Opinion Stop turning India into a circus

It needs to be said here that without the unstinting,slavish and unquestioning support of our news channels,this would not have happened. Proof comes from Medha Patkar’s ‘fast unto death’ in Mumbai which went unnoticed for so many days that her pal,Shabana Azmi,had to use Twitter to seek support. And,unless Baba Ramdev wastes away by the time you read this,it is clear that once the venue of his hunger strike shifted to Haridwar,it went almost ignored. It is ironic that a rustic,little man from rural Maharashtra and a yoga guru should have understood the political power of television better than most of our so-called leaders.

Had our ministers understood it better,they would have demolished Baba Ramdev’s outrageous figures for black money when he first started spouting them. They could have trashed easily his ludicrous claim that if all those imaginary hoards of black money are brought back to India,one Indian rupee will equal $50. Both Baba Ramdev and Anna Hazare need to take a few lessons in economics if they want to continue playing a political role. The first lesson they need to learn,and perhaps the most important one,is that the reason why India remained a poor country for so long was because the Indian economy was controlled totally by the government. It is only after the economic reforms that we have seen high rates of economic growth and the creation of a middle class that is larger than the population of most countries. The second lesson they need to learn is that if there are still more than 300 million Indians living in horrible poverty,it is entirely because governments (of all hue) have failed to keep their end of the bargain. It was their job to build the schools,roads and hospitals without which the poor suffer so terribly. It was their job to provide clean water and regular supplies of electricity and they have failed to do it just as they have failed to build housing for low-income groups without which our cities will continue to look like slums.

If 700 million Indians today can afford to buy cell phones and if there is more prosperity today than we have ever seen before,it is due to the extraordinary private enterprise that the economic reforms unleashed. It is unfortunate that the licence raj has not ended for poorer Indians who throng to the cities to set up small businesses that are regularly destroyed by local authorities because they use public land. So stop this stupid fasting business Baba Ramdev and Anna Hazare,sack your advisors,and try and understand that our most serious economic problems,and most corrupt practices,have been created because of failures of governance.

Every second child in India is malnourished despite thousands of crore rupees having been poured into the world’s largest child welfare programme,the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS). If the government can be blackmailed into rescinding Parliament’s sole right to make laws,how about blackmailing it into ensuring that no Indian child goes to bed hungry at night?

Follow Tavleen Singh on Twitter @ tavleen_singh