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FIFTH
COLUMN
Poverty
Politics
Can't
anti-reform activists see that the socialist model of development has
failed?
By
Tavleen
Singh
This
week I write with a measure of hope and optimism. Not because India has
miraculously become a better place since last week but because for the
first time in many, many years I heard an Indian politician dare to tell
the truth about why a country that should be among the richest in the
world is counted among the poorest. That politician was Manmohan Singh
and this column salutes him not just because he dared to tell the truth,
but also because he had the courage to rise above petty political considerations
and partisan loyalties to tell it. The tribute is even more fitting when
you remember that this is almost unheard of in the illiberal, shamelessly
partisan world that Indian politics has become.
Singh was
speaking to businessmen gathered in Delhi for the World Economic Forum's
annual India Summit where Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee and Finance Minister
Yashwant Sinha also spoke. Ironically, while Vajpayee gave us the usual
platitudes and excuses, Singh ended up saying the sort of thing that the
prime minister should have said not just to this gathering but from the
ramparts of the Red Fort at least once in the past three years.
Singh began
by admitting that India had not fulfilled its obligations to its people
because mistakes had been made. In 1960, he said, most people would have
agreed that India was one of the countries most likely to succeed. "But
the harsh reality is that we couldn't make it. We set out to create a
more just society but we failed. Whether in the field of education or
healthcare our achievements have fallen far short of the expectations
of our people. That is the background to the economic reforms that we
began."
While the
Congress president, Signora Sonia, has in the course of discovering India
rediscovered the virtues of Nehruvian socialism and disowned the economic
reforms a Congress government began, her colleague had the courage to
admit that the reforms became necessary because socialism had failed.
This is no small thing when you remember that even the RSS is now Nehruvian
socialist.
Singh had
a lot to say about why it was important to privatise our public sector
because we were wasting capital that would be much better spent on schools,
healthcare and building roads. And about why it was important to increase
India's linkages with the rest of the world. To say these things at a
time when the RSS is joined in its anti-globalisation, anti-privatisation
campaign by such unexpected travelling companions as the Narmada sisters—Arundhati
Roy and Medha Patkar—makes his a desperately needed sane voice in
a cacophony of hysterical nonsense.
Targeting
Poverty, Not the Poor: If only—ah, if only—the prime minister
would realise how important it is for him to explain the mistakes of the
past and the need for change to the people of India so that the game is
not won by those who claim (like the Narmada sisters) that they speak
for the poor when they are actually speaking only for poverty.
Poverty
is the biggest political constituency in India. Not only do our politicians
feed off it like vultures but supposedly pro-poor activists and NGOs also
rush around condemning economic reforms on the grounds that the poor will
not benefit. They never stop to ask themselves why the poor did not benefit
in all those years of socialism when the government centralised all economic
activity in its incapable hands, ostensibly because it was working towards
the elimination of poverty. They never ask why with the state fully in
charge, in the name of the poor, so little was done to give the poor the
things they need most desperately-schools, healthcare, sanitation, jobs
and a halfway decent standard of living. If they did, they might agree
with Singh that our model of development failed and that it was this that
necessitated economic reform.
A favourite
whipping boy of the "pro-poor" activists is globalisation. This
they tell us is definitely anti-poor but again they do not ask if globalisation
is an option any more or a reality we have to face.
We cannot
close the door to the world as we did in the past because it is simply
not possible any more. We could have done it when TV consisted only of
two state-controlled channels and when the Internet was only an idea in
some foreigner's mind. We cannot do so now. It is, in any case, to our
advantage that we do not because there is much we can gain by learning
from other kinds of systems of governance where we went wrong. There are
not many countries left in the world so over-regulated that you need to
pull political strings to get the basic necessities of life like a gas
connection, a telephone and even admission for your children in school.
We need to ask ourselves, as Singh did so eloquently this past week, what
went wrong and what can be done to change it.
Top
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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