Left out in a world of their own

In the week of the gloomiest Diwali anyone can remember, there is one happy little group of Indians who have taken to gloating publicly over the meltdown of the world’s financial systems.

In the week of the gloomiest Diwali anyone can remember, there is one happy little group of Indians who have taken to gloating publicly over the meltdown of the world’s financial systems. Our communist brethren. Senior communist leaders called a press conference in Delhi last week to pronounce that they had ‘insulated’ India from the effects of globalisation by forcing the Prime Minister to disallow more foreign investment in the insurance sector. The commies can hardly contain their excitement at what they see as the end of capitalism. It will disappoint them hugely when they discover in a few months that capitalism will revive itself with some corrections because whatever its flaws, it remains the best way for countries and people to become rich and prosperous. Just as whatever the flaws of democracy, it remains the best political system we know.

Our communists are an irrepressible bunch because they have been insulated from the changes that have taken place in the world in the past 20 years. Communists elsewhere were forced to confront certain harsh political and economic realities when the Soviet Union collapsed and China chucked Marxist economics into the dustbin. Our communists did not need to, because decades of socialism have taught the average Indian to believe that the Left is always right. In India, the commies have been asked no questions. So they have continued shoving their dogmas and manifestos down our throats as if the Berlin Wall never came down, revealing the truth not just of East Germany but of Eastern Europe.

In these troubled times it is important for us to beware of those who would drag us back to those dark socialist decades when all we succeeded in achieving economically was the redistribution of poverty on a grandiose scale. We followed policies that guaranteed a rate of economic growth so low that the world mocked at it as the Hindu rate of growth. But, because most Indians were ‘insulated’ from world events, they did not notice how bad their standard of living was when compared even with countries in the East that had been at the same stage of development as we were in 1947.

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They did not notice that the singular achievement of ‘socialism’ was to make a ‘government job’ the ultimate Indian dream. This is still true in some of our poorer states. Anyone who believes that our socialist policies were the right ones should travel in rural Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh to understand how bad they were. If an economy does not create wealth and jobs, it forces people to live off the land in conditions so desperate that life on the pavements of Mumbai is better. Sadly, there are vast tracts of rural India where people continue to live in hideous poverty because the economic changes of the past 15 years have not reached them.

That is our real failure. There have been dramatic changes in India since the economy became more open, but of these changes, almost the only one that has filtered down to rural parts is the cell phone. I have not been to a village in recent years where the cell phone has not reached and with it has come change and the aspiration for a better life. The poorest Indians today want proper schools for their children, preferably those that teach English, they want pucca houses, regular supplies of electricity and clean water. In the bad old days, they did not know that they had a right to such things or that it was possible for them to demand them from their governments.

India has changed immeasurably for the better since we moved away from socialism. The communists know this and they make policies in West Bengal that are capitalist by any standards. They want private investment so badly they are prepared to acquire land from the poor and give it to the richest men in India, but when it comes to gloating over the supposed collapse of capitalism, they are out there waving the red flags of communism.

If India is to survive the worst economic crisis the world has seen in a hundred years, then we need to think in terms of national policies to get us through. We need to strengthen infrastructure and improve governance. This is not a time for flag waving and divisions. We need to do what will work best for India and we need to see someone at the top show some leadership. Every major world leader has been on television more than once in recent weeks reassuring his countrymen, helping them understand what has gone wrong, except our Prime Minister. As an economist this should be his moment to lead. But, he is in Japan smiling that Zen-like smile while lesser players take centrestage.