Friday, December 4, 2015

WHAT POLITICIANS PROMISE US

From Business World of 19 April 2004. 

Agendas and propaganda

On the agenda of National Democratic Alliance (NDA), Atal Behari Vajpayee “poses” in front of the sheer sandstone wall of Parliament, a pillar of strength in an immaculately tailored, single-cuffed, three-quarter-length kurta, a smart dark waistcoat equipped with a pen, a billowing, lined dhoti, polished pathani chappals, and sunglasses. Here is a man of fashion – but also a man of authority, a man to whom you can leave the affairs of the state. Here is a man in command; he will command the commander-in-chief of Pakistan to keep peace, and the rain Gods to drench India. He is the man of the future; even if he has to leave the future unguided, future once touched by him will fly India into the heaven of advanced nations.
On the Congress manifesto, an attentive Sonia Gandhi bends benignly over the masses, dressed in a Gujarati handloom sari, the palloo demurely draped over the head, a long red dash on the forehead evidently planted by a fawning amateur. She is holding the petitions she has been handed; below her, villagers – women, children, and in the background, men marching in procession behind a portrait of Indira Gandhi. Here is a woman of the people who would take the government to the people. She is the woman to make the women of India come to the fore. Backwards, forwards, scheduled, unscheduled, downtrodden, sidelined – all will be properly docketed and made to develop.
On the inside cover, the NDA agenda has a poem saying, “I think I will make a new India” There are two errors - “sanmaan” is spelt as “sammaan”, and– “vijay” is made feminine. But otherwise it is a nice, anodyne poem which everyone would understand and no one would disagree violently with. It is the kind of poem that would have been recited by the Prime Minister when pressed by ignorant, fawning journalists.
On the inside cover of the Congress manifesto, a scholarly pseudo-poem, whose every line starts with “a time to…”. And at the back, a recital of reasons for voting Congress. A lot of c’s clatter away here – the Congress’s contributions, commitments, concerns, charter, clarity, conviction, compassion, consistency. Also, much repetition; one feels the Congress cannot think of many reasons for asking for a vote. The best reason for voting the Congress is the alternative – if you do not want the whole of India to turn into a Gujarat, if you do not want 29 Uma Bhartis as chief ministers, vote for Congress. But the Congress is too polite to say that.
NDA’s agenda begins by blowing its own bugle – and why should it not? Before the last elections it had issued “An Agenda for a Proud, Prosperous India”; in the five years, NDA has given the country prosperity and cause to be proud. Unprecedented high growth, peace with Pakistan, reconciliation with border people, swelling exchange reserves, low inflation, globally competitive industry and services, lots of houses, food for work, school for all children – it is an impressive catalogue of achievements, tall claims and lucky breaks. At the time of elections, it is customary for ruling parties to take credit for luck. Great monsoon? Well, what do you expect? The Prime Minister has a hotline to Indra.
The Congress cannot, of course, take credit for them, since it was out of power; but then it takes credit for being what it is – a nationalist, secular party of the poor and the downtrodden. And then follows a commentary on the misdeeds of NDA which may have been written by Indira Gandhi. She is at any rate on top of the page, looking rather cross and disheveled and holding two documents. Maybe they are entry permits to whichever part of heaven she went to. Maybe the class she was admitted to was not quite to her liking. Maybe they put her in the queue for admission, and she does not like the waiting room. Anyway, under her disapproving glare, NDA is accused of having thrown millions out of employment, reduced the growth rate of the economy, distressed farmers and farm workers, organized riots, taught children religious hatred, corrupted the government, insulted democratic institutions and kowtowed to the US. It sounds rather shocking – and unconvincing. It would have carried greater conviction if the Congress had marshaled a few facts and figures. There is a certain air about its manifesto which suggests that its writers were not quite fully engaged – or that they thought themselves to be so authoritative that people would believe anything they said.
