Dark Clouds On The Horizon
It all sounded so easy last year. Seven per cent growth each year was all we needed. At the end of 20 years, poverty would be vanquished and starvation a thing of past.
Seven per cent was the magic figure for a number of politicians and economists including P Chidambaram. Last year, it didn't sound like a faraway dream. If anything, growth would speed up after a few years of reforms. That's what happened in China and why shouldn't it happen here.
How times change. One year on and there's gloom all around. Seven per cent growth isn't going to happen this year and it doesn't look likely for several years to come. The industrial slowdown is here to stay -- despite Yashwant Sinha's firm conviction that it will end in September.
What's worse is that this gloomy scenario has spread around the globe. In Indonesia, motor mechanics are going back to poverty-line professions like rag-picking. White-collar and once-affluent Thais have been selling their Mercedes Benzes and cellphones in a bid to make ends meet. Far from abolishing poverty in 20 years time, it now looks as if the whole world is going into reverse gear.
It hasn't come to that yet in India. But there are other causes for grim despair in this country. The industrial slowdown may end in September or the year 2000, but does it really matter? Has the system broken down like an old Ambassador that has been to the mechanic one time too many? Can it really be fixed this time?
Two things have happened this year. The first is that after years of practising for the role, the BJP has finally come to power at the Centre. They were the last hope of an electorate which has tried just about everything else. Now after four months in power the myth is well and truly destroyed. The politicians of the BJP are no different from Congressmen and the stalwarts of the United Front. It could even be argued that they are a bit worse. And, if that is true then the Indian electorate has nothing else to hope for.
But the BJP's non-performance wouldn't be such a disaster if it wasn't for a second fact. After years the bureaucracy has also finally broken down to a point of no repair. In Uttar Pradesh, senior bureaucrats are given homilies on governance by BJP president Kushabhau Thakre. Alternatively, they are moved about (again in Uttar Pradesh) to newly-created districts which have no houses or office space.
The result is that the bureaucrats can't get on with the business of governing the country while the politicians play their games. That's how it worked in the old days.
There was one school of thought which argued that India was just like Italy without the Ferraris and the Colosseum. The politicians would play their games while the businessmen got on with the important task of creating wealth. But, that's hard to do when the bureaucrats can't take the everyday decisions and keep the wheels rolling.
The breakdown in the governmental system is showing even in cities like Delhi which has always been a privileged island. In the last few months, the city's government has come out with one hare-brained scheme after another. Most famously, it suggested that schoolgirls should wear salwar kameezes ostensibly to protect them from dengue fever. On another occasion it suggested that churches were not religious institutions because they served sacramental wine. Meanwhile, Delhi's chief minister is going ahead with his pet scheme to set up a gau shala to protect itinerant cows and has commandeered hundreds of acres for the task. And, in another crazy scheme, the city's government has decided that all air-conditioners must be registered. Nobody is quite sure why.
Is there a glimmer of hope on the horizon? Well, don't forget that old saying that it is always darkest before the dawn. But there isn't any reason for optimism and that is a scary thought.