Never a nation of the Naive
Former West Bengal governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi says the intelligence of its simple people will keep India's stature unsullied, despite challenges.
In his new anthology of writings from figures in modern Indian history, Ramachandra Guha has included one from a man who looked at things darkly, through heavy-tinted glasses. Those also seemed to use magnetic resonance imaging to reach facts. Inconvenient facts.
Chakravarti Rajagopalachari wrote 50 years ago, in 1961, the high noon of Nehruvian socialism:
"I want the dense permit-licence fog not to sit on us. I want statism to go and Government reduced to its proper functions… "I want the inefficiency of public management to go…
"I want the officials appointed to administer laws and policies to be free from the pressures of the bosses of the ruling party…
"I want an India where the peasants are not intimidated or beguiled into giving up their lands…
"I want an India where the budget of the Centre does not cause inflation and soaring prices...
"I want the money power of big business to be isolated from politics. Democracy is hard to be worked and it should not be ruined by money power and rendered into a simulacrum by expensive elections and big business supporting the ruling party with funds in return for privileges…
"I want India to regain her moral stature abroad…"
He wrote frankly and administered warnings clearly, though he was given to using out-of-the-way words that sent the reader to a dictionary.
When CR wrote those lines, "statism" was only 15 years old. But it seemed like it had come for good. Even that far-sighted man did not foresee that the Congress itself, some 30 years down the line, led by a grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru and then by a cerebral south Indian prime minister aided by a worldclass economist as finance minister, would want to dismantle the permit-licence raj.
Today, after 20 years of "reforms", with that finance minister into his second term as Prime Minister, would CR be joyous? Or, like Jagdish Bhagwati, joyous in great part? CR's imaginary response is not, however, the point. He has said his piece, striven and suffered for his convictions and gone, with a liberal democrat's heart beating strong, to his well-deserved rest.
The point is: How and what are we doing? The permit-licence fog has gone. But has not a smog taken its place? Being choked cannot be preferable to being constricted Who can deny that governance - to call "public management" by its current name - is under the severest strain?
Almost every major city and town groans under power cuts, erratic supplies of potable water, high and low tides of garbage, ageing sewers lying close to water-lines, sub-standard, pavement-less and filth-edged roads, murderously chaotic traffic that includes a daily injection of new two-wheelers and automobiles, scandalous levels of air and sound pollution, rapacious demolitions and constructions by money-spinning "developers". And every urban agglomeration is host, unwilling perhaps but helpless, to underground and often over-ground Mafiosi.
"Inefficiency of public management" would be an anaemic phrase to describe governance in India after 20 years of reforms. The public is no less and often more to blame than its "managers". It has ceased to care, seduced by the allurements of middle class lifestyle sops held up by hire-purchase and micro-credit regimes.
And as to "officials appointed to administer the laws", one has to only rewind the tapes, literal and mental, of the inter-toothed wheels of party bosses, houses of commerce and the cloisters of the administration to see how the momentum works.
Not even the most ardent champions of free enterprise in what was the Swatantra Party could have quite foreseen the unregulated packaging of land and resources into special economic zones, or SEZs, and their "investment kits".
CR had spoken of a post permit-licence India where peasants are not intimidated or beguiled into parting with land. Who is there today who would have things to say, simple but hard things, not just to government, not just to the investor, and not just to the agitators against those projects but across the board, about Nandigram, Singur, Posco, Vedanta, Lavasa? Who can tell governments, "Giving incentives is one thing, pauperising the common weal is another"? Tell investors, "Being ambitious is one thing, being rapacious is another". Tell opponents of SEZs and such enterprises, "Rage against exploitation, not against enterprise".
There is none. Or, to be charitable to ourselves, there are but a few. For, in the plaintive words of Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Sheher-e-jaanaa mein ab baa-safaa kaun hai? (Who else is sacrosanct in this city of beloved?)
The unshackling of reforms has generated enterprise, but has unleashed a scramble. A scramble for the seed-bed before it has been readied for the hoe, for the seeds before the earth can receive them, for the fruits before they are quite ripe, for the produce before it has been analysed. For quality, for quantity and for questioning when neither quality nor quantity are right.
The reforms have led, as they should have done, to accelerated growth and therefore to more money in hand than there has ever been before. But it flows more in the invisible Saraswati with its catchment in elections, than in the Ganga.
This is the open secret of our reforms' underside. It is "open", for no one in an Indian village can be left out of a wedding. Some get the steaming dish, some the cold leavings. But everyone gets something. And India remains one vast village. United in the fact of its thirsts. Divided in its quenching of it.
Three score and three years after she freed herself, India is a Democracy of Divided Dreams. She is a Republic of Regrets. But she is not, and cannot ever be taken to be, a Nation of the Naive.
