|
India: an Empire in Denial Indian economic policy is hijacked by a small
elite
Mani Shankar Iyer, Minister for Panchayati Raj
at the Confederation of Indian Industry
"..Every five years, it is the
masses who determine who will form the government. And in
between those five years the classes determine what that
government will do... when you talk of a nine point two per cent
growth rate, it becomes a statistical abstraction: 0.2 per cent
of our people are growing at 9.92 per cent per annum...You have
to be quarrelling with your mother-in-law or hitting your
daughter-in-law to be able to hit the headlines. It is
impossible to get particularly the pink papers to focus on
issues that affect the bulk of the people. And it is so easy to
get them to focus on issues that are of high relevance to only
one or two per cent of the people..."
3 May 2007
In a speech at a
Confederation of Indian Industry
(CII) meet, Mani Shankar Aiyar argued that policy is hijacked
by a small elite. That the cabinet he belongs to is quite
comfortable with this hijacking. That India�s system of governance
is such that Rs 650 crore for village development is considered
wasteful but Rs 7,000 crore for the Commonwealth Games is considered
vital. The classes rule all the time, Aiyar says, the masses get a
look-in every five years
A few weeks ago the newspapers reported that the number of Indian
billionaires had exceeded the number of billionaires in Japan, and
there was a considerable amount of self-congratulation on this. I
understand from P. Sainath that we rank eighth in the world in the
number of our millionaires. And we stand 126th on the Human
Development Index. I am glad to report that last year we were 127th.
At this very fast rate of growth that we are now showing, we moved
up from 127th to 126th position. This is the paradigm of our
development process. In a democracy, every five years the masses
determine who will rule this country. And they showed dramatically
in the last elections that they knew how to keep their counsel and
show who they wanted. We, my party and I, were the beneficiaries and
we formed the government. Every five years, it is the masses who
determine who will form the government. And in between those five
years the classes determine what that government will do.
In determining what that government will do, the CII has played an
extremely important role. I am not surprised, as that is its job. It
represents industry, and therefore it argues for the interests of
the industry. Industry has been enormously benefited by the
processes of economic reform that we have seen in this country over
the last 15 years or so. But the benefits of these reforms have gone
so disproportionately to those who are the most passionate advocates
of reforms that every five years we are given a slap in the face for
having done what the CII regards as self-evidently the right thing
for this country.
It is a sustainable economic proposition, because our numbers are so
vast, that there are perhaps 10 million Indians who are just as rich
as the richest equivalent segment anywhere in the world or in any
group of countries. There are about fifty million Indians who really
are extraordinarily well off. That�s the population of the UK.
But if you look at the 700 million Indians who are either not in the
market or barely in the market, then the impact of the economic
reforms process, which is so lauded by the CII, makes virtually no
difference to their lives. That is why there is a complete disjunct
between what the democratic processes are trying for in the short
run and what those who have made an enormous success of our
achievements in the last fifteen years deem to be, at least in the
short run, their own requirements.
So when you talk of a nine point two per cent growth rate, it
becomes a statistical abstraction: 0.2 per cent of our people are
growing at 9.92 per cent per annum. But there is a very large
number, I don�t know how many, whose growth rate is perhaps down to
0.2 per cent. But certainly, the number of those who are at the
lower end of the growth sector is very much larger than those who
are at the higher end.
Yet what happens when you have the budget? As an absolute ritual
every finance minister (my colleague Chidambaram is no exception)
will devote the first four or five pages of his budget speech to the
bulk of India and there will then be several pages, including whole
of part B, which deals perhaps with one or two per cent of our
population. Almost the entire discussion that takes place at CII or
CII-like forums, will be about Part B rather than Part A.
There are comfort levels that you get from statistics � for
instance, suddenly Arun Shourie, announcing in the NDA government
that our poverty rates have fallen from 35 per cent to 22 per cent.
He did it by changing the basis on which you estimate poverty. You
cannot compare apples and s. The next national sample survey
has shown that our poverty levels have actually increased. Are we
going to be mesmerised by these statistics or understand that 700
million of our people are poor?
