Good Intentions Avenue

 Good Intentions Avenue

The road to Hell they say, is paved with good intentions. And perdition awaits the gullible. We already live in a nation state that is echoing the failed state antics of our Islamic neighbour next door. As of now, we mimic Pakistan only in a minor key. But with a daily diet of rapes, murders and terrorist atrocities perpetrated robustly by a bad element running riot in the absence of good government; it is indeed cold comfort.

Indian Law and order is on its knees, the courts are completely over –burdened, and the enforcement agencies are undermanned, under-funded, ill equipped, and ineffective. 

The future leader of the Congress Party, now anointed its Vice President, steadfastly refuses to leave learning mode. On the threshold of his possibly becoming prime minister in 2014, it is just as well there are many competent people in the Congress Party with years of actual hands-on experience of governance to support their leader.

The opposition BJP may have a powerful and proven candidate in Narendra Modi and several others at the top of the heap in BJP run states; but are not blessed with much administrative experience down the ladder.

Besides, unlike the dynastic cohesiveness of the Congress, the BJP seems to be in considerable disarray, with many senior leaders   blatantly jockeying for power. There is consequently much weakening factionalism. In addition, the BJP is remote controlled by an out dated and cabalistic RSS which continues to be its ideological mentor.

The ideological underpinnings of the Congress Party too are confusing, because it leans both Right, in so far as its reformist agenda goes, and Left, in terms of its vision for the upliftment of the poor. Its Socialist past, and years of governing with the support of the Communists internally, and the USSR externally, has partially moulded its DNA.

But even since 1991, when the results of modernisation has placed India in the ranks of the most attractive economies and markets in the world; there remains much hesitation in its policy direction. So the reform agenda is lagging the promises, as is the progress of the national economy as a consequence. So our income is hampered by ideological squeamishness, but our expenses on burgeoning welfarism and a gargantuan government establishment are ever increasing. This makes for a disastrous formula that could end up bankrupting us.

The concern for the poor and aam aadmi is expressed largely in terms of hand-outs and write-offs rather than training, infrastructure development, job creation and the like. Giving a man a fish feeds him for a day as the old adage goes, but the Congress Party refuses to teach him how to fish.

The BJP, on the other hand, practically has no reformist economic vision at present. The original party for small business, shop-keepers, and the middle classes, now has nothing to offer its adherents but ideological rhetoric and reactivity.  Even Hindutva that worked so well to catapult the party to its pole position in national politics, is now old hat.

These days it is economics that sets the tone by default not just in India but the world over, and politics has no choice but to chime in and harmonise. If this does not happen wilfully, there is jarring cacophony and confusion in the mind of the voter.

In Modi’s Gujarat, one can see his commitment to business and industry, and the solid results this has produced; but at the Centre the BJP opposes every reformist move for what appears to be the sake of opposing.

Sadly, the BJP’s performance at the Centre over the last couple of years or more, has more in common with Mamata Banerjee’s arch- left policies in West Bengal rather than Modi’s business friendliness in Gujarat. It is a strange dichotomy that lets the leaders of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha claim Modi won his third term in Gujarat because of his track record on development, without backing similar policies elsewhere. Modi   then is apparently successful despite the BJP and its anachronistic RSS cradle, and he seems to know it.

To some extent this running- with- the- hares and hunting- with- the- hounds brand of hedged politics on the part of the two major national parties, is due to the compulsions of coalition politics.  Coalition politics will have both national parties dependent on the support of regional ones for over one hundred parliamentary seats after the next general elections.

But the biggest drag on BJP’s prospects of winning power at the Centre is its ideological inability to attract the minorities into its fold.  Not only that, it is anathema to many regional parties dependent on minority votes. It is a great pity that the  Congress Party and its allies are able to boldly paint the BJP as communal without any comeback from it.

The underpinning RSS too needs to move on from its partition- of- India mind-set, its obscurantist sanskar, to embrace India’s loyal Muslim and other minorities. Muslims have done this country proud in the Armed Forces, in the Police, in the Intelligence Agencies, in the IAS and the IFS, in Sports, in the Corporate World, in Bollywood, in the Arts. And it is unfair in the extreme to pay lip- service to the needs of poor Muslims as the Congress does, or to ignore them outright as the BJP does, in the name of their version of secularism.

The implicit hostility to all Muslims in the RSS and allied organisations is an anachronism and a tired over- played one at that. This only helps the terrorists across the border while giving the UPA an unfair advantage over the already much depleted NDA.

Even the JDU is having trouble staying in the NDA because of its electoral compulsions in Bihar, and the biggest slur on Narendra Modi’s reputation, is his perceived, if not real, hostility towards the Muslims of India. The BJP and its associates need to urgently address this problem to give themselves their best chance at winning power at the Centre in 2014.

The situation is ripe for a change of government but as things stand the chances of yet another Congress led coalition or even a third-front led government seem plausible. This will not be strong or stable but BJP cannot seize the day if it continues to be untouchable.

