We are in the thick of a season of slander, with the current troika of the Indian political stage – the BJP, Congress and the AAP trading the choicest of barbs at one another in their rallies over the weekend. From corruption to crony capitalism, to Sikhs in Gujarat and pensions for army personnel, the campaigns of Modi, kejriwal and Rahul Gandhi change melody with geography, but have hinged largely, and heavily, on character assassinating opponents, localized electoral promises and plenty of empty rhetoric about the Aam Aadmi.
Opinion makers, intellectuals and the media (the pink papers in particular), on the other hand have been preoccupied, apart from minutely examining every little insult on the campaign trail, with other more serious, if superfluous stuff - dissecting the Finance Minister’s budget speech and obsessing over the credibility of the fiscal deficit number for instance. Or whether excise duty cuts will revive automobile sales. Or the telecom auctions and their bearing on the sector that’s seeing light again after years in a long, dark tunnel.
Amartya Sen – the Economist and Nobel Laureate is concerned about these select fixations – an overemphasis on which he believes has made India a strange country of people that possess mobile phones, but no toilets, a country where despite the fact that 2.6 to 3.6% of GDP is spent on middle-class subsidies (petroleum, fertilizers, diesel, LPG and electricity), there is outrage about 0.8% of GDP being expended on food entitlements for the poorest of poor.
In an interview with CNBC TV-18, Sen lamented that neither politicians including from AAP, nor the intelligentsia have been able to identify the real Aam Aadmi and deal with issues concerning him. So even as the relatively less poor continue to seize subsidies for instance, and dominate mainstream debate in this country, the most vulnerable sections of society – or the real Aam Aadmi - has been left out of the political discourse entirely. Except deplorably, when apprehensive economists have chided the government on the cost of the food bill.
“If you are looking for the poorest of poor, they are not asking for cheaper electricity – they don’t have electricity – 1/3rd of Indians don’t. They are not asking for LPG gas cylinders” Sen insisted, even as politicians across party lines continually harped on cheap electricity and LPG cylinder assurances at their rallies over the weekend.
This, Sen believes is a distorted understanding of equity. What’s missing is a more profound debate on the real guiding principles of fair economic growth – health, education, nutrition – the foundations of which countries like Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, China and Indonesia developed and reduced poverty. So the fact that India has the highest population of illiterate adults – 287 million or 37% of the total population according to UNESCO, or that 42% of its children are malnourished, or that it finds a place in the healthcare hall of shame, ranking below its less prosperous neighbours on key parameters, are not points of focus for politicians or opinion makers. Of course, Rahul Gandhi has promised free healthcare and invokes achievements on RTE and NREGS time and again, while Narendra Modi has healthcare and education as among the main planks of his vision, but they are hardly dominant electoral issues like Obamacare was, for instance, in the US.
Partially to blame is the media, which stands patently guilty of ignoring those at the other side of the digital divide – the Aam Aadmi that inhabits an india where there is no electricity, no schools and no employment - to further the agenda of an English speaking, urban elite. It is a reflection of the dangerous emergent trend of corporate ownership of media and the shrinking space for public service journalism.
But a large part of the culpability lies with our politicians who’ve merely paid lip service to the mango man. The Congress through key pro-poor legislations like the food security bill, the land acquisition act and other social entitlements has been earnest in intent, but often found floundering on implementation. The BJP with Modi at the helm of affairs has yet to shake off his obvious pro big business stance, not having made sincere overtures to the bigger, more neglected electorate. And AAP doesn’t seem to have the time to articulate its ideas on the Aam Aadmi anymore, busy as it is dissenting and hollowing out scandals of big corporates.
It is time to redefine the Aam bit of the Aam Aadmi and broaden the scope of his existence beyond subsidized electricity, gas cylinders and fertilizers, which are really middle class subsidies like Sen articulates. Where is the question of subsiding electricity afterall, if 1/3rd of India’s villages do not have power? A recent McKinsey study vindicates Sen’s argument. It pegs some 680 million Indians - more than 2.5 times the population of 270 million below the official poverty line - are deprived of basic needs like food, energy, housing, sanitation, healthcare, social security, education and drinking water. It is time to talk about these 680 million folk, not just the subsidized middle class that is being mistaken as the only component of the Aam Aadmi brigade.