So we have an Indira Awaas Yojana which will ensure that there will
be a �jhuggi� for every Indian round about the year 2200. We have
the PM Gram Sadak Yojana which was supposed to complete all the gram
sadak in seven years � we are in the eighth year. And where we are
told that the education of 1000 may be covered, who knows only the
education of 500 will be covered. And if you happen to be a tribal
in Arunachal, you are told that because of your social custom you
are to live in one hut atop a hill, we can�t provide you a road.
I was always something of a leftist. But I became a complete Marxist
only after the economic reforms. Because I see the extent to which
the most important conception of Marx � that the relationship of any
given class with the means of production determines the
superstructure � holds.
This ugly choice is placed before the government. An unequal choice,
because you have organised yourself to say what you want to say but
the others are only able to organise themselves and that too without
speaking to each other in the fifth year when the elections take
place. That is why this expression anti-incumbency, although the
Oxford Dictionary says that it is a word belonging to the English
language, is a peculiarly Indian phenomenon. Because everything that
goes in the name of good governance like the economic reforms either
does not touch the life of people or affect them at all.
We have seen what happened at Nandigram, we have seen what was
happening at Singur and we have these propositions that say that
SEZs are going to come and lakhs of hectares are going to be
utilised for the good of the country. For what�s the syndrome in all
this, it�s still �do bigha zameen�. The chap says that I want my one
bigha of zameen to be reinstated, but you offer double the
compensation and �baad mein dekha jayega�. You go to Hirakud, which
is where Jawaharlal Nehru actually used the expression modern
temples of India, and you ask what happened to the tribals who were
driven out of there. Absolutely nobody knows.
Coming to the cabinet, you see what happens. The minute suggestions
are made as to what would perhaps benefit the people and what would
benefit the classes, the tendency is to say that our great
achievement is 9.2 per cent growth. Our great achievement is that
Indian industrialists are buying Arcelor and Corus. That Time
magazine thinks we are a great power.
In these circumstances, when a proposal came before the government
to spend Rs 648 crore on the Gram Nyaya department, we were solemnly
informed by one of the most influential ministers in the government
to remember that we are a poor country. I was delighted when the
next day he was with me in a group of ministers and I reminded him
of his remark and said in that case can we stop spending the Rs 7000
crore on the Commonwealth Games and he said, �No, no, that is an
international commitment and a matter of national pride.� This
national pride will of course blow up if you spend Rs 7000 crore on
the Commonwealth Games. We will be on the cover of Time and
Newsweek.
I have always wondered why this rate of growth and economic reforms
process is dated to Manmohan Singh. Because actually it should be
dated to L.K. Jha�s book Economic Strategy for the 80s. It is the
decade in which we quickly recovered from agricultural depression
and registered a double digit growth. At the beginning of the decade
our biggest import was crude oil and after that it was edible oil.
By the end of the decade we were exporters of several kinds of
edible oil.
Why is it that Nehru became successful with his Hindu rate of
growth? The reason is that the Hindu rate of growth was five times
what our pre-Hindu rate of growth was. From 1914 to 1947, the
figures of which are available, the rate of growth of the Indian
economy was 0.72 per cent. And we got the Hindu rate of growth which
was five times that and it made a difference to the people. The
minute you had solid land reforms, the people had their �zameen�.
That is what Mother India was all about. People felt that they were
involved in the process. All the political talk was: gareeb ke liye
ham kya kar sakte hain. Indira Gandhi matched it beautifully when
the entire political spectrum joined hands against her by saying,
�Woh kehte hain Indira hatao, hum kehte hain Garibi hatao.�
There is nobody so marginal in a government as the minister of
Panchayati Raj. I count for nothing. Nothing! When I was the
minister of petroleum, I used to walk surrounded by this media. I
kept on telling them that petrol prices can do only three things �
go up, go down or remain where they are. And it was all over the
place.
But try and get them to write two words about the 700 million
Indians � absolutely impossible. And now with terrestrial television
it is even worse. You have to be quarrelling with your mother-in-law
or hitting your daughter-in-law to be able to hit the headlines. It
is impossible to get particularly the pink papers to focus on issues
that affect the bulk of the people. And it is so easy to get them to
focus on issues that are of high relevance to only one or two per
cent of the people.
I believe the CII, if it is serious about the issue, should not be
restricting itself to 25 minutes discussion before lunch but hold
discussions for ten days and maybe something will come out of it.
|
