The Development Juggernaut Is On the Move
When India became independent, to our credit, not all the
Congress stalwarts counted themselves as Leftist. Many, like Sardar Patel, C
Rajagopalachari, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, amongst the notables, were decidedly right-
of-centre, but their views did not prevail. They were, in fact, roundly ignored
by Jawaharlal Nehru, who also had relative youth and longevity on his side.
Rajaji’s Swatantra
Party did not do well electorally, and neither did Dr. Shyama Prasad Mookerjee’s
efforts, though both had their committed adherents, who have added vastly to
their numbers and flowered these 69 years on. Such ideas now, after decades,
win elections, as Narendra Modi has demonstrated. The nationalist mood of the
times, in the forties and fifties, the sixties and seventies, and for half of
the eighties, preferred the rosy promises of socialism.
But we now know that this going down the socialist garden
path, as opposed to the capitalist high road, condemned India to decades of negligible
growth, rarely more than 2.5%, high inflation, as much as a ruinous 20% per
annum, with no I&B controlled media
comment; and ever increasing poverty in a face of a growing population. Our infrastructure, to date, is patchy, vastly
inadequate, and often described as quaint.
So, to create a
workable image, the Government of the day, cast itself in the role of an annadata, a benevolent neo-feudal maibaap, demonising the rich, and
feeding the poor with terrible, sub-standard rations, often unfit for human
consumption. The popular films of the
time played along with this ethical fiction, without offering any explanation
as well.
The Government wilfully glossed over its own colossal
failure. It took no responsibility for perpetuating a Dickensian nightmare and
utterly failing to make the economy grow. It ignored the lack of equality and
equity on the ground, the opposite of what socialism loved to profess and
promise. Raj Kapoor played his version
of the lovable tramp Charlie Chaplin, and was very popular in the USSR as well.
Till the sixties, for all Nehru’s lofty pronouncements, we
could not even feed ourselves, and had to go begging for food aid. We received
a lot of charity those days, including ‘PL 480’ grain, powdered milk etc. from
the generous US, even as we pretended to be non-aligned, and were actually
ensconced in the Soviet camp.
Indira Gandhi’s Green Revolution of the seventies changed
this basic requirement at least, and the people loved her for it. But the
dislike of free enterprise, embedded in the Soviet style Planning Commission
from its earliest days, stayed.
It took a highly statistical approach at first,
institutionalised under the much in favor PC Mahalonobis. People like TATA
Director Freddy Mehta, who was a member at first, quickly lost influence and
had to quit. Nehru saw it fit to patronise a young, patriotic and enthusiastic
JRD Tata, without taking any of his suggestions on the economy seriously.
The saving grace was
that Nehru did allow what he called a ‘mixed economy’, with the private sector
at least permitted to exist, albeit under a mistrustful and tight reign, the
infamous ‘Licence-Permit Raj’. This, along with very high taxes, forced most of
the successful in Indian business and industry to become dishonest and dexterous
master manipulators of the system.
This went on for so long, and created so many distortions in
the economic reality of this country, that we all got used to it as part of how
things had to be, because we were a ‘poor country’. Nobody questioned why we
were poor. Sadly, it was a given.
This began to change in the
mid 1980s with the advent of
Rajiv Gandhi, and more forcefully when economic liberalisation properly began, in
1991; only to lose its way again, after an initial spurt of real change. Still, it ushered in, from the mid-eighties, a
near double-digit rate of growth, for the first time, with transformational
consequences.
But if we are about to witness the launch of the much
delayed second generation reforms, it is because we are now ready to make a
decisive break with the past. The end of
that Planning Commission and the beginning of Niti Aayog, marks this departure,
led by a celebrated free-market champion that believes double-digit growth is
achievable; given a hefty push to infrastructure, modernisation, and ample
utilities. But, there are other problems
today, with a highly uncooperative Opposition.
The Government, stymied in parliament, not in one session, but
two, by a noisy filibustering, has begun on its legislative agenda in right
earnest via the use of ordinances. It is
interesting to realise that we have forgotten what the obstructions were about
in the Monsoon Session, except that they were very much there, and expressed
similarly; though the outrage in the Winter Session is still fresh in our
minds.
This time, it was about the RSS moving about on Conversions
in their Ghar Wapsi Campaign, and
some foolish, if salty remarks, made by not very important and inexperienced
BJP MPs in the House. These were further amplified by certain Sangh Parivar
fringe elements on the outside. The
whole noisy bunch have now been curbed by RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat, stepping
into the breach and fray, rightly to assist the first majority Government in 30
years
Still, it will be interesting to see if an electorally
marginalised Opposition is going to do its sworn duty even in the Budget
Session, by behaving any better, or resort to further noisy scenes over found and fresh issues, to try and stop all
progress.
But, refusing to be side-tracked by all this, the Government
is pressing on, determined to pick up the pace on its development agenda,
lagging also because of its divided concentration on a spate of Assembly
elections, bunched together over the last few months. Fortunately, these state
elections have yielded good dividends for the BJP, making it all worth their while.
The latest on the anvil, now that the Government is back to
business, is the restarting of mining, again by Cabinet decision and ordinance.
This getting on with things regardless, underlines the absurdity if not
futility of the tail attempting to wag the dog as an Opposition strategy,
particularly when the dog in question is of the determined sort.
To signal the coming of its free-market philosophy tempered
with concern for the poor, the Government has institutionalised the Niti Aayog.
This new organisation is widely expected to inject a spirit of competitive
development amongst the States of the Union, and boost the prospects of the
private sector as well; all the while driving the tempo towards raising the GDP
as soon as possible.
(1,098 words)
January 6th, 2015
Gautam Mukherjee
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