PERSPECTIVE During the last decade, India witnessed a fixed contest between a handpicked home-based economist and a West-backed airdropped economist that led nowhere, and a decade later brought India back to the gloom she was trying hard to come out from. In 2004 India’s economic resurgence was halted on the name of inclusion to suit the priorities of those who preferred to treat India as a ‘Governance Failure’, that too at a time when India was actually in control and headed in the right direction.
In the ensuing period, India’s economic development was compromised, but her politics seriously undermined. More than economic reverses, the past decade is a story of the biggest political failure in the history of post-independence India. The real challenge before the next government will be to restore the autonomy of India’s thought and political leadership to be able to truly respond to the priorities and concerns of over one billion people looking for a life of self-reliance and dignity.
Slowly, and after lots of provocations, but India had finally moved
In the backdrop of political instability and near economic bankruptcy of India, Narsimha Rao formed the Congress minority government in 1991 and gradually converged the democratic India’s power to where it ideally belonged – the Prime Minister’s Office. In spite of having acquired an image of being someone who avoided taking decisions, Rao decided to trust Manmohan Singh with the task of liberalizing and deregulating the economy while he provided the necessary political cover fire.
Together Rao and Singh quietly but systematically prepared the ground for steering India out of the gloom and into the 21st century. By mid 1990s the wheels of change were starting to move and, to the great satisfaction of global Economic Warriors, the Indian economy was at last gearing up to embrace the world.
Wheels of change turned and India began to embrace the world
After some political hiccups, the BJP-led government under Vajpayee in 1998 continued the economic reforms. It also took the historic decision of testing the nuclear device that at least confirmed that the democratic India’s power was where it ideally belonged – the Prime Minister’s office. The world reacted sharply with economic sanctions, but with the rising economic opportunities in sight, it reconciled. The Vajpayee government was in control and there was a positive sentiment in the market.
The results of economic reforms were starting to show, with the rising GDP growth rates, peaking at over 8% in 2004. However, while India was starting to shine here and there, there were large tracts of darkness where the economic shine was yet to reach. The signs of economic recovery and positive market sentiment made the NDA government somewhat self-indulgent and lose sight of the larger political plot.
America changed, the world changed, and so was India’s politics
Suddenly, at the very outset of the 21st century, the world changed, mainly because America changed, due to bringing down of the twin-towers by the ‘aliens’. As a result, the popular wisdom in the policy circles of Washington DC changed as well. They argued: it was not the Poverty, an aspect of Economic Failure, that they had tried to fix by pushing for the painful structural adjustments all over the world during 1990s, but actually the Governance Failure in the less developed world that was the source of the simmering global terrorism.
Therefore, the focus of the world powers moved away from multiplying their gains by pushing for the economic globalization to securing their lives and life styles by arresting the terrorism tide exactly where it began. Leaving behind the Economic Warriors of the Washington Consensus, the Social Crusaders took on the responsibility to fix the ‘Governance Failure’ in the ‘un-civilized’ world. An argumentative Indian was handy with his theories of entitlements and development as freedom that suited the strategic requirements of the West globally.
Enthused by the West’s new global agenda, soon the Indian version of the Social Crusaders would make inclusive growth and rights-based development the mantra of the new Congress-led UPA government and, in the time to come, produce a series of bills and acts that NDA would eventually deride.
More than economy, ‘Governance Failure’ became India’s priority
The UPA-I government took charge when the reforms were starting to pay off and the economy was in reasonably good health and, for sure, heading for better, with issues related to percolation of benefits notwithstanding. While the political calculations in 2004 catapulted the handpicked home-based economist into the Prime Minister of India, another economist with his Nobel weight and the backing of the international Social Crusaders was becoming increasingly vocal as to why the Indian government should pay priority attention to ‘Governance Failure’, interpreted in India.
In terms of unaccountable and irresponsive bureaucracy that most thought was responsible for all that was bad in India, widespread corruption that some thought was part of the Indian blood, inefficiencies and ineffectiveness of public institutions that others thought reflected the inherent cultural sloth and the lack of individual and institutional capacities to analyze, innovate and lead the development discourse. All of which together, they argued, blunted India’s development efforts. India’s ‘governance failure’, however, could not be linked to the ‘alien acts’ abroad therefore fighting poverty became the justification.
Fixed contest of the economists and the power vacuum in India’s politics
The UPA-I government was suitably placed to appropriate the results of the economic performance of the previous NDA government, while making the ‘governance failure’ and poverty their priorities. The RTI and NREGS followed to tighten the bureaucracy and placate the rural poor.
However, given the international push for the rights based agenda, India’s development policy soon became the quiet but fixed contest between the handpicked home-based economist and the West-backed airdropped economist that India’s political class, irrespective of their party affiliations, was made to witness, sometimes cheer, from the stadium that we call the Parliament House.
The Social Crusaders called the shots, the Economic Warriors were in doubt, and India’s political class was nowhere. In the process, democratic India’s power center started evaporating from where it ideally belonged – the Prime Minister’s Office.
Rejection of ‘Shining India’ and apologetic adoption of ‘Governance Failure’
The change in 2004 was essentially a shift from the earlier-than-required exuberance of NDA’s ‘shining India’ to the not-quite-unavoidable gloom of UPA’s adopted ‘governance failure’. There were persisting governance challenges, no doubt, but the democratic India was in control of its economy as well as politics and was nowhere close to being Rwanda, Burundi, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Pakistan, Afghanistan or even Egypt.
On the contrary, the performance of the Congress-led Rao government and the BJP-led Vajpayee government, both politicians, had indicated that India was seriously engaged in transforming herself and moving in the right direction.
