Opinion The India story could end
When the Prime Ministers economic advisory committee admitted last week that India seems to have lost the economic plot.
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When the Prime Ministers economic advisory committee admitted last week that India seems to have lost the economic plot,images of my first time in Davos came to mind. It was in 1996. The economic reforms started by Dr Manmohan Singh,five years earlier,had not yet begun to show results. Deve Gowda was prime minister and treated his trip to Davos as an excuse for a family holiday. He came with a gaggle of grandchildren and spent more time with them,in his fine hotel in Klosters,than he did in the conference halls of the World Economic Forum. In his entourage came officials who wore monkey caps and clothes and footwear more suited to Lodhi Gardens than the icy streets of Davos. The small group of Indian businessmen who were there that year were diffident,bedazzled and badly dressed. Their suits looked as if they had been made in a Mumbai back street.
Ten years later,Indias story changed so dramatically that India was the flavour of that years WEF. There were India nights and Indian fashion shows. And,the scents of Indian spices and sounds of Bollywood music wafted out of sedate Swiss restaurants. There were still Indian officials scuttling about in monkey caps but Indian businessmen behaved like masters of the Universe. They had good reason. In less than a decade,they had succeeded in creating world-class companies and proved that not only was India open for business but it had shaken off that contemptible Hindu rate of (3.5 per cent) growth.
In the twenty years since the economic reforms began on July 24,1991,India has created more prosperity and pulled more people out of poverty than in the forty years that went before. The change has been led entirely by the private sector and has happened despite government failing to deliver its side of the bargain. Its job was to build the infrastructure (both physical and social) that could match what the private sector was doing. World-class companies need to operate in world-class cities with world-class infrastructure.
It was the job of the government to improve roads,ports and railways. Its job to improve the abysmal state of government schools and hospitals. Its job to ensure that our cities and villages did not look like slums. That this did not happen is bad enough but now there is even worse news. In the past few months,the Government of India,the Opposition parties,Sonias National Advisory Council,Leftist spokesmen of civil society and the Supreme Court have colluded to end the India story.
First the licence raj was brought back in the guise of environmental concern. Hundreds of big projects were stopped on the unproven claims of dubious NGOs with a vested interest in poverty. Our 24-hour news channels cheered the process on as they have done Anna Hazare and his team of Leftists and the self-righteous former Lokayukta of Karnataka. His voluminous report on illegal mining appears to have persuaded the Supreme Court to ban all mining of iron ore. A reckless move since there are half a million jobs at stake and legitimate,highly respected steel factories in Bellary. Sajjan Jindals Vidyanagar is among the most beautiful industrial towns I have ever seen. It has brought prosperity and jobs to one of the poorest regions in India. And,yet he has been made to sound like a villain in the Lokayuktas report because he contributed to an educational trust run by the chief minister.
As has been pointed out ad nauseum in this column,nearly all corruption in India is connected to government. Politicians regularly use their so-called educational trusts to garner private wealth and election funds. Businessmen,especially big ones,have little choice but to pay if they want to continue doing business. They would not have to if election funds were collected more openly and if political parties were made to render public accounts of their revenue and expenses. Why is it so hard to make this happen?
What is most important now is for the India story not to become mired in loose charges of corruption and cronyism. The Prime Minister has to come forward and lead as he did in his first term in office. He needs to sack ministers who obstruct reforms and show licence raj proclivities. And, Parliament must take back its central role in law making. No more amateur efforts from NGOs,please,either in the NAC or in Annas team. It is not their job to make laws so it is not surprising that their documents are either flawed or hysterical.
Unless the Prime Minister takes firm charge,we may as well write off the India story and go back to those shabby,socialist times when there was neither prosperity nor the hope of ending poverty.
Follow Tavleen Singh on Twitter @ tavleen_singh
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