Question however is, NOW what?
Difficult Days Ahead.
Convert Sure Collapse to Massive Growth
How?
By settling Sovereignty with Assam .
And Converting Assam to the main Growth Centre--far exceeding Dubai.
And pulling jobless SAARC Brain+Brawn in to the Oxomiya Toka's magic!
Sneer? Do that. Loss is Yours!
mm
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2007 09:01:57 -0500To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]: Re: [Assam] Fw: More on UP Elections
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: 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 India’s most popular reading in barber saloons and dentist
waiting rooms, had only last year deemed the Amarinder Singh government as
India’s 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 SEZ’s, 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 India’s 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 Saikia’s 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. It’s 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 India’s 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? That’s 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 government’s 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 Gandhi’s 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 India’s 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 don’t 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 India’s 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 Akbar’s 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: [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
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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