Nevertheless, the fixed contest between the home-based and the airdropped economists shifted India’s focus away from seriously doing something about India’s topmost priorities, strengthening the economy and alleviating poverty, to endlessly discussing the same and building arguments to align them to the global buzz-word, the ‘Governance Failure’.
Academic alignment in the times of corruption, scandals and no leadership
The economic performance of the last two decades indicates how India first moved step-by-step away from the state of political instability and economic gloom of early nineties to stability and better performance in late 1990s and mid 2000s and then slowly returned to instability and gloom a decade later. While UPA-I (2004-09) gained from the momentum built in NDA years (1998-2004), it frittered away the gains after securing the second term in 2009.
A series of high-end corruption scandals, the most discussed ‘policy paralysis’ and the held-up economic reforms started to throttle the achievements of the previous decade. While the extra-constitutional body like the National Advisory Council (NAC), the Indian manifestation of the international Social Crusaders, took on the role of determining India’s development priorities and drafting pro-poor bills (employment, education, food, etc.), the largest democracy of the world was forced to helplessly witness the complete dispersal of India’s political power from where it ideally belonged – the Prime Minister’s Office.
Between an argumentative and a silent economist, India lost her priorities
The home-based economist quietly gave into the priorities articulated by the West-backed economist, who was suitably being airdropped to guide and put his Nobel weight around the NAC’s work. There was no urgency about the actual delivery on the academic “entitlements” and “rights”. It could take another couple of decades and several national and State governments to interpret them for India’s poor. Moreover, by that time the definition of poverty would be suitably upgraded from a dollar a day to whatever dollars a day.
India’s Development Index further revised, with all scholarly pretensions, to move its focus from highly politicized ‘malnutrition’ to something even more scientific, may be, individual platelet counts. Sadly, the world’s largest democracy was made to compromise her economic development agenda mainly because some globally wise had become more concerned about the ‘governance failure’ endangering the lives and life-styles in the civilized world out there than the ‘widespread poverty’ that was corroding away the very existence of societies in here in the ‘un-civilized world’ on everyday basis. In the absence of political leadership, India simply lost her development ‘priorities’.
Confusion, chaos and the anti-establishment sentiment
It is not surprising that in the following years, given the rise of anti-establishment sentiment nationally leading to massive social movements, India became politically uncertain and economically unsure. In the fixed contest, while the home-based economist lost almost all the rounds, the airdropped economist could claim victory to at least one, for helping the return of UPA to power in 2009 with NREGS.
However, the real losers turned out to be hundreds of millions of poor whose desperation finally led to the establishment of first ever government of social activists under the hurriedly and publicly formed Aam Adami Party (AAP) in the national capital in 2013. The AAP sentiment is spreading across the country and, if not handled with care, may end up pushing India back into the political instability of early nineties. While the argumentative economist, as always, pontificated from somewhere that emergence of AAP was good for India’s democracy, the one who was, and still is, formally responsible for India’s poor remained silent, as always.
Systematic infliction of self-doubt and the leadership crisis
In this West-sponsored UPA-led fixed contest, in spite of all the rights-based legislations, India lost a decade. However, what suffered the most was the politics of India that increasingly became faceless due to the willful power dispersal. The largest democracy, having enthusiastically voted for its leaders, became unsure about its political leadership. BJP belatedly argued that the ‘two’ power centers played havoc with India’s development aspirations and, for once, the senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh also agreed, however, the proposition convinced only the innocents. The reality was when it came to determining India’s development priorities, there was only one power center and, unfortunately, it was not anymore where it ideally belonged – the Prime Minister’s Office. Worse still, it was not even where India’s political class thought it was. The NAC in India was only the manifestation of the international Social Crusaders, working through the so called ‘international community’ and its sponsored ‘civil society’, out to fix the ‘Governance Failure’ in the ‘un-civilized’ world.
A decade of political de-capacitation and India’s bewilderment
India’s development priorities were readjusted to suit the priorities of the world powers and to the disadvantage of hundreds of millions of India’s poor who, at the end, received a more detailed constitutional guarantee of some ‘rights’ that were already part of the Indian Constitution and some freebies on the name of inclusive development, while the growing economic capacity of India to handle her challenges was systematically reversed, in fact, compromised.
In the very first decade of the 21st century, India’s political class was arm-twisted into watching India’s development decision-making slip into the hands of sponsored technicians and not the political leadership, as it happens across the world, including the Western democracies. It is the consequence of this political failure that the agitated social activists turned politicians are carrying appeal among all sections of society, except the elites, and are restless to go national with their protests, irrespective of the election outcome. India’s protests story will not end with the expected change of regime after the elections. On the contrary, it may get worse.
India’s poor and the poverty of her politics
After proudly listing the rights based legislations, some of which came just before the end of the term, during the AICC session on 17 Jan 2014, the Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi passionately concluded amidst the thunderous applause, “Just wait and watch what we do over (next) five years…. We shall fight poverty (and) make people stand on their feet. You’ll see these changes in the coming future”.
Between the “Remove Poverty” slogan of Indira Gandhi in 1970s to the “Fight Poverty” slogan of Rahul Gandhi in 2014, about forty years of India’s life have passed, of which Congress has ruled the country for over thirty five years. Particularly, over the last decade, with handpicked leadership, willful dispersal of political power and quiet acceptance of internationally sponsored priorities, not only India’s economic development was compromised, but also her politics blatantly undermined.
The biggest challenge before the next government, therefore, will be to restore the autonomy of India’s development thought and political leadership to be able to truly respond to India’s priorities and concerns first. After all it is about one seventh of humanity looking for development as well as freedom from poverty, in fact, a life of self-reliance, dignity and fairness. They need opportunities, not handouts.
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