Two Roads For The Country

What if India had followed Masani's and Rajaji's vision rather than Nehru's?

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/edit-page/What-if-India-had-followed-Masanis-and-Rajajis-vision-rather-than-Nehrus/articleshow/20279198.cms

Today is the death anniversary of two noteworthy Indians. They started off as ideological comrades but later became antagonists, each representing two opposing economic worldviews.
Their anniversaries too will be observed in contrasting ways - one with pomp and publicity, the other in obscurity. There's a certain irony in that.
Jawaharlal Nehru will be feted at various functions and the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government will pledge itself to his ideals, never mind that the country has turned its back on his eponymous model of development, which was heavily biased towards state intervention in the economy. This shift away from socialism — half-hearted though it is — would not have pleased Nehru had he been alive, even though his name has been constantly invoked by the Congress to show continuity with his policies.
There will be no public functions to mark the 15th death anniversary of Minoo Masani, co-founder of the erstwhile Swatantra Party, even though since 1991 the country has been travelling the road he tirelessly championed for 40 years along with another political stalwart, C Rajagopalachari or Rajaji - that of a liberal, market-oriented economy. But Masani, too, would shudder to have his name linked with all that is happening today, in the name of the model he advocated.
Nehru and Masani forged a deep friendship when they were both in the Congress, strengthened by their common love for socialism and admiration for the Soviet Union. Masani was one of the founders of the Congress Socialist Party within the Indian National Congress, in the early 1930s. Soon, disillusioned by Stalinist excesses in the Soviet Union, he became one of India's foremost and forceful critics of communism.
In 1947, he articulated the idea of a mixed economy, with three sectors - a small sector of nationalised industries (which would be decided by an independent commission), a larger sector of new public enterprises in areas where what he called 'free enterprise' was unable to venture into, and a third, largest sector of free enterprises. "Such a programme of state plus free enterprise is, in fact, the only practicable programme that the government in India can possibly adopt in the coming years...it is important that it is done, not sullenly for lack of anything better, but with enthusiasm and drive," he wrote in a paper detailing the idea.
After Independence, his nuanced approach would bring him in direct conflict with Nehru and what he called the latter's zeal to foist the Soviet pattern of state capitalism. Since the only non-socialist alternative to the Congress in the 1950s was the Jan Sangh, with a strong Hindu bias, Masani teamed up with Rajaji and farmers' leader, NG Ranga, to form India's first conservative-liberal Swatantra Party in 1959. Through the party's short life and after its demise, Masani never tired of pointing out that state involvement in industry, trade and commerce would result in the neglect of its primary responsibilities of maintaining law and order and the provision of drinking water facilities, primary healthcare, primary education and physical infrastructure.
He also relentlessly pointed to the lurking dangers of the licence-permit-quota raj that Nehru and later Indira Gandhi promoted. Nehru apologists argue that his model was vilified because of the distortions that his daughter introduced in the 1970s. But Masani and Rajaji always warned that the model was susceptible to such distortion.
So when, in 1991, India took its first steps towards a freer economy, Masani should have felt vindicated. Though he was glad, he also had a sense of foreboding. The government, he noted, took the path of liberalisation out of compulsion and not conviction and he fretted that this would not be sustained. He was clearly quite prescient.
State meddling in the economy continues; in the name of helping the poor, the government continues to artificially suppress prices and distort markets rather than working seriously for a shift towards targeted subsidies; inefficient public sector undertakings continue to be cosseted; inspector raj continues to throttle small and medium enterprises. Despite what the critics of liberalisation might say, India is not a market economy in the true sense of the word.
While Masani, were he alive, would have been pained by this, what would have horrified him is the prevailing rampant corruption - the result of a pernicious cronyism that marks the relationship between government and private business. What would devastate him is that this is happening in the name of liberalisation.
Crony capitalism is not the post-1991 phenomenon that those railing against what they dub 'neo-liberal economic policies' make it out to be. Though a strong supporter of private capital, Masani took a dim view of most Indian entrepreneurs of his time who, he believed, took the easy way out by bribing ministers and bureaucrats instead of facing up to competition. Naturally, he blamed the controls-driven system for fostering this. Masani would have been the first to speak up against the shenanigans in the telecom, coal and airlines sectors.
As economic liberalisation increasingly comes under attack for fostering oligopolies and sowing the seeds of plutocracy, there are not enough voices pointing out that the mess the country is in is a direct result of the state continuing to have the power to make or mar fortunes of entrepreneurs, that the country needs more economic and governance reforms to strike at the root of corruption. Masani would have been that voice.
Minoo Masani, the country misses you.
The writer is a senior journalist and author.