Meanwhile as America’s black president launches into his second term of office, we can take inspiration, as the most populous democracy from the oldest one. We can persuade ourselves that inclusiveness is the mantra that gives both hope and strength to a nation.

(1,102 words)

22^nd January 2013

Gautam Mukherjee

A Late Blooming Sunflower for Oscar Wilde

BOOK REVIEW

Title: DECLARING HIS GENIUS, Oscar Wilde in North America

Author: Roy Morris, Junior.

Published by: The Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 2013

Price: USD 26.95

A Late Blooming Sunflower for Oscar Wilde

There are some people who are not only attractive but substantially ahead of their time. Vincent Van Gogh, the Dutch post-impressionist master, was one such. He famously sold just one painting in his lifetime, only to have his works become most admired and colossally expensive, a century, more or less, after his death.

Van Gogh’s contemporary, the Oxford educated six feet four inches tall Irishman Oscar Wilde, is the subject of this book by Mr. Roy Morris Junior. Mr. Morris, writing recently, seems to accompany Oscar Wilde on his travels across America in 1882, with a lightness of touch and texture that his subject would have approved of.

Oscar Wilde was fragrantly gay in a time when it was illegal, and it landed him eventually in jail. But before that, throughout his adult life, Wilde challenged the manners, mores and morals of his considerable audience on both sides of the Atlantic, and planted a proud flag for aesthetics and art in all things.

Wilde believed Art was worthwhile for its own sake rather than as an embellishment to something else. And this, in time, greatly influenced the thirst for culture, state policy with regard to it, and its budget allocations ever since. No one had quite articulated the value and necessity of aesthetics, art and beauty quite as masterfully before him; nor given such things a tangible relevance to the progress of civilisation.

Wilde made an extraordinary impact in his stature, flamboyant dress sense, the Sunflowers and Lillies he favoured. He had a natural celebrity’s temperament and was famous for being famous. So much so, that the Prince of Wales felt it necessary to know him rather than the other way around. He was gifted in the art of self- promotion, notwithstanding his considerable talent.

Oscar Wilde, poet, playwright, personality at large, made good copy and was much reported on, and seemed to speak only in extraordinarily spontaneous witticisms and aphorisms. His quotations have survived in legendary proportions to this day, prolific, topical, thought provoking, challenging of the common boundaries.

But Oscar Wilde was misunderstood and disapproved of by the establishment almost in equal measure. He was, to many conservative Victorians, quirky, outrageous and bizarre. He was frequently and heatedly questioned for his departures from the norm. As was Van Gogh, for his intense post-impressionism, much before it acquired a label.

Some liked Oscar Wilde for breaking ranks with convention, and others were amused by his curiousity value. But that is the notoriety of the freak and it is not a pleasant sensation to be its subject.

Van Gogh, of course, never really got any appreciation for his genius during his lifetime, and it drove him to despair and suicide. Being mocked, laughed and jeered at took a toll on the brave Mr. Wilde too, and it is not just a coincidence that he went into self-imposed exile and died young abroad. He is buried in Paris and not London or Dublin, but fittingly he has been claimed by the world of style and substance. 

But as this account of a country-wide lecture tour of America, undertaken over 11 months when he was just 27 years old shows, Wilde was a pathfinder already. He delivered 140 lectures, travelling 15,000 miles. Armed with a bushel of letters of introduction from prominent members of London society, Oscar Wilde was received by the Who’s Who. And while many did not take to him enthusiastically, none refused to be charmed somewhat by his efforts.

Wilde spent a lot of his time trying to arrange for his early plays to be produced with American support but his best work, as poet, dramatist and visionary was still in the future. His personality and world view was, as always, a work in progress. This book reads pleasantly enough as a society chronicle of the times with many famous post- Civil War Americans populating its pages. But almost all of them pass swiftly, like ships in the night; rather like Elvis meeting the Beatles eighty odd years later.

The Americans were often uplifted by their encounter with the brilliant Oscar Wilde of “the first period” with his stage costume of knee breeches, black silk stockings, satin smoking jacket and Byronic peasant shirt accompanied by long hair and sunflowers.

One of Wilde’s several biographers, Richard Ellmann, dubbed this sojourn of 1882: “the most sustained attack upon materialistic vulgarity that America has seen”.  But the Americans were gracious, happy to lap up Oscar’s metro-sexual charm as he promoted beauty and art to an audience that had been deeply traumatised by the ravages of the Civil War. Oscar Wilde noticed the vastness of the country he visited in more senses than one. “America” he said, “is not a country; it is a world”. He was affected by America enough to promptly reinvent himself.

  

(802 words)

19^th January 2013

Gautam Mukherjee

Time to Accelerate

Time to Accelerate

India’s economy continues to falter despite brave pronouncements from the Government. It is facing the threat of downgrades from international rating agencies such as Fitch yet again. Fitch has stated that it can’t see things improving much over the next 12 to 24 months, or, in effect, the remaining period of this Government’s tenure. This is, of course, not necessarily true, because this Government can, if it has the will, accelerate things and go to the elections in a blaze of glory.

