Thursday, July 28, 2016

Death Knell and the Devils Paradise

Death Knell and the Devils Paradise
       It was around this date 25 years back that the so called economic reforms [?] were introduced by Mr. P.V. Narasimha Rao and Dr. Manmohan Singh, then Prime Minister and Finance Minister. PVN only knew too well how the ‘aam aadhmi’ would react if alone they could deciphers what he was up to. There was wide spread anger and resentment within the cabinet, party, parliament and the polity. As his wont, he did not speak nor allow his gang to speak. But his spokes persons – would be beneficiaries – started singing in praise of him and presented the ushering in of the ‘free for all’ as a panacea for all the ills of the earlier era – the Nehruvian legacy. Then the polity silently started playing second fiddle lured by the lucre it offered to them. 
      Even granting the reforms delivered huge benefits as being portrayed, it is another story that PVN and MMS were not the actual architects. Command came from World Bank, World Trade Organization and International Monetary Fund – front organizations for the corporate and financial Shylocks of US and Europe – and the paradigm shift in the economic policy were brewing for some time, even during VP Singh’s tenure. Chandrasekar took the initial steps, but it took the final form only during PVN’s tenure. It is said that the situation then was so critical that anybody else in that gaddhi would have had no option than to do that. Hence PVN and MMS do not deserve all the credit [?]. The population of India closing in on a billion and the potential market for their wares – more than double their then existing market – drove the Shylocks to arm twist or black mail the Indian rulers in to doing their bidding.
      While the corporate – particularly the MNCs and Indian ones readying to dance to their tunes – their spokes persons – not so Indian media – and white collared who were slated to be the collateral beneficiaries were applauding the marauders, the common people were silently enduring the sufferings and humiliation. At the earliest available opportunity – 1996 election – the dumb millions spoke in one voice and voted out PVN and Congress party was thrown in to oblivion. The party could be resurrected only when the people were lured in to believing a return to the democratic socialistic governance of Nehruvian era, by the ascendency of Ms Sonia and virtual excommunication of PVN from the party. The aspirations of the people at large played out through the transition from PVN to Sonia through Sitaram Kesari. The somersault by Sonia in 2004 by anointing MMS the co conspirator of the LPG – Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization – regime was as much the orchestration of the Shylocks, as the ascendency of PVN and MMS in 1991 after eliminating the hurdles – read Indhira and Rajiv of the Nehru dynasty. 
      PVN had no mandate to tamper with the economic model the Congress party has been pursuing since even before Independence and fine tuned during Nehru’s tenure. People reposed faith in Congress for continuance of that economic model ‘Democratic Socialism – la controlled economy’. His dumping of that model and reversing the gear to capitalistic model clothed as ‘market economy’ was a betrayal of faith, of the worst kind. It resulted in a few lac local industries perishing, few million workmen and employees losing jobs, a staggering rate of inflation – stagflation – and worst of all, more than 4.5 lac farmers committing suicide and perishing not able to cope up with the assault on them the LPG regime unleashed. How many non agro workers and employees perished is not known.
       In August 1991, when I saw a hoarding claiming ‘Shackles broken’ and showing a chained elephant breaking loose, I instantly visualized the unfolding socio economic scenario and jotted down ‘With this LPG regime, all small scale industries in India will be closed within 3 years, all medium ones will shut shop in 4 years and all large industries too will call it quits in 5 years. Only MNCs will survive and what will they be producing? Lip sticks and nail polishes”. It took nearly a decade for others to discover and write in news magazine in this vein.       
      The old world criticism ‘rich became richer and poor became poorer’ and ‘the gap between the haves and have-nots widened’ look very benign to describe the consequence of LPG regime. The ‘haves’ have become ‘have every-things’ and ‘have-nots’ have ‘become have nothings’. ‘The gap between ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ widened in to a ‘gash’ and in these 25 years, it has become a ‘gorge’. Another species has been added to the list of endangered – the ‘farmers’. Farming has become a quagmire. Rao-ites claim some 450 million rich and middle class have benefitted. If the development of 450 millions has to be achieved walking over the dead bodies of 4.5 lac famers, what kind of development is this? What kind of paradise are we building – ‘A devils paradise?’ Added to this is the climate change threatening to annihilate all living things on earth due directly to the kind of development ushered in and due only to the over consumption by the not so poor. The proliferation of cars, scooters, soaps, deodorants, lipsticks and nail polishes do not indicate progress of a society. The growth sans ethics driven by greed more than need leading to ‘crony capitalism’, the daylight loot – scams running to millions of crores – that are taking place, the explosive increase in crimes directly attributable to the greed fanned by the media and the advertisements for the non essential goods [bads?], is definitely not a healthy growth but just ‘cancerous’.    
