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EDITORIAL
End
of Profiteer Raj
Why isn't
Indian business ready for competition?
 It
has been a decade now since the Indian bazaar began opening up to the
world. Cheaper alternatives-if sometimes contraband-from countries such
as China are filling shop shelves and the Word Trade Organisation threatens
to do more. Understandably, Indian manufacturers are upset. They are calling
for high tariffs on imports, anti-dumping duties, calibrated globalisation
and so on. With an equal certitude consumers are celebrating; they reckon
the profiteer is getting his comeuppance. When it gets over its breast
beating, corporate India should ask itself a few hard questions. True,
there is much to blame the government for: bureaucracy, poor infrastructure,
high cost of capital, fitful dismantling of the licence-permit edifice.
Yet what have Indian businessmen done to prepare their companies for competition
they knew was coming? Precious little.
For two
generations, Indian corporate houses have been treated with kid gloves
by economic analysts. In the socialist era, they were simply throttled
by a regime that saw the private sector as a criminal enterprise and profit
as the financial equivalent of culpable homicide. Unfortunately, this
tells only half the story. Over 50 years of protectionism, big and even
medium-sized private-sector firms established domestic monopolies. With
no competition the consumer was a captive of shoddy, overpriced products.
So smug and so set was it in its ways that the Indian manufacturing cartel
actually slept through the first decade of liberalisation. Today, when
under the banner of "nationalism" it seeks preferential treatment
in everything from selling goods to buying public-sector units up for
privatisation, it is difficult to lend it any sympathy. In cold terms
there are two options for "old economy" Indian companies: lobby
with friendly political parties and hold back globalisation; or buck up.
In short, move on with the country-or be left behind by history.
Yesterday's
Prisoner
So now
Pakistan wants to rewrite the story of 1971
 Earlier
this week, a Pakistani diplomat caused a furore in Dhaka by arguing that
the atrocities prior to the Bangladesh liberation war of 1971 were caused
by "Awami League miscreants". To suggest that this amounts to
a grossly imaginative interpretation would be understating it. After all,
Pakistani generals like Tikka Khan-infamous as the "Butcher of Bangladesh"-as
well as the Hamoodur Rahman commission of inquiry have been quite categorical
in admitting to the pogroms of the time. The diplomat's revelation came
shortly after Pakistan asked Bangladesh to forget the "tragic past".
This is ironical given the same Islamabad school of history argues that
"Kashmir is part of the unfinished agenda of Partition". At
the root of Pakistan's constant endeavours to redefine the past to suit
its convenience lies an inability to come to terms with the shared legacy
of the subcontinent. The remark in Dhaka is only the symptom of this;
the greater ailment makes south Asia one of the globe's top trouble zones.
If the ideological
junta in Pakistan wants to invent a national past for itself-going by
the official website of the Lahore administration, the city's life seems
to have begun only with its conquest by Mahmud of Ghazni in 1021-it is
toying with a societal neurosis. At a more mundane level, the Pakistani
establishment's obsession with the past is its biggest handicap. Inherited
prejudices and suspicions passed on to succeeding generations are not
fertile ground for, say, an economic partnership of equals. With honest
appraisals and a genuine belief in a fresh start, Pakistan can do a service
to itself and to this part of the world. Responding to the peace initiative
in Kashmir would be as good a first step as any.
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Enron
symbolises everything that's wrong with the way reforms were handled by
M/s Rao & Manmohan, says INDIA TODAY Associate Editor