A history lesson on India Inc for Manish Tewari

http://www.firstpost.com/politics/a-history-lesson-on-india-inc-for-manish-tewari-773197.html

Information and broadcasting minister Manish Tewari has sent out a word of advice for Corporate India through the media. Be careful of whom you support, he is supposed to have said while addressing journalists in Mumbai, according to this report in the Economic Times.
He also gave our industrialists a lesson in history. Remember Europe in the 1930s, he warned. The leader European businessmen supported wholeheartedly then “caused a lot of harm and destruction all over the world.” He left the leader unnamed but the Economic Times rightly identifies him as Hitler. And we all know who the Indian `One Who Tewari Did Not Name’ is. The Economic Times identifies him as well.
But why does Tewari have to go back eighty-odd years? And to a different continent, at that? Why not look within the country and go back just forty-odd years? Specifically, India in the 1970s?
Tewari was only ten years old during a certain dark chapter in India’s democracy and so he may not have any memories of this period. The history books he would have studied in school also would not have dealt with those events, so a lesson for him in recent Indian history is in order.
India was then ruled by the Congress Party and Mrs Indira Gandhi was the undisputed supremo of the party and the government. Buoyed by the stupendous mandate that she had got in the 1971 elections, Mrs Gandhi went about systematically destroying every autonomous institution that the founding fathers of the Constitution had created. The mess that the country now finds itself in has its roots in that period, when the notions of committed bureaucracy and committed judiciary were used to pack the civil and police service and the judiciary with loyalists. Loyalists not to the country, but to the Congress Party and by default Indira Gandhi and by further default a certain Sanjay Gandhi.
The arrogant disdain for democratic processes kept escalating, finally culminating in the declaration of Emergency in 1975. The Congress likes to paint the ‘One Whom Tewari Did Not Name’ as a dictator, but he will only be India’s second. Just as it has been the trend-setter in the case of dynastic politics, it is the Congress again which has the dubious honour of giving India its first dictator. India is Indira and Indira is India, we were told. (Before people turn apoplectic at the thought of equating Mrs Gandhi with a certain maut ka saudagar, I concede that there were no killings on the scale of the 2002 riots during her time.)
But the real point about this history lesson relates to the businessmen and entrepreneurs to whom Tewari dished out advice. As Mrs Gandhi went about making a mockery of India’s democracy, India Inc. of those days did not utter a squeak in protest. Worse, they went all out to back the Congress Party and Mrs Gandhi. When it was believed that she would resign following the Allahabad High Court setting aside her election in 1971 for electoral malpractices, a delegation of Indian businessmen went to her and pleaded that she stay. These were not small-time businessmen. They were respected industrialists, led by none other than K. K. Birla.
Why should we think these industrialists were better than those who, thirty years later, hugged the One Tewari Did Not Name and called him king of kings (disgustingly servile as that was)?
There’s only one thing that’s clear from all this. Industrialists and businesspersons aren’t bothered about the ideology of the party or leader in power. All they want is a stable business environment, tax sops and other freebies and if they can indulge in some crony capitalism, well, that’s icing on the cake. They are not even interested in parties or persons who espouse their cause if they are not in power. What else can explain the fact that the Swatantra Party, which kept championing the cause of free markets, hardly got any funding from business houses? Businessmen preferred to pay fat bribes to ministers and bureaucrats in return for assured licences and pour money into Congress coffers to ensure favourable competition-killing policies.
In the 2006 West Bengal assembly elections, it was well known that a significant section of businessmen in the state were hoping that the Left Front would return to power because Mamata Banerjee was not seen as a very credible leader. In fact, there’s talk now that during the next election, they will once again back the Left Front.
Nor are they unduly bothered by things like genocide. The only thing that worries them about riots is how it disrupts their supply chains and affects their business operations. Forget Gujarat, Indian businessmen have no qualms about setting up manufacturing bases in China, never mind a certain problem called Tibet.
This apparently cold-blooded attitude is not unique to Indian businessmen. The change in the United States attitude to China in the seventies and its silence over human rights violations in that country is dictated by the agenda of American businesses. So is its support of tinpot dictators everywhere from South America to West Asia. China will never be faced with an economic blockade, something other dictatorships with less attractive markets are subjected to.
So if you want India Inc. to stop singing the praises of the ‘One You Did Not Name’, Mr Tewari, just get your government to take away his USP. In the remaining months that your government is in power, get it to create an environment that is investment-friendly (no, that does not mean encouraging cronyism), end the policy paralysis, take policy and other measures to set right the infrastructure sector. Get the economy back on track and deliver results. When you do that, India Inc. will come running back into the Congress fold.

