 May 2012

Gautam Mukherjee


Published as Leader Edit under title" Waking up a little late" on Edit Page of The Pioneer on 17th May 2012 and also online at www.dailypioneer.com

Welcome Al Jazeera!

Welcome Al Jazeera!

What a treat it is to receive Al Jazeera English on the Tata Sky bouquet at last! Every time it comes on though, one is reminded of the hazards of too much balancing of the books. And also some of its perhaps unintended benefits.

 We have had two Reliances for a while now, the combined enterprise value of which is quite a bit bigger than the unbroken entity used to be. And it came about because the former monolithic entity was too restrictive for the ambitions and talents of two very admirable prime-movers.

And Al Jazeera , started in 1996 in the aftermath of the closure of the BBC’s Arabic Service, is now well established in its own right, in English, Arabic, and on the Internet. It echoes some of the BBC’s style, manned as it is with many of its ex-staffers, but some say it outperforms the original, despite the same DNA. This is possibly because of its robust and red blooded journalistic tone. And this, while the progenitor, some say the original, feels watery, wheezy and out of condition in comparison.

Mukesh Ambani’s alleged despotism after the demise of his legendary father Mr. Dhirubhai Ambani, apparently spawned the break-out by younger sibling Anil Ambani. And Mrs. Thatcher’s alleged hatchet job on “Aunty Beeb’s” finances begat Al Jazeera.  

Of course, in the early days of the nineties, Al Jazeera faced not a little dithering on the part of its originally Saudi backers who could not stomach a potentially critical programme on the Kingdom. And proportionate sagacity, courage and ambition on the part of the present ruler of  Qatar who picked up the gauntlet when the Saudis backed out.

The Emir of Qatar has in fact broken the mould on media freedom in the Middle East characterised by tame, often state-owned and run propagandist media, till Al Jazeera came of age with live coverage of the war in Afghanistan post 9/11. 

The interesting thing is that the channel does not do a CNN style potted and self conscious look tinged with expatriate brio, at Arabia, or India, or Afghanistan for that matter. On the contrary, it comments with great aplomb and considerable professionalism on the goings on all around the world. It is also not a mouthpiece for Al Qaeda or its radical Islamic offshoots, as some if its nervous competitors would have us believe, though it didn’t hesitate to give the late and unlamented Osama a fair amount of balanced play.

CNN, the original pathfinder for 24x7 global news and views from 1980,  grew weary along the way, somewhere after all that brilliant reporting and firework display visuals of the first Gulf War of 1991 in President Bush the Elder’s time. It changed and became middle-aged, particularly after its acquisition by forces such as Time Warner and AOL, “suits”, who were quite a bit different from the pioneering, visionary, maverick and entrepreneurial Ted Turner.

BBC meanwhile has now settled into antiquated dowagerism with its blanket spread over its knees style, a piece with the transitional licence fee fed radio-TV era, emanating whiffs of a British Empire mindset long gone.

The world has changed a great deal in cultural, political and point-of-view terms since the epoch of Britannia’s rule of the waves, its quixotic solar topeed dominance enforced by artillery, the Thin Red Line and the stiff upper lip. That sort of caricature poseurism has gone to the tome and coffee table books, available to nostalgia buffs and the current day fans of an outdated idea.

Imperialism, all the rage in the 18^th and 19^th centuries with its talk of “the White man’s burden”, and other constructs and Empires further back, has always been a pernicious idea. It was designed to beggar the imagination and exclude all that is inconvenient to its tentacular hubris. And on the ground, it has ruthlessly exploited most of its subject populations.

In comparison, it is indeed refreshing to hear about the fortunes of the Montpelier football team, one from a historic city in Southern France, and that of Paraguay in the Al Jazeera Sports News coverage. It comes replete with news of on-field scuffles just like the best of the best from Britain and Germany.

These sorts of countries and cities do not normally pass muster as worth talking about on most Western channels. With much that supported their eminence having fallen away, they still persist in an arrogant navel-gazing that defines the edges of their own world. Compared to this implicit racism and insularity, Al Jazeera, which literally means “The Island”, is a British-trained breath of fresh air set free by the Emir of Qatar and his people.

More than one reputable media watching analyst from the Western bastions has identified the channel for its quality. We may benefit, for example, from accessing our inputs on the second round of elections to select the French President or the ongoing and intensifying drama between Sudan and South Sudan from Al Jazeera. This, rather than BBC or CNN, let alone our own relatively under-funded channel feeds.  

America, for example, does not particularly cover South America, preferring to ignore an entire continent, except within a subtly derogatory frame of reference. The European media too follows a similar West-centric world view that tends to render the trials and tribulations, the hopes and fears of much of the rest of the world, somehow unimportant, even irrelevant.

A Middle Eastern base for a beacon of non-imperial journalism of high quality such as Al Jazeera is most useful in today’s world with its relentless shift of power. The power is moving towards BRICS, more particularly to China, and to a lesser extent, to India.

