Non-Indian spin doctors, beware. You are going to be outsourced to India in the near future. The United Progressive Alliance (UPA – Union of Parliamentary Activists?) has just released its Common Minimum Programme – a vision thing the new government will help make reality. (But whose government is it? That of the cabinet ministers led by Manmohan Singh or that of the Congress party led by Mrs. G? There is no previous instance of party rule in a democratic economy, though example of its prevalence in Communist dictatorships is not uncommon e.g. Soviet Union till the mid-eighties, and China even today).
Janus is a two headed Roman god of beginnings (and endings). The heads, naturally, face in opposite directions. Magus is a “strange and compelling” novel by John Fowles in which nothing is quite what it seems. So much so that the author provided, perhaps for the first time in literary history, two separate endings – the reader could choose the one of her liking!
The human faced Common Minimum Programme, and President Kalam’s speech, are both emphatic in reducing poverty, corruption, and job discrimination in India. These documents read with so much syrup that it is difficult to objectively unglue oneself from the trite but oh! so politically correct messages. If the documents only talked of intention, they could be ignored. But they go much further. For example, the President’s speech outlines legislative plans: “the government is sensitive to the issue of affirmative action including reservations in the private sector and it is committed to faster socio-economic and educational development of the scheduled castes and the scheduled tribes… Reservation quotas in government, including those relating to promotions, will be fulfilled in a time-bound manner. To codify all policies on reservations, appropriate legislation will be enacted.”
If one major forecast is right, then the rule is that you should double up – even if you are slightly wrong on the next, it is worth the risk. Think of what can happen if you are right! In Sept. 1999, I had offered a model of election forecasting that was devoid of any information gleaned from “messy” opinion polls. This model was based exclusively on the pattern of four variables – whether the party was incumbent or not, and the differences in the rates of growth of income (GDP), inflation and exchange rate depreciation. The differences have to do with what happened in the previous election. Based on this model, I had forecast that the much touted ex-post model of anti-incumbency was wrong; that the NDA would easily win the election and that the Congress per se would obtain only 116 seats.
“I am just a poor boy”… and one who has been exploited by politicians, especially the lowly types. And it really does not matter whether the politician is from the Congress, which invented the slogan of removing poverty while enriching the super-rich, or the BJP, which believes that simple aping is the best form of flattery. You have heard it often; I am here to help the poor, I begin in the name of the poor, this program is to help the poor. So much poor around, and they are so stupid, they will buy any jargon, follow any piper’s platitude. That is what the education minister of India, Mr. Murli Manohar (MM) Joshi, believes will happen if fees to students entering prestigious schools like the IIM’s and the IITs (hereafter referred to as IIs) are drastically cut. Since there are no plans to decrease the quality of these schools, and there is an undertaking to the Supreme Court that a vice-like control is not a government objective, the belief is that the government will finance through the general budget (read yours and mine taxes) the deficit caused by the reduced subsidies.
There is every indication that 2004 will turn out to be a glorious year. Even the conservative IMF is ratcheting up its growth forecasts. It is encouraging to note that the past laggards of growth – Africa, Latin America and Japan – are joining the globalization party. Perhaps it is appropriate that as celebration, the two most populous democracies in the world – India and the US – are going to the polls.
The fundamental issue for governments, and their protégé's, quasi-government organizations(QGO) like the World Bank, IMF and the UN, is one of accountability, or what goes by the QGOs fashionable phrase of "corporate governance". Corporate governance is ensured in the private sector via the market. If a firm is perceived to even have a shade of corporate mis-governance, the highly competitive international marketplace is very quick to penalize it. To ask for corporate governance in today's competitive international world, for publicly listed firms, is like mandating rules that a politician has to campaign - she will do so because it is in her self-interest to do so.
In the article, Kashmir: A Free Way to Peace, (Business Standard, Aug 5), it was suggested that perhaps the only genuine peace possibility rests with India honouring its own 53 years old proposal of a plebiscite in the Vale of Kashmir (both the India and Pakistan controlled areas and excluding Jammu and Ladakh). The suggestion of a referendum raises hackles across the political, national, and religious divide. That it does so is natural, but it does not detract from the necessity of a referendum to end the war, the suffering, the conflict.
If proof was needed that poverty is Big Business, at least as far as the largest NGO, the World Bank, is concerned, then it is available aplenty in the just released World Development Report, Attacking Poverty. The "veil of ignorance" position on whether the conclusions on world poverty are consistent with increased business for the World Bank would be the following. First, there should be large amounts of poor in the world - obvious, but necessary. Second, the number of poor should not be seen to be declining too fast - it is best if they were not declining at all. Why? So that it could be shown that there is need for policy advice, technical assistance, and need for the NGO - the World Bank.
It is a mad, mad Indian world. The government has just reported that the percentage poor in India has fallen from 39 percent in 1987-88, and 36 percent in 1993-1994, to about 27 percent in 1999-2000. If MAD magazine were to review the situation, it would state that there are two camps – the what me worry types and the “But Me Worry” (BMW) types. Instead of creating some joy that there are less joyless in India, and therefore a reason for some celebration, the reaction among the BMWs in the Indian government (and their close relatives in Indian academia) is that the data are wrong. And why are the data wrong? Because in the National Sample Survey of 125,000 households, there were some (less than 10 percent) of households who were asked some expenditure questions in the wrong sequence. Sorry, I am not stating the position of the BMWs accurately.
