Saturday, December 5, 2015

THE PRIME MINISTER'S MESSAGE TO INDUSTRY

From  Business World of 1 September 2004.


Choose your battleground


It took the Prime Minister a hundred days to address industrialists; he did so at ASSOCHAM’s JRD centenary memorial meeting last week. A legendary reformer like him would have been forgiven the delay, but for the fact that the Common Minimum Programme that drives his tenure had some pretty scary threats to industry, such as reservations in the private sector. He was himself a bit embarrassed by his tardiness, and excused himself by saying that the daily turmoil in Parliament prevented him from meeting people. It was a telling admission, especially since he has mentioned the mayhem in Parliament often before. It shows that he expects others, such as politicians, to behave decently. A fat hope, as he should have known by now. When he first became finance minister and showed anguish at the opposition’s attacks, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, then leader of the opposition, had advised him to developed a thicker skin. He still has to take that advice.
There were other ways in which the Prime Minister’s speech could have been improved. Being his first major address to industrialists, it should have been delivered at 9:30 PM, not 9:30 AM. That would have given him a hundred times larger television audience. ASSOCHAM would have gladly accommodated him; he is Prime Minister now. The speech showed his scholarship. That JRD stood for Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy must have been news to quite a few in his audience; the reference to the 1944 Bombay Plan and the quotation from Professor R K Hazari’s book from the 1960s was a testimony to his early readings and his phenomenal memory.  But his tribute to JRD need not have been mediated through a book on concentration, ownership and control; and it need not have been shared with nods to other industrialists of JRD’s time.
Occasions like the ASSOCHAM meeting should be used to give a powerful message. If there was one in the Prime Minister’s speech, it was that he is going to take infrastructure seriously – chair a committee on it himself. A laudable objective – and one he, incidentally, inherited from his predecessor. But the difference in approach was palpable. Vajpayee did not let himself be bothered by nitty gritty. Coming out of a poetic cloud one afternoon, he just said, “Let there be roads from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and from Porbandar to wherebunder.” He called Major General Khanduri, and told him to start on the roads forthwith. He called Yashwant Sinha and asked him to find the money somehow. And they both did; by the time of the general elections, four years later, national highways were festooned with portraits of Vajpayee.
Mamnohan Singh would have been shocked by the very idea of such nonchalance. Such extravagance would have repelled him. And as for the sycophancy – he would rather it was all showered on Sonia Gandhi. So what he chose to announce to the industrialists was that they would soon get better regulators for infrastructure industries, after a design to be perfected in the Planning Commission. An excellent idea; as TDSAT’s latest verdict (denying TRAI the power to regulate telephone interconnexion) shows, some of our regulators are models of imperfection. Still, the industrialists must have been left a bit befuddled; can this really be the Prime Minister’s diagnosis of what is wrong with India’s infrastructure?
If the promise to design better regulation was too profound for the ever practical industrialists, the promise to undo the inspector raj was too shallow. All know that most of the 30-odd inspectors the Prime Minister refers to are employees of the state governments; and who would believe that a Prime Minister who cannot even prevent Amarinder Singh from playing mischief with water and YSR Reddy with power can stop visits of inspectors? And then, how are laws going to be enforced if the government cannot find out that they are being followed? Inspection is a vital part of government. What industrialists wish – hope forlornly for – is that inspectors would not be corrupt. And on how to wean them of sweet lollypops – the Prime Minister will seek the advice of industrialists – those whom he soon plans to appoint to his Industrial Advisory Council. Shuffle, shuffle, file disposed.

Everyone knows that the Prime Minister is a man of good education, high intelligence and utmost integrity. That is why he faces such high expectations. He is human; he cannot fulfil them all. But he is Prime Minister; he can choose where he wants to make a difference. And he can ignore the rest – leave Mani Shankar Aiyar to irk the opposition in Parliament, go back to the PMO and work on the few things he cares for. And he can drive the nation towards his goals. That is what he should have done with the industrialists.