The zaalim of deceit and the djinn of hypocrisy can get away once, they can get away twice. But the Great Indian Village, well served by the intelligence of its simple people and by constitutionally-empowered whistleblowers, can be trusted to keep its faith higher than its fears, and its stature unsullied.
Buy the Business Today January 9 edition for more such columns by business leaders like N R Narayana Murthy, Azim Premji and Nandan Nilekani.
Chakravarti Rajagopalachari wrote 50 years ago, in 1961, the high noon of Nehruvian socialism:
"I want the dense permit-licence fog not to sit on us. I want statism to go and Government reduced to its proper functions… "I want the inefficiency of public management to go…
"I want the officials appointed to administer laws and policies to be free from the pressures of the bosses of the ruling party…
"I want an India where the peasants are not intimidated or beguiled into giving up their lands…
"I want an India where the budget of the Centre does not cause inflation and soaring prices...
"I want the money power of big business to be isolated from politics. Democracy is hard to be worked and it should not be ruined by money power and rendered into a simulacrum by expensive elections and big business supporting the ruling party with funds in return for privileges…
"I want India to regain her moral stature abroad…"
He wrote frankly and administered warnings clearly, though he was given to using out-of-the-way words that sent the reader to a dictionary.
 The reforms have generated enterprise, but have unleashed a scramble. For the…fruits before they are quite ripe |
Today, after 20 years of "reforms", with that finance minister into his second term as Prime Minister, would CR be joyous? Or, like Jagdish Bhagwati, joyous in great part? CR's imaginary response is not, however, the point. He has said his piece, striven and suffered for his convictions and gone, with a liberal democrat's heart beating strong, to his well-deserved rest.
The point is: How and what are we doing? The permit-licence fog has gone. But has not a smog taken its place? Being choked cannot be preferable to being constricted Who can deny that governance - to call "public management" by its current name - is under the severest strain?
Almost every major city and town groans under power cuts, erratic supplies of potable water, high and low tides of garbage, ageing sewers lying close to water-lines, sub-standard, pavement-less and filth-edged roads, murderously chaotic traffic that includes a daily injection of new two-wheelers and automobiles, scandalous levels of air and sound pollution, rapacious demolitions and constructions by money-spinning "developers". And every urban agglomeration is host, unwilling perhaps but helpless, to underground and often over-ground Mafiosi.
"Inefficiency of public management" would be an anaemic phrase to describe governance in India after 20 years of reforms. The public is no less and often more to blame than its "managers". It has ceased to care, seduced by the allurements of middle class lifestyle sops held up by hire-purchase and micro-credit regimes.
And as to "officials appointed to administer the laws", one has to only rewind the tapes, literal and mental, of the inter-toothed wheels of party bosses, houses of commerce and the cloisters of the administration to see how the momentum works.
Not even the most ardent champions of free enterprise in what was the Swatantra Party could have quite foreseen the unregulated packaging of land and resources into special economic zones, or SEZs, and their "investment kits".
CR had spoken of a post permit-licence India where peasants are not intimidated or beguiled into parting with land. Who is there today who would have things to say, simple but hard things, not just to government, not just to the investor, and not just to the agitators against those projects but across the board, about Nandigram, Singur, Posco, Vedanta, Lavasa? Who can tell governments, "Giving incentives is one thing, pauperising the common weal is another"? Tell investors, "Being ambitious is one thing, being rapacious is another". Tell opponents of SEZs and such enterprises, "Rage against exploitation, not against enterprise".
There is none. Or, to be charitable to ourselves, there are but a few. For, in the plaintive words of Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Sheher-e-jaanaa mein ab baa-safaa kaun hai? (Who else is sacrosanct in this city of beloved?)
The unshackling of reforms has generated enterprise, but has unleashed a scramble. A scramble for the seed-bed before it has been readied for the hoe, for the seeds before the earth can receive them, for the fruits before they are quite ripe, for the produce before it has been analysed. For quality, for quantity and for questioning when neither quality nor quantity are right.
The reforms have led, as they should have done, to accelerated growth and therefore to more money in hand than there has ever been before. But it flows more in the invisible Saraswati with its catchment in elections, than in the Ganga.
This is the open secret of our reforms' underside. It is "open", for no one in an Indian village can be left out of a wedding. Some get the steaming dish, some the cold leavings. But everyone gets something. And India remains one vast village. United in the fact of its thirsts. Divided in its quenching of it.
Three score and three years after she freed herself, India is a Democracy of Divided Dreams. She is a Republic of Regrets. But she is not, and cannot ever be taken to be, a Nation of the Naive.
The zaalim of deceit and the djinn of hypocrisy can get away once, they can get away twice. But the Great Indian Village, well served by the intelligence of its simple people and by constitutionally-empowered whistleblowers, can be trusted to keep its faith higher than its fears, and its stature unsullied.
Buy the Business Today January 9 edition for more such columns by business leaders like N R Narayana Murthy, Azim Premji and Nandan Nilekani.