After these preliminary insults, the Congress Manifesto gets down to its task – saying what the Congress would do with power. It is aimed at its favourite interest groups. Every rural family will be guaranteed a hundred days of employment on public works. On May Day every year, the Congress government will publish a national employment report. Credit to farmers will be doubled in three years. Their tubewells will be repaired. Farm workers will be paid the minimum wage. A third of the seats in legislatures will go to women; 30 per cent of local authority funds will be spent on women and children. Women will be given complete equality in law with men. Reservations will be extended to backward classes amongst non-Hindus as well; the private sector will be encouraged to adopt reservations. Unorganized workers will get social security. Hawkers will be given a legal right to space on urban streets. It would be excellent if hawkers and non-Hindu backward women read this manifesto. But only urban, upwardly mobile Anglophones are likely to read it; and amongst them, the manifesto will lose the Congress a lot of votes. It deserves credit for the courage and honesty with which it has tried to alienate them.
On economic issues the Congress is surprisingly vague. Taxes as a proportion of GDP must be raised by at least a fifth. The Congress does not know what to do about the yawning revenue deficit, but promises to come up with a plan within 30 days of coming to power. That should give it plenty of time to think up something.
After all this pandering to interest groups in the Congress manifesto, the NDA agenda is a refreshing study in contrast. Here, interest groups take a back seat; the agenda is all about India, about making India an economic superpower – the food factory of the world, global manufacturing hub, service provider to the world, center of the knowledge economy, global destination of tourists, patients and students. Everything is on a grand scale. Rs 500 billion will be spent in the name of Jayaprakash Narayan on agricultural infrastructure, Rs 150 billion on railways, another Rs 200 billion on unfinished railway projects, Rs 170 billion on railway safety, Rs 50 billion on railway stations, Rs 1 trillion on ports and shipyards, Rs 400 billion on power projects, and Rs 5 trillion to link rivers. Figures like Rs 10, 20 or 30 billion are small change strewn across the pages. These NDA guys certainly know how to spend money. On where they will get it, they are rather vague. But after all, it is expenditure that generates income. The millions that the candidates for the elections have declared as their wealth this time, and the billions they did not declare, must have come from someone else’s expenditure; so NDA has got its antennae trained in the right direction.
Then follow a few hundred promises, some grand, some unwise, some stupid. You are invited to the launch ceremony of the Second Green Revolution by the Prime Minister on 15 August, 2004. The first ever train will steam into Srinagar before 15 August 2007; the Prime Minister wants to be on it. All revenue records will be computerized; leasing of agricultural land will be allowed. The 1551 farmers’ call center service will be extended to all languages and regions. Production of pulses and oilseeds will be raised and imports stopped within five years. Cow and her children will be protected; if they starve under NDA’s protection, they can hardly complain. And it does not matter; NDA has not promised to give them a vote. A law will be passed to ensure that Sonia and her descendants will never become Prime Minister or President or whatever. Shepherds will have their own Development Corporation. A stop will be put to inspector raj within six months – at least, strong measures will be taken.
Half of Fortune 500 companies will be persuaded to do a big part of their R&D in India. Foreign scientists and professionals will be made welcome in India. An Indian will be put on the moon by an Indian rocket in 2008. Every city will have enough pay-and-squat toilets within three years. Two world-class theme parks will show tourists how virtuous, civilized Indians lived in the Vedic age. A hundred pilgrimage centers will receive public investment. The glory of Nalanda will be recaptured; 25 universities and 100 colleges will be raised to international standards. Two hundred flyovers will be built every year in smaller cities. Those who followed Murli Manohar Joshi’s measures to indigenize the education system will wonder what international standards mean to NDA; others will wonder why small cities are particularly hospitable places for flyovers. But need does not matter. Ever since the BJP-Shiv Sena government gave contracts to loyal builders to build flyovers all over Bombay in the late 1990s, flyovers have been very fashionable with NDA and its members.

This is not the place to spill all the NDA’s plans. But the above random list should whet the appetite of those who would believe party manifestos. And even if you do not believe them, the NDA agenda will lift your spirits. Whatever one may think of their ability, seriousness or understanding, the NDA’s care-free, forward-looking nationalism makes better reading than the Congress’s sanctimonious, self-congratulatory nationalism.