Opinion The UPA’s split personality

Meanwhile,the Supreme Court,displaying a deep sense of disappointment,is asking the CBI why it has not questioned the main dramatis personae who are seen to be at the centre of the 2G spectrum controversy,i.e,A. Raja and his key officials. After raiding the DoT offices many moons ago,and having collected over 8000 documents,the CBI is yet to name anyone in its complaint. Interestingly,the complaint filed by the CBI remains against some “unknown persons”! Indeed,there is something bizarre about the series of events described above,when seen in their totality. They all appear to be random components of some chaos theorist’s explosive experiment.

Yet,the more discerning should be able to see a pattern in these occurrences. Historically,in any evolving capitalism, mainstream political forces and big business work together and maintain some sort of systemic equilibrium. This has been so from the time of the freedom struggle in India when political leaders actively involved the capitalist class in the project of nation formation.

Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawn viewed the nation-state,with all its attendant institutions,as a convenient unit which sought to advance capitalism in an orderly fashion. However,capitalism per se has an inherent tendency to become unruly from time to time. There are myriad instances in American history when the capitalist class got ahead of itself and then invited a severe backlash from the state apparatus. In the early 20th century (around 1905) J.P. Morgan alone owned over 50 per cent of all market capitalisation on the American stock markets as he operated the bulk of the steel,banking and rail road operations. However,the brute capitalist clout possessed by J.P. Morgan was broken by the American state when there was popular anger against his monopoly power. But for all of capitalism’s excesses and severe self-corrections,there’s little doubt that it improves material conditions along the way.

The larger point is the systemic equilibrium maintained between the political class and big business gets seriously shaken and rattled from time to time. The equilibrium returns only after some serious cleansing happens among both state actors and capitalists. One can possibly conclude that both the Indian state and the big business class are presently going through a serious churn manifested in the multiple scams and controversies linked to precious resources such as spectrum,iron ore,gas,petroleum,real estate and so on.

At one level this churn must be welcomed,even if in the immediate term it causes fears that India may be “fast descending into a banana republic”. Crony capitalism occurs essentially when state institutions abandon the notion of orderly and well-regulated growth and surrender to the predatory instincts of some sections of big business. A classic case in point is the completely non-transparent manner in which Indian state actors have designed the policy framework for allocations of scarce resources such as spectrum,land,mines etc. When this happens,the systemic equilibrium between the political class and broader universe of emerging businesses gets disrupted. Then you witness multiple scams becoming public.

So when state institutions become non-transparent and start playing favourites,they lay the ground for a prolonged war among the capitalist class. Today,this is what we are witnessing in the “emerged power” that is India. As growth impulses slow down permanently in the West,more global money is getting thrown at India. Finance capitalism will make the grab for precious resources even more intense. State institutions will have to drastically restructure in order to bring sanity to this process. Otherwise there will be more chaos.

However,the state and regulatory institutions cannot restructure in a vacuum. New institutions get built out of political renewal. It can only emerge out of a qualitatively different political process. The current lot of political parties do not seem to have a full grasp on how to provide appropriate agency to all sections of the people. The UPA shows utter confusion on how to sequence orderly wealth creation and redistribution. This dilemma is starkly visible in Jairam Ramesh’s “stop work”notice to the Lavasa city project even as Sharad Pawar protests that 18,000 labourers are sitting idle due to stoppage of construction. Some say Pawar’s interest in the project goes beyond idle labourers.

Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said there are “two cultures” in the environment versus development debate,and the two are not talking. There could also be two cultures within the UPA which are not talking. It is time,perhaps,for political renewal.

The writer is Managing Editor,‘The Financial Express’ mk.venu@expressindia.com