 India is often pressured to toe the US line as a major geopolitical presence in South Asia that cannot be permitted too much leeway. But Qatar is not strategically that important despite its substantial gas and petroleum assets proportionate to its tininess. It can therefore play the 24x7 Nightingale without some insomniac reaching for his rifle.

A current cameo, that of the blind Chinese dissident Chen, wimpishly handled with less than unwavering support by the US Embassy in China, is illustrative.  Chen walked out on his exploration of US asylum when his family on the outside in Chinese hands was threatened. The days of gun boat diplomacy are long gone. Today, the US, despite being the world’s indisputably preeminent military and economic power, cannot afford to annoy or embarrass China. It is Chinese cooperation in bilateral and multilateral contexts that has become crucial to America. See it all on the feisty channel from Qatar.

 (1,098 words)

May 3^rd, 2012

Gautam Mukherjee

Serving the Nation

Serving the Nation

It is not just that the Indian economy is drifting rudderless. And possibly towards the shoals where it could run aground. And this, a debacle from near iconic status as the second fastest growing economy in the world.

This drift in the ship of state is being attributed to “policy paralysis”, descriptive also of the lack of serious accountability in governance. But it is indeed a Government paralysed, in denial, immune to criticism, practising the “masterful inaction” much favoured by the father of reforms Mr. PV Narasimha Rao, cynically hanging on to power without discharging the function it was elected to perform. It seems to be at loggerheads with itself and its allies and unlikely to take any reformist initiatives till the general elections of 2014.

This has resulted in the slowing of growth in the GDP from 9 per cent to less than 7. And in the ebbing of optimism nationally and internationally with regard to the “India Story”.  

On top of this, there is inexplicably cheeseparing activity such as the proposed GAAR to trap those taking advantage of perfectly legitimate tax treaties with Mauritius, and even retrospective legislation to extract tax from multinationals and others for acquisition/sale of enterprise/India based entities. This is rightly seen as avoidable chicanery with a Stalinist streak. After all, entities such as Vodafone were well within their rights per the prevailing laws of the time, as clarified and upheld by the Supreme Court of India.

Some, like economist Mr. Ruchir Sharma suggest the India Story was a chimera in the first place, caused by the “rising of all boats” in the 2003 to 2007 period, when the world economy powered on, driven forward on a sea of liquidity. Till that is, it floundered against the Lehman Brothers icebergs of Wall Street in 2008.

That was the beginning of the end of the party of rank excess, and it will be a long decade or more before the rosiness returns to the financial hubs of the West.

Happily Mr. Sharma astutely also thinks that India is capable of changing gear to “break out” the soonest amongst all the emerging economies in the BRICS. The break out will have to shun complacency though, because the next time around is unlikely to be based on just global liquidity to propel us forward. Our policy makers and entrepreneurs alike will have to show real merit and initiative to make the difference.  

Mr. Sharma’s first observation is harsh hindsight, and may be something of the revisionism that has seized some observers. But even if one subscribes to this logic, it is clear that a national policy effort to indeed bring about an economic high-tide that raises all boats is a classic win-win formula. It has the added strength of being both non-doctrinaire and non-discriminatory.

As for the second break-out idea, Mr. Sharma knows and we know, that given the Indian context of gross indiscipline and the way our reactive democracy works, it will be riddled with ifs and buts. Getting India to move forward and let go of its hard wired self-image of poverty exploited by generations of politicians, its petty concerns at the expense of the big picture, and particularly to have it adhere to a consistent plan, is no easy task.

As a country poised on the edge of destiny despite itself, we will have to find a way. After all, it is debatable whether we arrived at our growth by design or default thus far. The obvious reality looking forward is that we need a lot more infrastructure and modernisation because we persist in living in several centuries at the same time.

But given the wherewithal, Indian intelligence, enterprise and ingenuity, much admired around the globe, will utilize the resultant opportunities on their own.  With the help of building block enablers, such as roads, rail, ports, airports, power, water, IT and so on, which many countries are fortunate to take for granted, we could have a very reasonable India story indeed.

Right now, most things are hopelessly antiquated, over-burdened and choked off because of avoidable policy lassitude. And this even as we have changed tremendously over 20 years since the reform process properly began in 1991. As an Indian, it is therefore only natural to be caught fuming in the logjam wondering how long it will be before we can become a developed nation.

However, the demand is there, and that is the main thing. Not only is it there, it is there domestically, in the urban and rural areas alike, from the middle classes and the rich, bigger in number than most national populations, and from the poor too, who are themselves twice as numerous. India does not particularly need the global market to grow, and that is a most advantageous position enjoyed by very few economies.

Potentially, as a consequence of our 1.2 billion people today, the demand projections do look rosy, as do the perceived aspirations, but the reality is disappointing. Much of the demand in every sector of the economy is inadequately, inefficiently and crudely serviced. Our slow downs are unnecessary. And our prosperity is tantalisingly within our reach if not our grasp. But very little political thought actually goes towards nurturing the economy.

Economic growth is seen as something that favours the rich become richer still. It is a message that can be twisted too easily by rivals at the hustings. Whereas freebies and give-aways, subsidies, loans and hand-outs to the poor are seen as politically productive, even as they help to further damage our economic health.