Two Days I Will Never Forget

One journalist had recently written that nobody can forget where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news of Mrs Gandhi being shot. I remember too.

I was on morning shift in The Times of India and had popped into the cabin of the late V.D.Trivadi, the satirist and in charge of the middles section of the edit page, and Gautam G.S. Vohra, assistant editor and now a development activist. Someone (I don’t remember who) opened the door and said news had just come that Mrs Gandhi had been shot. We came out and moved to the teleprinters. Some of us young sub-editors smirked - `another attack drama?’ we wondered. Some years earlier, a stone thrown at her during a public rally was termed an assassination attempt. But no, this time it was for real.

The rest of the day went in a blur. A special edition had to be brought out, the teleprinters clattered without a pause. I don’t remember very much.

But there’s another thing people in Delhi will not forget – their first experience of/encounter with the anti-Sikh riots. Riots? Hell, no. It was a one-sided, targeted, cold-blooded massacre.

It was November 1. I was on morning shift again, which started at 9 a.m. I was on a 703 or 704, from Janakpuri to ITO. As the bus stopped at the red light on what is known as the Lajwanti crossing on Jail Road, we saw massive crowds on the road leading from the Delhi Cantonment railway station. No one had a clue what was happening (there were only small reports of Sikhs being attacked in South Delhi in the newspapers). Someone thought some train had got cancelled. And then the import hit us – several men got into our bus. “Koi sardar hai kya?” There were none. I quickly lowered my hand which was on the bar of the seat before mine and covered the kada I wear on my left wrist.

As I looked out of the window, I saw a middle aged Sikh man with his old mother on a two wheeler and the mob chasing him. He drove towards some office – it was probably a municipal corporation office or part of the Tihar Jail complex – right on the corner. But the employees there wouldn’t open the gate. There was fright on his face as he tried to speed away. The light turned green and my bus turned. I don’t know what happened to that man and his mother. Did they get to safety? Did the mob get to them? That picture haunts me to this day.

I reached office without any further incident. It was only towards afternoon that the magnitude of what was happening began to strike us. Cars were sent to pick up people in later shifts. When my shift got over, I was sent home in a car with someone else who had to be dropped home, crack reporter Ravi Bhatia (now deceased) and a photographer, probably Chadha saheb.

The images will never leave me. Panchkuin Road furniture shops being looted. “Gaadi rok, mere ko bhi ek chair chahiye,” Ravi joked, as only he can. We all laughed but all of us were shaken to the core.

I couldn’t believe that the ghost city I was driving through was the city I was born and brought up in. Burnt vehicles, still smouldering, blackened shopfronts.

The Kirti Nagar timber market was up in flames – we could feel the heat in the car. At one point, a lone policeman armed with just a lathi (a lathi!!), trembling with fear, flagged our car down. `Don’t go further, there’s violence there.’ With me in the car, Ravi and Chadha saheb decided to take another route. Near Naraina village, we saw a group with a Congress flag chanting that now famous slogan - `khoon ka badla khoon’.

And on the Delhi Cantt flyover – Janak Setu – the most horrifying sight of the day (for me, that is) – the half burnt body of a Sikh, his hair spread out.

And as we turned into Janakpuri from Jail Road, there was a huge poster that had been quickly put up – We mourn the sad loss of our beloved Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. It had been put up by Bakshi Properties – a known property dealer of the area and a Sikh.

Did that get him immunity from the rioters? Some said yes, and some said no. I never came to know.