Hafizzz
SENIOR MEMBER
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2010
- Messages
- 5,041
- Reaction score
- 0
http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/7owbgeoqCtSOmpLOfrjZdM/India-is-now-a-nonfunctioning-anarchy.html
It was the late John Kenneth Galbraith who called India a functioning anarchy. The last great humanist economist, who had been US ambassador to India, loved the country, and found much about us to wonder about. The term he used was hardly disdainful; it embodied, to a significant extent, head-scratching grimacing admiration. There could have perhaps been no description more appropriate for a nation where, for everything that is true, the opposite is also equally true. We Indians have incredible resilience, infinite adaptability, the ability to hold three different viewpoints in our heads, all at the same time, find loopholes in sheer concrete walls, and enjoy reasonable happiness, helped by a curious philosophical mix of fatalism and jugaad.
As India, we have bumbled our way along, through ups and downs, periods of despair and great hope. Like the Indian mind, the Indian nation is more comfortable with what seems to be chaos to Western (or even most Asian) minds than linearity. We turn our elections into festivals, our festivals into commerce, and commerce into pure politics. A European who spends a fair bit of time in India—and I have met quite a few of them—either falls in love with the whole damn mess or flees in panicked confusion.
The trouble is that, over the last few years, the anarchy has remained vibrant, but the functioning bit seems to have vanished. From the top of the pyramid to the bottom, confusion reigns. We have gone through huge churnings before—the Emergency and its aftermath, the Mandal upheaval that changed political arithmetic for ever—but it probably never came to this stage that no one appears to be sure what the hell is going on. The core question is: Who’s running the country?
Our Prime Minister speaks little. This is not, in itself, a bad thing. The story goes about the famously reticent US President Calvin Coolidge that at a party, a socialite had a bet with her friend that she could make the President say at least four words to her. She went up to Coolidge and told her about the wager. Coolidge replied: “Madam, you lose,” and walked away. But our Prime Minister also does not appear to have much control over what is going on. In recent months, he has focused on the international arena rather than national affairs. But whether that has brought India any benefits remains to be seen. The border agreement he has signed this week with China certainly does not seem to have made India’s position any stronger.
Of course, Congress chairperson Sonia Gandhi, having put a massive burden on the finances of the government with her welfare schemes, says nothing at all. I may have missed a few news items, but I can’t recall any meaningful policy declarations in the last two years that would help the economy grow, generate jobs, bring prices down, make the average Indian’s life a bit easier in a real sense. Right from the beginning of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime, there has been a problem of coordination between ministers. A respected economist, part of several post-reforms governments, told me a year ago that he quit his post early in the first UPA government because, even in those first few months, he could see a “policy paralysis” coming. “Man for man, the ministers in the UPA may be better, more efficient than those in the NDA (National Democratic Alliance),” he said, “but no one would listen to anyone.”
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has stepped into the policy area, and sent an already fumbling government into panic and even more confusion. Add to that a barely functioning Parliament, and what we have is a situation where the roles and responsibilities of all our primary institutions have got mixed up. With all due respect, whatever the irregularities and whatever the actual scale of the 2G scam, scrapping more than hundred cellular service permits in one stroke smells like overkill. The Supreme Court order has not only put the future of the country’s entire telecom policy in jeopardy, it has also run shivers down the spines of all foreign investors looking at India to put their money on. How does the government now auction spectrum? What would be the rules? What would be the base price? Who in government is going to take a chance with all these now? If I pass a file today, how do I know that I won’t be hauled off to prison when I am 80? If I invest today, what guarantee is there that six years from now, I won’t suddenly be on trial charged with something I didn’t even know about?
And this Coalgate, it’s become that ghost in the house that stays quiet for months and then suddenly pops out of a closet when you least expect it and shouts Boo! at you.
The Supreme Court has also decided that every large suspected scam should be handed over for investigation in toto to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Now, over the years, the CBI hasn’t exactly covered itself with glory as a gimlet-eyed the-guilty-must-pay band of bloodhounds. The average Indian citizen and observer associates the agency more with adeptness at cover-ups. Just consider its record on Bofors and the many disproportionate income cases against politicians. In case after big case, it has calmly contradicted itself in court, closed files, reopened them, exonerated the accused and then changed its mind, following its political masters’ diktats. Is the CBI now truly autonomous, as the court has been demanding and appears to now believe? Does the CBI itself know? Suddenly the sleuths are all over the place, indicting India’s top industrialists and sniffing at the doors of the Prime Minister’s Office. Are they serious? One suspects the CBI is as confused as the rest of us. It just wants to cover its own bottom. It can always retract later, that is the agency’s core competence.
So what we have is utter uncertainty, at all institutional, policy and functioning levels. After this, if you believe that any large firm, Indian or foreign, is going to invest big money in India, you might as well believe in Santa Claus.
And if anyone did want to invest, would any bureaucrat, however honest and diligent, put his signature on any file? As former cabinet secretary T.S.R. Subramaniam said: “Every bureaucrat will just play crossword or golf.” Who knows what who will be accused of, and when? Today, no bureaucrat feels he is safe as long as he is alive. In the meantime, the harassing of perfectly honest bureaucrats continues unabated, as the case of Ashok Khemka in Haryana demonstrates.