The international rating agencies, watching parameters such as the GDP, Capital formation and utilisation, the deficit, investment and so on, and the development banks, such as the IMF, the ADB and the World Bank too, are giving India the thumbs down presently. Somehow all the euphoria with regard to this country seems to have vanished.

All this, while inflation rages on, bloating the food bills of every man.  There is also the somewhat bizarre debate about the absurdly low per capita figures that rule the poverty line as defined by the Planning Commission.  In addition, The National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) data on household expenditure quoted by Left leader Mr. Sitaram Yechury recently, says over 60 per cent of the people in every state seem to be below even the Rs. 28 per head expenditure a day.

And this is cited as the level of income below which true penury begins, qualifying for Government relief programmes! There are about 360 million people below the Planning Commission poverty line, without going into the far larger numbers which the NSSO data suggests.

The political hot potato such poverty numbers suggest preoccupies the mind-space of every politician, but none seem able to dare break out of the vicious cycle of such poverty politics into the next stage of aspirations met and choices increased for the people. The tried and tested distribution of Government largesse, even if somewhat dog-eared with over use, is preferred to the uncharted territories of macro-level growth lest the trickle down effect is not thought to be effective enough. The lessons of the ill-fated “India Shining”  political campaign has not been lost on the polity.

Besides a good deal of our present woes are imported. Petroleum prices, not only at the pump but because of ever increasing demand, are boosting cost push inflation with every barrel of crude purchased. The Western economies are moribund after a very long innings of leveraged growth, but are nevertheless awash with speculative money at near zero percent interest. And this money, as in the earlier days of liquidity, is scouring the world economies and its commodities for a quick speculative buck.

The economic thinking behind this is that austerity will kill the West much faster than continued spending, albeit redirected and better harnessed than before. Sometimes it is even linked to security. As Vice President Mr. Joe Biden says as part of President Obama’s re-election bid this year: “Osama Bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive”.

We are, of course, most adept at making problems for ourselves in addition to the macro challenges of a global economy in varying degrees of trouble. To wit, the Left thinks the wooing of the public-private partnership (PPP) model is the culprit and has resulted in the betrayal of the hopes of the poor. It thinks anything private just puts up the prices beyond their reach. And almost every political party tends to have to chime in with their own Leftist mantras in order to not be discarded by the electorate.

The pantheon of Indian business, industry and the multi-nationals however, are exasperated. They feel that almost none of the hoped for reforms or liberalisations have materialised during more than three years of the current Government. Things pending from UPA I are also left undone.

Interest rates are amongst the highest in the world at this juncture. Capital is scarce. Coalition pulls and tugs, plus differences of approach and emphasis between the Government and the ruling Party are making it very difficult to govern.

Besides the future too is undecided. General Secretary Rahul Gandhi is still searching for his political metier and traction. This has involved some old fashioned minority appeasement and socialism combined with a modern management approach, but is still very much a work in progress. Here too, there is very little emphasis on the revival of the economy.

So we slide from bad to worse with FII and FDI drying up alongside. And yet the longed for action to resolve our problems does not come. In fact, even as growth plummets, welfarism gains ground alongside a yawning fiscal deficit heading towards the unmanageability of stagflation.

India seems to be at a crossroads of its destiny because nothing is being done to keep both horses, that of growth and welfarism going strong. But at the crossroads we do face stark choices. One road will take us back into the mire. This is the way of reckless welfarism with scant regard for balancing the books. The bills and IOUs after all will be presented after the 2014 general elections, when all is already lost and won.

The focus of such largesse is to cater to a voting public far removed from the intelligentsia or the media, but spawned and reared on a culture of socialism over our first 40 years as an independent nation. It doesn’t work very well in 2012 or 2014, with its developmental aspirations, but there are many in powerful places who think it to be their best bet to retain power.

As for stimulating the economy, the jury seems to be out on the political dividend. The rich are not much good at voting and neither are they numerous. As for getting money from them for any purpose, it has never been difficult to do so for the political classes.

Hence the complicit policy paralysis, though nothing explains adequately why nothing to speak of was done in the three plus years already run through. But presently, no one wants to bell the cat before the general elections, not even the Opposition. Everyone is looking for vote catching stratagems. Nothing else really matters.

So Government is deaf to the learned arguments of international economists and inured to the criticisms of the Opposition who are themselves very keen to avoid being perceived as anti-people in any way.

And so the economy is held hostage to the imperatives of electoral politics. The good thing about all this is that there is nothing fundamentally wrong that can’t be taken up once the political battle is over. Let us just hope the collateral damage of inaction is not too great. This is, after all, the price we pay for our freedom and political system.

It’s good to know however, for the long run particularly, that most of our present predicament is self inflicted and we are not unable to fix it when we get around to finally wanting to.

(2,000 words)

1^st May 2012

Gautam Mukherjee


Published as Cover Story in The Sunday Pioneer in the AGENDA Section as "India no longer shining" on 13th May 2012