The India of my Dreams
Saturday, 29 September 2012
In the name of the aam admi
Sukumaran C. V.
To safeguard democracy the people
must have a keen sense of independence, self respect and oneness, and should
insist upon choosing as their representatives only such persons as are good and
true.
—M. K. Gandhi. (The Story of My Experiments with Truth)
In his keynote address at the
opening of the Edinburgh Commonwealth Summit on October 24, 1997 the then Prime
Minister of India, I. K. Gujral, said: “Equal opportunity and democracy are
often absent in the restricted chambers of the international economic system.
And yet, I have little doubt that, in the long run, globalization will succeed
only if it is equitable and just. The institutional systems that oversee the
globalised economy must reflect an enlightened balance of interests.”
Nearly fifteen years after, the
globalised economy in India not only reflects a balance of interests but also
widened the imbalance between the rich and the poor and as a result it has
wiped out the lives of nearly three lakh farmers between 1995 and 2011.
According to the NCRB (National Crime Record Bureau) data; 2, 90, 740 farmers
committed suicide during 1995-2011—an average 18,171 farm suicides each year!
When Mr. Manmohan Singh ushered in
the liberalized economic policies in 1991, it paved the way for the corporate
sector to be a Shylock with the unconditional help of the State. And in the
2001-02 Union Budget, the then Finance Minister Yaswant Sinha introduced a
major policy decision (in favour of the big business) to reduce the role of the
FCI to maintaining only minimum buffer stocks. This policy shift was a lethal
blow to our PDS and led to the dismantling of the Minimum Support Price scheme
which was a solace to the farmers.
The Union governments since 1991have
confined themselves to creating conditions for private enterprise to flourish.
While the successive Union Budgets in the liberalization era have inflicted
severe cuts in agriculture subsidies, the revenue forgone under corporate
income tax, excise and customs duties during the period 2005 - 2011 is Rs. 21,
25, 023 crores. (P. Sainath, “Corporate socialism’s 2G orgy”, The Hindu,
March 7, 2011)
In this abysmal socio-economic
background, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, on June 29, 2011, in his
opening remarks at the interaction with newspaper editors, told: “We must not
bring back the license permit raj which we sought to abolish in 1991. I think
our nation has prospered as a result of that. If you look at the list of top
100 firms today you will find a sea change in that list. New entrepreneurs have
come into the list. These are some of the gains of liberalization which we must
cherish, nurse and develop.”
Gains of liberalization which we must cherish, nurse and develop!
To understand this ‘gains’ we have
to compare the data on unemployment from the Government of India’s Economic
Census of 1990 with that of 1998. The annual average growth rate percentage
of employment in the two Censuses (shown in the table below) speaks volumes on
the gains of liberalization.
Year
|
Agricultural sector
|
Non-Agricultural sector
|
Total
|
|
Rural
|
1980-1990
|
+5.62 %
|
+2.81 %
|
+3.13 %
|
1990-1998
|
+1.80 %
|
-2.15 %
|
-1.58 %
|
|
Urban
|
1980-1990
|
+2.93 %
|
+2.88 %
|
+2.88 %
|
1990-1998
|
+3.15 %
|
-1.08 %
|
-1.01 %
|
And yet our Prime Minister speaks of
the gains of liberalization!
In the wake of the different
multi-crore scams and scandals, Mr. Singh warns the media that if an atmosphere
of cynicism is created, the growth and the entrepreneurial impulses of the big
business will not flourish. Then he tells the editors that “we must do all that
we can to revive the animal spirits of our businesses.”
Fifteen years ago, when the lethal
aftereffects of the liberalization were not so visible as today, we had a Prime
Minister who was at least bothered about the ideal of equal opportunity. Today
when the structural inequalities and violence stand more entrenched and
imbalanced than ever before as the result of the free play of market forces;
our Prime Minister is bothered not about the pathetic condition of the farmers
and the poor, but about the nervousness the corporate sector feels if its
wayward activities being monitored. In his inaugural address at the
India corporate Week 2010, he said that the government was committed to
providing an enabling environment conducive to the growth of the corporate
sector.
What about providing an environment
conducive to a decent living to the 830 million people who live on Rs. 20 a
day? What about providing an environment which is not conducive to
eliminating the lives of more than 18,171farmers every year? What about the
villagers being displaced by the multinational giants like the Vedanta and the
Posco?
In an environment conducive to growth!
And on Sept. 21, 2012 in his address
to the Nation, the Prime Minister, by calling us brothers and sisters again and
again, told us:
“In 1991, when we opened India to
foreign investment in manufacturing, many were worried. But today, Indian
companies are competing effectively both at home and abroad and they are
investing around the world. More importantly, foreign companies are creating
jobs for our youth—in IT, in steel, and in the auto industry. I am sure this
will happen in retail trade as well.”
Can there be a greater irony than
this? Can anybody, who is face to face with the lives of the millions of
ordinary people in this vast country, speak like this? And the way he started
his address is really the joke of the year: “No government likes to impose
burdens on the common man. Our Government has been voted to office twice to
protect the interests of the aam admi.”
P.S: In her Broken Republic, Arundhati Roy writes: “In his autobiography, A Prattler’s Tale, Ashok Mitra, former finance minister of West Bengal, tells his story of how Manmohan Singh rose to power. In 1991, when India’s foreign exchange reserves were dangerously low, the P.V. Narasimha Rao government approached the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for an emergency loan. The IMF agreed on two conditions. The first was structural adjustment and economic reform. The second was the appointment of a finance minister of its choice. That man, says Mitra, was Manmohan Singh.”
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