So the answer to the question is rather simple: No one is running the country. It’s every man for himself now. And don’t think just because you’ve been filing all your taxes scrupulously and on time, you’re all right and have nothing to worry about.
It was the late John Kenneth Galbraith who called India a functioning anarchy. The last great humanist economist, who had been US ambassador to India, loved the country, and found much about us to wonder about. The term he used was hardly disdainful; it embodied, to a significant extent, head-scratching grimacing admiration. There could have perhaps been no description more appropriate for a nation where, for everything that is true, the opposite is also equally true. We Indians have incredible resilience, infinite adaptability, the ability to hold three different viewpoints in our heads, all at the same time, find loopholes in sheer concrete walls, and enjoy reasonable happiness, helped by a curious philosophical mix of fatalism and jugaad.
As India, we have bumbled our way along, through ups and downs, periods of despair and great hope. Like the Indian mind, the Indian nation is more comfortable with what seems to be chaos to Western (or even most Asian) minds than linearity. We turn our elections into festivals, our festivals into commerce, and commerce into pure politics. A European who spends a fair bit of time in India—and I have met quite a few of them—either falls in love with the whole damn mess or flees in panicked confusion.
The trouble is that, over the last few years, the anarchy has remained vibrant, but the functioning bit seems to have vanished. From the top of the pyramid to the bottom, confusion reigns. We have gone through huge churnings before—the Emergency and its aftermath, the Mandal upheaval that changed political arithmetic for ever—but it probably never came to this stage that no one appears to be sure what the hell is going on. The core question is: Who’s running the country?
Our Prime Minister speaks little. This is not, in itself, a bad thing. The story goes about the famously reticent US President Calvin Coolidge that at a party, a socialite had a bet with her friend that she could make the President say at least four words to her. She went up to Coolidge and told her about the wager. Coolidge replied: “Madam, you lose,” and walked away. But our Prime Minister also does not appear to have much control over what is going on. In recent months, he has focused on the international arena rather than national affairs. But whether that has brought India any benefits remains to be seen. The border agreement he has signed this week with China certainly does not seem to have made India’s position any stronger.
Of course, Congress chairperson Sonia Gandhi, having put a massive burden on the finances of the government with her welfare schemes, says nothing at all. I may have missed a few news items, but I can’t recall any meaningful policy declarations in the last two years that would help the economy grow, generate jobs, bring prices down, make the average Indian’s life a bit easier in a real sense. Right from the beginning of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime, there has been a problem of coordination between ministers. A respected economist, part of several post-reforms governments, told me a year ago that he quit his post early in the first UPA government because, even in those first few months, he could see a “policy paralysis” coming. “Man for man, the ministers in the UPA may be better, more efficient than those in the NDA (National Democratic Alliance),” he said, “but no one would listen to anyone.”
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has stepped into the policy area, and sent an already fumbling government into panic and even more confusion. Add to that a barely functioning Parliament, and what we have is a situation where the roles and responsibilities of all our primary institutions have got mixed up. With all due respect, whatever the irregularities and whatever the actual scale of the 2G scam, scrapping more than hundred cellular service permits in one stroke smells like overkill. The Supreme Court order has not only put the future of the country’s entire telecom policy in jeopardy, it has also run shivers down the spines of all foreign investors looking at India to put their money on. How does the government now auction spectrum? What would be the rules? What would be the base price? Who in government is going to take a chance with all these now? If I pass a file today, how do I know that I won’t be hauled off to prison when I am 80? If I invest today, what guarantee is there that six years from now, I won’t suddenly be on trial charged with something I didn’t even know about?
And this Coalgate, it’s become that ghost in the house that stays quiet for months and then suddenly pops out of a closet when you least expect it and shouts Boo! at you.
The Supreme Court has also decided that every large suspected scam should be handed over for investigation in toto to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Now, over the years, the CBI hasn’t exactly covered itself with glory as a gimlet-eyed the-guilty-must-pay band of bloodhounds. The average Indian citizen and observer associates the agency more with adeptness at cover-ups. Just consider its record on Bofors and the many disproportionate income cases against politicians. In case after big case, it has calmly contradicted itself in court, closed files, reopened them, exonerated the accused and then changed its mind, following its political masters’ diktats. Is the CBI now truly autonomous, as the court has been demanding and appears to now believe? Does the CBI itself know? Suddenly the sleuths are all over the place, indicting India’s top industrialists and sniffing at the doors of the Prime Minister’s Office. Are they serious? One suspects the CBI is as confused as the rest of us. It just wants to cover its own bottom. It can always retract later, that is the agency’s core competence.
So what we have is utter uncertainty, at all institutional, policy and functioning levels. After this, if you believe that any large firm, Indian or foreign, is going to invest big money in India, you might as well believe in Santa Claus.
And if anyone did want to invest, would any bureaucrat, however honest and diligent, put his signature on any file? As former cabinet secretary T.S.R. Subramaniam said: “Every bureaucrat will just play crossword or golf.” Who knows what who will be accused of, and when? Today, no bureaucrat feels he is safe as long as he is alive. In the meantime, the harassing of perfectly honest bureaucrats continues unabated, as the case of Ashok Khemka in Haryana demonstrates.
So the answer to the question is rather simple: No one is running the country. It’s every man for himself now. And don’t think just because you’ve been filing all your taxes scrupulously and on time, you’re all right and have nothing to worry about.
