Remember the last days of the Congress-led government in 2011-13? Rampant corruption, a brutal rape, economic stagnancy, and policy failures had gripped the country, to protest against which the docile, the busy and the insensitive — all came out on the streets. Is the current mood turning in that direction? All the ingredients of those gloomy days of UPA2 are here, minus the obvious centralised corruption. Misgovernance and aimless drift are palpable, there are protests against brutal rapes again, the economy is spiralling downwards, and now suddenly, the people have to deal with a new citizenship process and a national registration that will cost more than Rs 70,000 crore, at a time when government coffers are empty. Spontaneous protests against this badly-timed moved have erupted all over the country. And exactly like the previous regime, the current one, six years in power, is not listening.
The previous prime minister was personally honest but seemed remote from everyday issues of citizens and businessmen — the job creators. The current prime minister does not seem to be any different, while ministers down the line are as divorced from reality. Former finance minister P Chidambaram’s diktats were like King Canute, ordering economic actors to act and forcing events to unfold, according to his desires. On Friday the current finance minister lived up to that epithet by announcing Canute-like “I have asked public banks to give loans instead of using reverse repo” while asserting “there is no government interference on banks’ decision-making”. She also “advised” Indian businessmen to bid enthusiastically for government companies, which are being privatised, asking them to come out of “self-doubt” and unleash their animal spirits.
Clearly, she is not listening. Some 16 years ago, Arun Shourie, as disinvestment minister, had said the government companies “are not crown jewels, these are bleeding ulcers”. Under successive governments, they have grown worse. To ask anyone “to bid enthusiastically” is laughable. On the same day, the prime minister instructed members of Assocham, a top industry association, filled with successful Indian businesses and multinationals, to take decisions freely and “invest without fear”. As I said, politicians live in an echo chamber.
Anybody who has some understanding of doing business in India knows how extraordinarily difficult it is to be successful and scale up operations, creating hundreds and thousands of jobs. Companies that have survived and grown in the toxic political economy of India handled everyday bribery, braved enormous delays in decision-making, cut through scores of maddening rules and licences, battled court cases, negotiated capricious demands from revenue departments, tiptoed around draconian laws are super-achievers. They don’t need to be lectured to. How come politicians, some of whom have not even won election, much less contributed anything useful in their lives, never created any jobs or wealth, are never embarrassed to sermonise to these successful businessmen that they should be courageous or overcome self-doubt? Where do they get the confidence to speak with such condescension?
The reason is simple: Once they acquire power, they are removed from reality, labelling all uncomfortable facts as negativity, confident that what they are doing is right. This was exactly the attitude of Pranab Mukherjee, the man responsible for enormous bad loans and the steroid-fuelled fake growth of the post-2008 period. On Friday, the prime minister said the economy was in the doldrums because the current government had to clean up the mess of the previous regime. Assuming this is true, who is going to ask him why his government awarded the Bharat Ratna to a man singularly responsible for the mess he is cleaning up? We are not supposed to ask these and a million other uncomfortable questions. But even assuming that you can, leaders in power are only interested in telling you what you should be doing. And of course, they are all the time echoing one another. The patronising advice to “have no fear” came on the same day from the finance minister and the prime minister.
All this leads me to wonder why successful businessmen who are creating jobs in a job-starved country, while politicians are destroying them, sit as supplicants before politicians, much less subject themselves to demeaning reprimands or gratuitous advice? In the Assocham meeting on Friday, the prime minister was miffed about the lukewarm applause he was getting and rebuked them for it, he even snubbed them for not being able to understand what he was trying to say. The reaction of these successful businessmen to such humiliation was laughter and increased clapping. As the prime minister stepped up his insults and accused them of calling different ministers and asking for favours, they listened in silence.
I understand there is little we can do. We can change governments once in five years and that leads to no better outcome. At least we should ignore their endless preaching, and certainly reject their tricks of subjecting us to an endless cycle of inquisition, guilt trip, and tension about patriotism, nationalism, entrepreneurship, cleanliness, black money, new identity and so on, while netas, babus and party hacks keep themselves safely above all such trials.
The writer is the editor of www.moneylife.in Twitter: @Moneylifers
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