Insightful article. Thanks for sharing, Rajen.
Not that we did not know of it all along, but
good to see there are others who see it too.
Question however is, NOW what?
c
At 6:30 AM -0500 4/2/07, barua25 wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>Centre for Policy Alternatives
Sent: Monday, April 02, 2007 2:29 AM
Subject: More on UP Elections
Difficult Days Ahead.
Predicting the defeat of the Congress Party in
the recent Punjab and Uttaranchal elections was
easy enough if one analyzed the performance of
these governments during their term in office.
(See Hardnews of September 2006 to read about
the dismal performance of the Amarinder Singh
government) It is only the so-called
professional psephologists and glib television
pundits who invariably get these wrong. Let us
also not forget that the India Today, which has
now become Indias most popular reading in
barber saloons and dentist waiting rooms, had
only last year deemed the Amarinder Singh
government as Indias best performing one and
had got the President of India to award him a
prize. At that time this columnist had decried
the practice of the President and high
constitutional authorities being the chief
guests at such superficial beauty parades.
Ordinary people are better judges of performance
and have always exhibited a great ability to
discern good government from hyped up
governance, as they did in the case of
Chandrababu Naidu and SM Krishna in the recent
past.
But the Prime Minister seems to be busy being a
chief guest at political beauty parades and like
functions organized by the faithful, not
realizing that the faithful are faithful to the
office and not to the person. One should take
the adulation of the CII and FICCI with more
than a pinch of salt, for the adulation comes
with a price tag. Witness how the State is
acquiring land from the peasants using the most
unrealistic valuations to give them away to
so-called developers of SEZs, but actually in
most instances these are just gigantic real
estate plays. Many decades ago a leading
industrialist, Lala Charatram, candidly
confessed: We support the Prime Minister. We
support whoever is the Prime Minister. But Dr.
Manmohan Singh would have got a truer measure of
his popularity with Indias multitudes by the
attendances to his meetings in his home state of
Punjab. At more than one meeting policemen
vastly outnumbered the public. I have enough
Congressmen testifying to this.
Then consider this, if he accepted the offer of
Amarinder Singh to contest the Lok Sabha
elections from Amritsar, we would have had a
true world record of his being the first Prime
Minister to be defeated by a professional
humorist. But then he was defeated in South
Delhi by one just a little better than that.
Right now Dr. Manmohan Singh is better off being
the paying guest of the late Hiteshwar Saikias
widow in Gauhati and returned to the Rajya Sabha
by the long suffering people of Assam. The point
here is that we have a Prime Minister without a
political constituency and hence out of touch
with the reality of India. Unfortunately for him
and for us, ours is a system of government by
elected politicians, and India is paying the
price of having a non-political person as its
leader. More on this later.
Now the challenge of Uttar Pradesh is on hand.
The only question for the Congress Party is
whether it will get more than two dozen seats or
less. We seem to be getting some early
indications of how the cookie is going to
crumble with the SPG advising that Rahul Gandhi
curtail his public meetings and the MoS in the
Home Ministry, Sriprakash Jaiswal, advising
Rahul Gandhi to follow the advice of the SPG. I
suspect that it is not security but attendance
that is the problem. Its not always true that
people in UP vote entirely according to their
caste. Caste is important, but promise and hope
are just as important. In the recent past when
political parties held out the promise of a
major change in terms of performance to meet the
aspirations of people for better government, the
people of UP have responded overwhelmingly in
support. Rajiv Gandhi, VP Singh and the BJP held
out credible promise of change and the people
rewarded them. It is another matter that they
failed to meet the aspirations of the people
even partially. The result is that people are
being left with no option but to turn to the
parties of thugs led by Mulayam Singh and
Mayawati. The Congress is yet to realize that
Rahul Gandhi and retinue of his page three
princelings do not still hold out any hope of
rescuing Indias biggest state from prolonged
mal-governance. For that you need to have a
program based upon a true appreciation of the
problems besetting India and a promise of
solutions. Wearing a prayer cap in Deoband is
not a program. It is a stunt.
