A V Rajwade: 'Respect your enemy strategically ...'

WORLD MONEY

... but despise him tactically". Be cautious in planning the strategy, but implement it without second thoughts.

In the 1970s, the little red book of Mao's Thoughts had become very popular, particularly with the youth in West Bengal. I read it at the time and, ideology apart, many of the aphorisms were sensible. One I still remember was something like "respect your enemy strategically, but despise him tactically". One does not know what exactly the Great Helmsman had in mind, but my own interpretation was that one should be extremely careful, cautious in planning the strategy for achieving an objective, but the implementation should be without any second thoughts, indeed at blitzkrieg-like speed. Curiously, Baba Amte, the great social worker, said something similar in one of his Marathi poems "" loosely translated, it read "We need youth who plan carefully, feet firmly on the earth, but implement the plans with reckless courage." In a business/economic sense, the greatest followers of Mao and Baba on the issue seem to be the Japanese and, increasingly, the Chinese.

While China has moved well away from the traditional socialist ideology "" in many ways it is only nominally communist today "" it obviously has not forgotten at least this thought of Mao. The speed at which infrastructure or industry comes up is mind-boggling. Steel production, for instance, has gone up from 120 million tonnes to 350 million tonnes in the past four years. (India's is projected to go up from 42 million tonnes to 110 million tonnes by 2020 "" but, keep your fingers crossed!) The blitzkrieg-like implementation is manifest even in academic fields. As Sunil Jain wrote (July 17), "China's score on the Knowledge Index has risen from 3.03 in 1995 to 4.21 today", accompanied by an explosive growth in the research papers published: in a quarter century, the number has grown from 7 per cent of India's to almost 300 per cent, even as India's own output of research articles went up tow-and-a-half times! On the same day, Pankaj Jalote, a professor at IIT Kanpur, wrote in The Economic Times that "China has performed nothing short of a miracle in transforming its university system, with R&D output growing apace. Is India ready for change yet?"

To come back to the process of taking and implementing major strategic initiatives, our own style seems to be the opposite. And not just lately: remember Jawaharlal Nehru announced in a press conference that he is asking the Indian Army to throw out the Chinese? Clearly he did not respect the enemy strategically! The result was a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Chinese in 1962. Have we learned to weigh carefully major decisions and strategies since then?

Hundreds of thousands of crores of public money has been locked in half-completed projects, started at the whims and fancies of politicians in power, with little thought to where the money for completion will come from. Often when irrigation projects are completed, there is no money for maintenance. What do the number of changes in tax laws each year evidence "" a changing environment, or inadequate preparatory work? The legislating of so many enactments without much thought about their efficient implementation is another instance. To be sure, we often take long to decide "" but not because all the options and implications are being carefully weighed.

Consider the policy initiative on special economic zones (SEZs). A few years ago, the then commerce minister, after a visit to China where the SEZs have worked beautifully, announced the decision. Clearly, for SEZs to succeed, the three essential elements are the tax policy, labour laws (one reason why China has made a spectacular success of its SEZs is the lack of job protection, which has helped attract labour intensive industry on a vast scale), and, of course, infrastructure. Years after the scheme was announced, we do not still seem to be clear about any of these areas. The issue of labour laws has been shunted to state governments. We are still debating what proportion of the land made available to an SEZ should have industry (25 per cent, 35 per cent or 50 per cent). A group of ministers is supposed to be looking at the issue.

If there is no clarity about the tax laws, the labour laws and the proportion of land for industry, why are all business houses rushing to promote SEZs? Because of the attractions of real estate? Roads, ports, other infrastructure, the story is the same: half-cooked initiatives with little implementation planning. And all this even before the do-gooders (and former, now unemployed, prime ministers) enter the fray with their PILs, dharnas and hunger strikes. The result? Huge cost and time overruns in practically every case!

Tailpiece: Instead of following China in blocking websites we should learn from their speed of project implementation. We can match them "" but only in an emergency: witness the way the Western Railway resumed services within four hours of the bomb blasts in Mumbai!

Email: avrco@vsnl.com