Debate, don’t dictate

Rao brought in economic reforms stealthily, without open discussion. The BJP-led government has adopted the same tactics, while opening more sectors

TWO reports have landed on my table at the same time. One claims that the Indian economy is fourth in the world in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP). The other, an UNDP document, points out that India accounted for 30 per cent of all maternal deaths in the world and 40 per cent of child labour. Both make depressing reading.

India’s per capita income remains low. It is less than that of Pakistan. Only the country’s purchasing power has increased. But this is not spread out among the population — as is the case in the USA, China and Japan, the three nations placed above us — but confined to roughly one-fifth of the population. A little more than 200 million Indians are going up the ladder. This lot has the money to indulge in consumerism, while the rest are getting marginalised rapidly. The liberalisation of economy — the Vajpayee government’s panacea for poverty eradication — is not only ruining more lives, it is creating ever-widening disparities.

In the name of economic reforms, the government has taken steps that have led to the closure of numerous small scale units. Many more are on their last legs. Agreed, self-reliance — which has been our policy for decades — does not fit in the world of globalisation. But there is something called self-interest which is non-negotiable. New Delhi’s policies are verging on extravagance. Yet it remains a cheerleader among the developed nations, because it helps the rich sell themselves to the Third World.

The prime minister has now promised yet another series of steps to liberalise the economy. What this really means is that we will be pawning our country to foreign companies at a more feverish pace than before. Indeed, leading foreign investors are having a field day. They are acquiring Indian ventures and crowding out local competition through any pressure they can exert. Once they come to establish their supremacy, if we are to go by past experience, they will raise the price of their products to recover rapidly what they ‘‘lost’’ earlier. In any case, most of their investments are in food products, cold drinks, shoes, clothes, television and cars. This is where the purchasing power has come to count. The 200-million plus people in India can afford to buy what many Europeans find beyond their means. Some among them do not bother to even read the price-tag and lap up anything that had once appeared tantalisingly ‘‘phoren’’.

This opening up would create conditions where millions of Indians are bound to be driven to the wall, but what people do not realise is that it is their own government which has been devising these policies. Is there no way that the government can protect vulnerable units and people? Too many distress calls are coming from the field, but the government is not responding to them. The other day, the minister of state for small-scale industries, Vasundhara Raje Scindia, told Parliament that a committee had been set up to find alternative avenues to provide a cushion for those affected by these processes. But why does the government act so late? It could have protected some sectors by not throwing everything open. It could have fixed its priorities so that foreign capital flows to specific fields which need it, like that of infrastructure.

The Narasimha Rao government brought in economic reforms stealthily, without any open discussion. The BJP-led government has adopted the same tactics, even while opening more sectors. Is there any harm in taking the nation into confidence? A proposal, which the government wants implemented, should be the subject of public debate. At present, decisions are announced after Cabinet meetings, like the fiat of an autocrat government. The Vajpayee coalition is also taking advantage of a long recess, nearly three months between the Monsoon and Winter sessions of Parliament. There is a proliferation of announcements, even ordinances, to “attract” foreign investment.

The government should know that the resentment has spread to such an extent that the very word, videshi, has become suspect. New Delhi’s waywardness has made the BJP’s own journal, Swadeshi, blast the government on the issue. Let us know whose agenda is being followed. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are said to have laid down certain conditions, which we have to follow to get any assistance. All we seem to be doing is signing on the dotted line. Yet both the WB and the IMF have come in for public flak. The recent demonstration at Prague, is a case in point. Last November, there was a similar demonstration against the WTO in Seattle.

Against this background, when Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha accepts the position of the chairman of the Development Committee of the IMF-World Bank, what should the nation infer? India, a Third World country, has come in handy. It will be used to influence other developing countries to submit themselves to the two institutions.

Sinha was once pro-socialist. He was also a spokesman of the Janata Dal, which did not want foreign companies to prowl about. Former socialist George Fernandes, who was instrumental in throwing out Coca-Cola and the IBM, is now part of the government. New Delhi has also given free access to foreign cartels by removing qualitative restrictions from 714 items. The result is that commodities like tea, coffee, spices, vegetables and rubber products from abroad have already flooded our markets. What happens to our white revolution in milk? Europe subsidises diary products. How can Indian milkmen withstand the competition? The United Planters Association of Southern India (UPASI) has already sought tariff protection for crops like tea, coffee and rubber. Where is “the convergence of interests”, a phrase used by Clinton during his India visit and repeated by Vajpayee in the US?

Convergence of interests can only happen between two equals or near equals. Otherwise, the rich will exploit the poor. The UNDP document tells us India’s deficiency in human development. Although the decade 1987-1997 saw a decline in infant mortality by 25 per cent, the divergence among different states and districts is striking — as low as 12 per cent in Kerala and as high as 96 and 94 in Orissa and Madhya Pradesh. What this means is that the better off states, like the better off people, are cornering all the benefits, leaving most in the country to wallow in poverty. The Brazilian President, when he visited New Delhi, was asked: ‘‘How is your country’s economy doing?’’ He replied: ‘‘The economy is doing well but not the people.’’ India may realise, as Latin America has done after 25 years of liberalisation, that reforms are meant for people, not the other way round.

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