     The ‘death knell’ sounded then has driven us in to this ‘devils paradise’.
     Gandhiji warned us more than 100 years back that ‘nature has enough for everybody’s need, but not enough for anybody’s greed’ and ‘Learn to live with nature and not on nature’. We did not listen and now the Frankenstein of Global warming is looming large over our head threatening to annihilate all organic matter on earth.    
     The tall claims of growth rate since the introduction of LPG are questionable. If there is real growth, primary economics – economy of numbers – tells us that there will be deflation. How come we have been facing steep inflation? They claim huge reserves of dollars have been built. Exports must have surpassed imports hugely to result in building dollar reserves – agreed. But then the value of rupee vis a vis dollar should have grown. But only dollar has bloated. A huge dollar reserve, at a rate nearly 6 times its PPP – purchasing power parity – value only means we have been impoverished heavily. Every dollar brought in, comes in with an impoverishment of 5 times its value. 
      Money has flown in as FDI. Yes. But MNCs do not come to India with their FDI to develop India, to create employment opportunities here or to redeem India in short. They come here to siphon away our wealth to their homes. In the earlier era we were encouraged to save and the deposits in public sector banks and insurance companies were used to foster real growth necessary for the people. FDI is like borrowing from multans, keeping our money in lockers or worse still throwing away our money, to purchase cosmetics when the stomach is empty.
     There was shortage of milk/milk products, edible oil and virtually every food article, very few educational institutions and hospitals and practically no research institution in 1947. The nation made huge progress during the first 17 years since independence. Nehru’s dedication to the real development resulted in a huge leap in the growth trajectory. BHELs, BEML, HALs,….., IITs, IIMs,….. Polytechnics and ITIs, Nagarjuna Sagar, Bakhra – Nangal,…..ISRO, DAE,… is just a indicative list of the progress made during his short tenure of 17 years, each name telling a mega story. The guiding principles for developmental planning then were ‘wiping out every tear from every eye’ and ‘wide distribution of wealth’. Nehru was probably the greatest ruler of all times – democrats, monarchs, dictators all put together. Achievements by others measured even on a pro rata basis even without considering what he inherited vis a vis others, are miniscule. And there are among us some elites calling PVN the greatest PM India has seen! They are not myopic. They are blind.
      Not only to economy, LPG regime delivered death knell to our cherished culture too. The exponential growth of crime graph – a direct result of open sky policy and the proliferation of TV channels – is prompting people to talk of moral education today – a forgotten subject of recent past. Privatization of education and health care has commercialized them to the extent of rendering them detrimental to the society. 
      People – aam aadhmi – realized the devil in the garb of growth offered by market economy and literally threw out Manmohanomics twice – not only in 1996 but in 2004 as well when they found Sinhanomics and Sighanomics no different from Manmohanomics. In 2009 Congress could return to power only due to rural employment guarantee scheme and waiver of farm loans, the only 2 people centric acts of the UPA1 regime, introduced at the insistence of communists and since Sonia could see sense in it, though MMS and PC were opposed to it. Though the polity facing flak of late is claiming that anyone in that position in 1991 would have done this only, the reforms were un avoidable and are irreversible and so on, it is debatable if a Rajiv or a Sonia or anybody else for that matter, would have delivered such a severe death knell, would they not have tempered it with some people centric balms and so on.
      The reforms were not introduced to benefit the people of India, but only to expand the market for the US and European industries and business and our great nethas succumbed to the pressure by their WTO, WB and IMF under the prevailing circumstances. The world has moved on in these 25 years. The clout of US and Europe has declined significantly due very much to their unholy war on Iraq and Afghanistan for gaining control of petroleum reserves under false pretexts of weapons of mass destruction and the like. We have built a huge reserve of dollars and our balance of payment is healthy now. Parallel trade and banking organizations have cropped up. Now is the time for us to assert ourselves. Let us undo the havoc done by the LPG. Let us revert to people centric policies. Let us redeem the poor, rural, marginalized and down trodden. Let us revert to democratic socialism and the attendant controlled economy. Let us rebuild the nation from the ruins of LPG regime. Retracing the path traveled in the past 25 years will be daunting. But there is no other way to atone/wash off the accumulated sin.       

Written on 24.7.16
By K. Raja Rajan
[A technologist by qualification, a farmer by option and a Gandhian by conviction]
Founder President – Gandhian Initiative for Social Transformation,
106, 6th Cross Street, Thirumalai Nagar, Perungudi, Chennai – 600 096
Ph: 94441 60839

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