Red Alert
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It is because I have in recent weeks run into so many Lefties in Delhi’s corridors of power that I feel it my duty to begin 2012 with a warning. And, this is that our political class seems to have forgotten that it was our devotion to socialist economic ideas that bankrupted India in 1991. So committed were we to the public sector and a controlled economy that we discouraged private enterprise and spent so much money on our public sector ‘temples of modern India’ that we had almost nothing left for anything else. The vast majority of Indians remained poor, illiterate and barely able to afford one meal a day at the end of four decades of socialism. If things have changed, it is because we changed course in 1991.
Unfortunately, our political leaders are such dedicated socialists that they never dared admit publicly that the old model had failed. So economic reforms were brought in by stealth and the average Indian voter never found out what had gone wrong or why reforms became necessary. We are now suffering the consequences of this. The Leftists are back in full fettle and can be seen on almost every chat show these days pontificating about the ‘collapse of capitalism’ in the West and the need to go back to working for ‘the poor’. They relish nothing more than converting every issue into a fight between rich and poor and talk gleefully these days about how the economic reforms have failed to make any difference to the lives of the ‘aam aadmi’. This is rubbish but they appear to be winning the argument and if they do, India is going to end up getting a lot poorer before we start to get rich again.
It is time for those of us who know that in an Indian context the Left has always been wrong to fight back. So here goes. When someone like your humble columnist says that the National Advisory Council’s latest offering, the Food Security Bill, is a bad idea it is because I know that it will not work. Not because I am not ashamed that 45 per cent of Indian children are officially malnourished. Secretly even supporters of the new law admit that it will not work. They agree that it is too centralised, too unwieldy and opens many new avenues of corruption. But, because ideologically they do not dare move away from their moorings, they are forced to bang on publicly about how it is wrong to resent spending money on the poor.
While in Delhi, Leftists of varying hue showed that they have taken control of making policies and laws in Mumbai, the year began with deepening gloom in business circles. Businessmen now admit that they are operating under an undeclared licence raj. Projects in which major investments have been made can be stopped arbitrarily for usually flimsy reasons and any company that shows signs of thriving despite this becomes a target for the income tax department.
This remains one of the most corrupt departments of the Government of India and the price that officials demand as bribes is now in crores not lakhs. The Prime Minister finds time to warn businessmen against spreading tales of doom and gloom but seems never to find time to conduct the administrative reforms he promised as far back as 2004. Why do officials have so much power? Why are government processes so convoluted?
There is a simple answer to both those questions. We set up this system of governance in socialist times in faithful imitation of the Soviet Union and communist China. The first of our Marxist role models died long ago and the second is now fifty years ahead of us economically because its leaders worked out fifteen years before we did that Marxist economic ideas had failed. In India, we should have discovered this just from seeing what happened to West Bengal but we did not and among the Lefties making the most noise these days are those who belong to the CPM.
Along with their new comrades in the BJP, they led the campaign against FDI in retail. If big international retail chains are ever allowed into India, the people who will benefit most are our poorest farmers but their voice remains unheard.
If the Prime Minister continues to surrender to the Leftists, we can be sure that by January next year the atmosphere in the country will be similar to what it was in the early nineties. For those who do not remember, it was a time when India was bankrupt and most Indians were very, very poor because in the name of the poor we followed ‘socialist’ economic policies. As someone who remembers those times well, may I say that the last thing we need is for such times to return.
Follow Tavleen Singh on Twitter @ Tavleen_Singh
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