Opinion Things Fall Apart
The world ends not with a bang but with a whimper. Of course,the bang has to come first
T S Eliot was right. The world ends not with a bang but with a whimper. Of course,the bang has to come first. Indeed bangs have been coming regularlyMay: Delhi,July: Mumbai,September: Delhi. The whimper also follows. Regularly. We are in control. We had intelligence. We shall find the culprits. They are probably already on the FBI list of double agents whom we shall encounter in courtrooms of Chicago or New York. Let us not quarrel about who did not do what. Let us unite behind the government.
And the bangs will come again. Perhaps in November in Mumbai and January in Delhi. The terrorist knows. He knows that despite much hand-wringing about what went wrong,CCTV cameras will not be installed. They had staked out the High Court site in May,run a dud bomb and knew that it will be much the same five months on. The same happened in Mumbai. CCTV cameras are probably low grade corruption items. No one makes enough money from ordering or installing them.
But fear not. Whenever such bombings take place,your friendly and compassionate neta will be there at your hospital bedside. Of course,each neta will have Z security which costs several times what it would cost to protect you and me. But you dont understand. He is a neta; sarkar,mai-baap. You are just a citizen of the largest democracy in the world. You only count at election times.
No one is to blame. That is the most important thing you have to remember. The visit of the neta may have kept you away from the hospital where your loved one was lying dead or injured. But the netas security matters more. So just wait. Only after the neta of every party has had his or her well-publicised visit,will it be that you will be admitted.
Two forces are now merging in India. One is that the terrorist knows India is a soft state. India can be attacked repeatedly with impunity. The Americans have better surveillance of what the terrorists are doing than we have. The Chinese know this and so they have blithely built roads and railroads in Baltistan and near our Eastern border through Burma and Bangladesh
At the same time,as has happened through Indian history over three millennia,as the Centre weakens,the regional satraps get stroppy. Mamata Banerjee delivered a spectacular snub to the Prime Minister by refusing to go to Bangladesh with him and blocking the Teesta Treaty. Thankfully,she is a UPA coalition partner. Can you imagine the fuss,if,at the other end of the country,Narendra Modi would have refused to go with the PM for some treaty on Balochistan?
Yes,of course,this is not like the Maurya or Gupta Empire which fell apart after three or four generations. India will be one but the States will get more and more autonomous. Tamil Nadu has always been a law unto itself and Andhra will become so once Jagan gets his way. West Bengal is now for all practical purposes a non-Congress and may be anti-Congress state. UP and Bihar are ruled by non-Congress parties. The only thing the states want from the Centre is a lot of money under Plan or non-Plan heading and no more questions please.
That requires steady growth. I have been predicting since the Budget that 2011-12 will see a rate of inflation exceeding the rate of real GDP growth.I am about to be proved sadly right. In this context,it is interesting that Montek Singh Ahluwalia has put a 9 per cent ceiling on Indias growth rate for the foreseeable future. Mind you this is three times the Hindu rate of growth of the 1950-1980 years.
What are the obstacles to achieving a double digit growth rate? Are we still wasting too much money on entitlements which may win political plaudits and keep the jholawallahs happy but is unproductive expenditure? Are the Government at the Centre and in the States roadblocks to growth due to their fiscal profligacy? Are there political obstacles within the UPA coalition or indeed within the Congress to pursuing in a single minded way a high growth strategy? Is this because the NAC believes growth is not sufficient or not even necessary to pursue inclusive development? Will the poor always have to wait?
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