We need trillions of US dollars to upgrade our infrastructure and some fractional achievements in this regard would prove to be a powerful stimulant to the economy. The money can come to our domestic players via external commercial borrowing (ECB) at a very competitive price. Mr. Uday Kotak of Kotak Securities and the bank that bears his name has suggested this.

It makes sense as our domestic industrialists and developers are much more in the know of things here and would be naturally committed to a greater extent to this country. And if we were to attract just a few million short of a billion of the US greenback additionally, we would see our economic figures jumping. And in the long term, plentiful and good quality infrastructure can unleash the creative potential of millions of Indians.

But right now, the finger-wagging may not be pleasant to countenance but is entirely justified. Fitch cites our sharply slowing growth, declining trend lines, burgeoning inflation, fiscal deficit, including that on the current account which is putting pressure on our foreign exchange reserves, policy confusion etc.

However, the irony is in the fact that most of our economic woes are self-inflicted wounds. This holds true across the board with our misguided attempts to choke off credit and financing and deliberately slowing down the economy lest it “overheat” after 2008.

Inflation however has been imported substantially along with the 75% or more dependence on foreign petroleum. And this petroleum fuelled inflation has affected the manufacturing sector generally and the transportation sector more directly.  But over time, such lop-sided pressures tend to distort the entire economy, as intrinsic values are swamped by the cost of inputs.

But food inflation, which affects the poor more than others, has also been stubborn. Apart from seasonal vagaries, this is due to a largely primitive farming methodology and stagnating agricultural output.

There are some fanciful explanations on food inflation extant which suggest it is happening because of rising incomes and a greater demand for protein rich foods. This is absurd given our pathetically small growth rates in agriculture and appalling storage and distribution problems which provide the more obvious cost push factors.

Almost half of our farm produce spoils and goes to waste even as food prices rise, and we don’t grow enough anyway in absolute terms. Our animal husbandry too suffers from low quality and yields. We have little or no food processing capacity and only a rudimentary to non-existent cold chain.

Compare this with the US, where 5% of their some 250 million people are farmers and turn out mountains of produce. American farm production is subsidised because otherwise the glut would ruin their farmers. And America gives away a large portion of its agricultural produce to less fortunate countries in its orbit.

Policy anomalies in India however has us exporting the choice farm produce and even our goats to the Middle East and the West when we don’t have enough to service the domestic market. This phenomenon must be a throwback from the days when we didn’t possess enough “foreign exchange”. Now it is all based on market demand and better prices obtained abroad. So it is difficult to blame the exporters taking advantage of a policy framework that actually encourages export of farm produce.

On the growth side too we are facing major challenges. The infrastructure bottlenecks have been ignored for years. This has always choked off all but the most sedate growth of a couple of percentage points in GDP. The 8 to just under 10%  growth in GDP that we have seen since 1985 has come about with the growth of the Services Sector which  does not need any substantial infrastructural support.

People like Mr Narayana Moorthy, now retired from executive duties at Infosys, have complained about the lack of fiscal support by way of tax breaks. Besides there’s a lack of policy support to promote the IT industry towards  greater value-addition.

It is overall fortunate that the Indian Service Sector economy now accounts for some 56% of its total with industry claiming about 20% and less than that for farming which nevertheless supports over 70% of our population. And the growth rates too were about 100% in the IT business till the downturn in Europe and America, with only 20% odd for the manufacturers and less than 5% for the farmers.

But, since we have a lot of catching up to do against our potential, nothing is really lost yet. Still, the engine of growth, the Services Sector, is also largely stagnating at present relying on domestic demand to pick up the sag from the US and Europe.

In fact, along with China, we were in an ideal position to grow strongly while all the Western economies were imploding post 2008. But neither India nor China were able to stimulate their domestic economy enough.

China is however a larger, stronger economy, already some 20 to 30 years ahead of us as we stand. But theoretically, we could catch up in perhaps a decade, if, and it is a big if, we figured out a way to pull out all the stops and be pragmatic as decision makers.

The economy has grown central and pivotal to our survival and progress. This is true not only of India but is being painfully borne out in the UK, Europe, Japan and the United States. Political policies that attempt, Indian style, to ignore the market place are unable to get away with it any longer.

But somehow we never seem to realise that the route to all our ambitions is a booming economy, even as one financial scandal after another rock the country. At a personal level we fully realise that money is the key to everything aspired for. At the collective point this clarity is obscured by cold feet and vote bank calculations. Kicking the can down the street and postponing essential decisions is tying us up in knots of our own making.  We need to make more than welcome speeches and promises. We owe it to our selves to deliver some speed of resolve and execution.

(1100 words)

9^th January 2013

Gautam Mukherjee