The problems that beset UP are well known. Not
the least among these is that with Rs.10, 817
(per capita GDP in 2003-4), it has the second
lowest per capita income in India. This is about
a third of the national average. If one were to
separate the incomes of western UP from this,
you would be left with a vast hinterland that is
no better off than Bihar (Rs. 5780). If this
huge region were a separate country it would
rank right at the bottom between Burundi ($90)
and Malawi ($160) in the worlds poverty
rankings. One quarter of UP lives below the
official poverty line. This official poverty
line is actually a starvation line, as it is
based on an income to provide a daily food
intake norm of 2400 calories. The methodology
used to arrive at a conclusion as to whether
people are starving are not is utterly dubious
and self serving and is mostly meant to show the
system in better light. Even so the suggestion
that almost one quarter of the socio-political
heartland of India starves everyday is a
horrendous thought and the fact this is now
proving to be a stubborn challenge is a matter
of great concern. The Planning Commission just a
few days ago put out a positive picture about
the reduction of the incidence of poverty
(starvation) in India, but if one just got off
the tarmac roads for a kilometer or two the
reality will be apparent. The people who live
here know better and all the paid advertisements
that UP is now Uttam Pradesh do not cut much
slack here.
This is not just the situation in UP. It is the
reality in most rural areas of India. The State
in India is in full retreat. It has largely
failed in meeting even the minimum aspirations
of the people. Most rural clusters do not have
the minimum health facilities, just as they do
not have schools. Consequently the infant
mortality rate is among the highest in the world
and even today almost 27% of the 15-24 age
cohort is illiterate. The State has withdrawn
from establishing new irrigation works to take
water to the parched lands and has largely left
it to the peasants to dig deeper into the earth
by digging deeper into their meager resources
for water for the fields. In the last twenty
years the State has not created any worthwhile
irrigation and all the additional millions of
irrigated acreage have been by private
tubewells. We all know that this is ruinous to
the economy and ecology, but the Government of
India still watches idly. Even the new plan
being contemplated by Montek Singh Ahluwalia
shows no inclination to tackle this situation in
any realistic manner. He of course thinks it is
more important to get Wal-Mart into India as it
will take care of the agriculture supply chain?
Thats what you get when you have bureaucrats
drawing up the national vision.
When he first took over office, Dr.Manmohan
Singh said that bureaucratic and administrative
reform will be his governments number one
priority. At that time we lauded him for his
vision and commitment to reform. But his
government has done little beyond giving
extensions and sinecures to favored babus.
Despite Rajiv Gandhis known commitment to
decentralization, the party headed by his widow
has apparently abandoned the commitment to take
government to the people and give them a say in
managing their daily lives. This power is not
with the politician either. It has passed into
the hands of the vast bureaucracy that has taken
charge of India. It is small wonder then the
biggest single item in public spending is the
burden of salaries and pensions paid to
government employees as the Central, State and
Local levels. At last count this figure stood
close to Rs.195, 000 crores and is still
climbing. This should enable the reader to
understand as to why the Services sector is the
fastest growing of Indias three economic
sectors. For some perverse reason Public
Administration expenditure is considered a
service and this sub sector is the fastest
growing one recording an 11.73% growth rate. So
my friends dont think it is IT that is
propelling the growth of the Services sector.
In Dr. Manmohan Singh we thought we had a
reformer. But what we got instead was a man with
a resume, he has had the best appointments
anyone can aspire to and a Cambridge degree to
boot. Our mistake was that we confused resume
with record. He has now clearly lost his chance
to set things right. His term as Prime Minister
is drawing to a close. He is 75 years now and we
can well consider him a lame duck. He has no
political constituency and not only has shown a
singular disinclination to take the bull by the
horns, but has also shown that he has no
understanding about Indias problems. Nor is he
performing the role of Bairam Khan and tutoring
the fledgling prince on the art of
administration and the problems of nation
building. But to be fair to him the princeling
has not shown any of Akbars enthusiasm and
curiosity either. So he will wear the prayer cap
at Deoband and do other symbolic things which
his handlers will plan for him. Which means we
will have to leave Uttam Pradesh to Mulayam
Singh or Mayawati? India seems heading for even
more difficult days ahead.
Now the real kicker is that all this is
happening when China is institutionalizing a
system of succession and inner party democracy
to enable it to continue on its current growth
trajectory of around 10%. Thus a totalitarian
system better suited for thugs is getting
gentrified, while a system of democratic
governance is being taken over by thugs. It is
said that Rugby is a game for hooligans played
by gentlemen, while soccer is a game for
gentlemen played by hooligans. The same thing
can be said for the systems in China and India.
Mohan Guruswamy
Email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
March 26, 2007
Centre for Policy Alternatives
94, Uday Park, New Delhi - 49
Ph: 91-11-41650997, Fax: 91-11-41650996
<http://www.cpasind.com>http://www.cpasind.com
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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