There has been a lot of noise lately from politicians of all camps. What is noteworthy is that the noise is exactly that of the Garibi Hatao campaign in the early seventies. | |
| What may be worrisome to some is that if all the politicians are caught in a time-warp (along with most senior bureaucrats) then what would happen to the poor people of this ostensibly perennially poor country? There is nothing to fear. Globalisation is ensuring that there is check and balance between what the politicians profess and what they do. This is good news for the common woman, as the politicians are forced to hurtle towards benign irrelevance. |
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| One of the more comical sights is to witness the BJP, sans Vajpayee, act out their stay in the opposition. They have been reduced to fighting imaginary insults and walking out of Parliament at a moment's notice. |
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| The only foreign investment they do not oppose is that of Reebok; possibly because they want to appear in ads favouring walking as an old Hindu custom. And if Vajpayee allows his party to oppose the very policies he encouraged (e.g. increase in foreign investment), then he is in danger of losing his important economic legacy. |
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| His political legacy, the rapprochement with Pakistan, is thankfully not in danger of being upset by his own politicians suffering most likely from the premature onset of Alzheimer's. |
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| Most likely supporting this "opposition for the sake of opposition" to economic reforms would be the reactionaries from the Left. While welcoming foreign investment in their private fiefdom of West Bengal, the Left thespians want to oppose such policies at the Centre. Why? Because they want to let the ruling Congress party know that their "bite is worse than their bark". |
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| I had heard of cutting one's nose to spite, etc. but this is the first time that the Left parties of India have publicly acknowledged that they are indeed the running dogs of Communism. And if they bite, it will be another "dog bites man" story; so I don't think India has much to fear. |
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| But then there are the Lefties within the Congress party itself. And these chaps are having an undue influence on the rhetoric of the present government; worse, their rhetoric is beginning to invade the otherwise good sense in the government. The leftover rhetoric is about human faces and the poor. |
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| Their attitude has been best described by my good friend Alok Rai: "their so-called 'idealism', their carefully projected air of sanctimonious virtue, their mealy-mouthed saintliness" ("Beyond Ideology," The Times of India, July 22, 2004). Sorry, but I should mention that Alok used these phrases to describe not the neo-liberals but rather the neo-fascists. Which is precisely my long-held conviction ""there is not a naya paisa's worth of difference between the two. |
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| So let us not insult the genuine individuals who reside in the left or right camps; let us term the no-difference Left and the RSS right as the tootsies, or totalitarian socialists. |
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| The tootsies, by claiming that their policies have saintliness, are asserting, with arrogant implicitness, that all earlier economic policies were not pro-poor. It is noteworthy, and ironic, that the father of these inhuman economic reforms is none other than Dr Manmohan Singh, the present Prime Minister. |
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| I had the privilege of working on his unsuccessful election campaign in 1999; at that time, the Congress Left was contending that the party had lost the 1996 general elections because of Singh's economic reforms! They have been in the wilderness since then""until their resurrection now, along with the human face, etc. With their mealy-mouths, they have shouted that genuine pseudo-liberals are now in power""the better to serve you, my dear. I must confess that I find the constant references to how this government will deliver reforms with "a human face" to be quite sickening, and dare I say it, nauseating. |
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| At least the "India Shining" slogan had the virtue of being right in asserting that the erstwhile begging bowl sub-continent had graduated from the depths of despair. The human face wallahs seem to be only happy in contending that there has not been much progress in India; it goes better with the premium Scotch, I guess""the better to drown your sorrows. |
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| My leftist friends never deny that they have the same views as the RSS or the Swadeshi Jagran Manch, but do assert that the two sides are different on non-economic issues. The Left is supposed to be more caring, more egalitarian, more freedom-loving. If so, then it is important to remember the original human face destroyers. |
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| The "socialism with a human face" programme was announced, in January 1968, by the reformist Czech Prime Minister Alexander Dubcek. What was his goal? Less storm-troopers, more economic freedom. Just eight months later, Russian troops, supported by the World Left movement, exterminated the human face. |
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| The moral of the story: freedom is never ended by believers in freedom, but almost always by those with sanctimonious virtue, i.e. the tootsies. |
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A comic feature of the tootsies is that they almost always get their facts wrong; more accurately, they tend to be more intellectually dishonest than most. The table documents these accusations. Since they smelt power, the human face wallahs have been shouting that agriculture has been neglected, that education spending has gone down, that GDP growth has suffered.
| No Difference, not Vive la Difference: Different governments, India, 1991-2004 | | | Cong.1
1991-96 | Cong.2
1992-96 | Cong.2+Left
1992-97 | NDA
1998-2004 | | GDP growth
(% pa) | 5.1 | 6.2 | 6 | 5.7 | | Rainfall index | -0.7 | 0.7 | 4 | -2.5 | | Agriculture | | Output growth (% pa) | 2.4 | 3.4 | 3.4 | 2.7 | | Investment/GDP (%) | 1.9 | 1.8 | 1.8 | 1.6 | | Investment/(GDP in Ag) (%) | 6.79 | 6.78 | 6.76 | 6.74 | | Education expenditure | | Percent of GDP | 3.3 | 3.3 | 3.2 | 3.7 | | Percent of total govt. expenditures | 13.1 | 13.1 | 13.1 | 14.1 | | Sources:
1. Indian Institute of Topological Meteorology, www.tropmet.res.in
2. Report of the Committee on Capital Formation in Agriculture, Govt. of India
3. State finances: A study of budgets, Reserve Bank of India | Note:
1. Rainfall index is the average percentage deviation of all the meteorological sub divisions from their long-term (1874-present) means. |
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| Data for four time-periods have been presented: the five years of the Congress rule, 1991-92 to 1995-96; the four years of the Congress rule, 1992""96 (ignoring the initial crisis year); the six years of the non-crisis Congress plus Left rule, 1992 to 1998; and the six years of the Vajpayee-led NDA rule, 1998""2004. |
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| The table tells a story buffeted more by weather than by the shenanigans of the politicians. Agricultural output growth in 1991-96 is lower than that in 1998""2004, as is the weather; growth is highest in 1992""97, and the weather was the best then. |
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| GDP growth follows the rainfall pattern, and indeed, adjusting for rainfall, the NDA comes out best! Educational spending, the reason for the recent tax and spend cess, shows a large increase during the NDA period""from 3.2 per cent of GDP during 1992-97 to 3.7 per cent. |
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| So we have to thank the NDA for the brilliance of using "in the name of education" expenditures as an excuse to fund wasteful state expenditures. |
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| Investment in agriculture, as a percentage of GDP has gone down, as contended by the faces; but this is a typically dishonest statistic, because with the share of agriculture declining (as part of desired development), it is expected that agricultural investment would also go down, as a share of total GDP. |
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| More informative is investment in agriculture as a proportion of agricultural GDP: this has varied between 6.74 per cent and 6.79 per cent over the last fifteen years! |
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| So what are we left with? A lot of rhetorical noise, a lot of sanctimonious platitudes, a lot of hand-wringing for the galleries, but really, very little in terms of differences in performance. Paraphrasing George Orwell, you look from the Congress to the NDA to the Congress and you cannot tell the difference. |
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| Because there isn't any. And that is the biggest reason for hope for India""these politicians can't mess up our economy, or our lives, anymore. Not to the same degree anyway. There is a larger intelligence and force than that possessed by our politicians""it is the checks and balances of the international economy, of globalisation. |
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| If we stray too far from reforms, that dog will bite, and bite hard enough for us mere mortals to change course. ssbhalla@oxusresearch.com |
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