People's Democracy

EDITORIAL

Heed The People's Mandate 

AT an event, organised by the FICCI and the Sriram Centre, in the capital, on India’s economic  priorities in the globalised world, leading luminaries advocating unbridled liberalisation gathered to urge the UPA government to press ahead full steam with such reforms. 

Economist Lord Meghnad Desai suggested “a grand coalition of the BJP with the Congress” designed to accelerate the rate of economic growth!  Nobel laureate Professor Amartya Sen, however, immediately disagreed highlighting his by now well-known positions on human development and welfare.  With the participation of the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission and many other economists who serve the government in the capacity of advisors and officials, this event is being seen as a build up to urge the UPA government to undertake a more proactive approach to economic reforms of liberalisation. 

There are two disturbing aspects that need to be noted. First, these suggestions reject with contempt the clear message given by the people in their verdict in 2004.  The election results have clearly shown that the people have voted for a change in government, amongst other things, (the defeat of the communal forces being a dominant objective) in order to bring about a shift in the focus of the economic policies being pursued by the earlier Vajpayee government. (The electoral defeats of Chandrababu Naidu and S M Krishna dramatically reinforce this trend.)  The focus of the economic policies ought to be people’s welfare and not merely the growth of corporate profit. It is such a shift that the people aspire for with the installation of the UPA government.  Much of the Common Minimum Programme (CMP) proposals have been made keeping in mind this precise nature of the people’s mandate.

It is precisely such a shift that the liberalisation pundits seek to prevent. They virtually urge the government to ignore one of the important messages contained in the people’s mandate.  The UPA government can, however, do so only at its own peril. 

The disastrous failure of the BJP’s campaigns of  `India shining’ and ‘feel good’ only underscore the reality that the benefits of the liberalisation reforms package was confined to a very thin upper strata of our society while the vast majority of our people saw a significant erosion in their standards of living. Instead of correcting this stark imbalance, the UPA government is being urged to proceed further with the same policies that, in the first place, brought about such growing inequalities. 

Secondly, in order to successfully market the pursuit of unbridled liberalisation, these economists adopt a dual track strategy. The first concerns the doctoring of statistics to show that the reform process has reduced the number of poor in the country and, therefore, it is people oriented.  Such doctoring of statistics comes at a time when the country was witness to unprecedented starvation deaths and distress suicides by our brethren in rural India. 

A prominent cheer leader of the reform process states “only 1.5 per cent people said they were always hungry in  2002 during India’s worst drought”.  The others, we presume, who did not speak to this particular survey, must have simply dropped dead!  In any case, 1.5 per cent of India’s population is nearly two crore, or, 20 million people.

The other track, in fact, is more devious.  The deputy chairman of the Planning Commission is reported to have stated that the greatest challenge confronting the nation is to sell (sic!) economic reform policies in a manner that individuals begin to perceive them as inclusive.  The important words are to sell and perceive.  “The tolerance of an unequal outcome is higher when people at large begin to think that development will bring some good to them”.

In other words, the reform process may not bring any developmental benefits to the vast mass of the people, in fact, it may make their lives more miserable, but if these reforms are ‘packaged’ properly and ‘sold’ to the people in a manner that they ‘perceive’ them as being of some benefit, then the reform process can succeed.  Such is the propaganda technique to be employed to lull the people and mentally cushion their fall as the present set of unbridled policies of liberalisation continue to heap ruin on the vast majority of the people.

It is, indeed, unfortunate that apart from Professor Amartya Sen, there were few lone voices like that of Planning Commission member, Dr Abhijit Sen, and emeritus economist, Professor Y K Alagh, who stood up against these  proponents of unbridled liberalisation. 

Needless to add, the liberalisation drum-beaters will continue with their efforts to whip up a passionate propaganda blitz and create an orchestrated support base for such a reform process that continues to heap miseries on the vast majority of the people.  The UPA, on the other hand, will do well to realise that its existence in  government depends squarely on its commitment to reflect in its policies the people’s urge for a shift in the focus of economic policies.  Towards this end, the implementation of many of the policies outlined in the CMP becomes imperative.   The stability and the longevity of the UPA government rests primarily on its sincerity in implementing such pro-people provisions of the CMP.