Minister of Information and Broadcasting Ambika Soni may vehemently disagree with Azim Premji’s statement that the current government is guilty of a “complete absence of decision-making”. But she will be hard put to find any takers for her view that Mr Premji’s forthright criticism was a matter of “perception” that needed to be “rectified”. Certainly her boss Prime Minister Manmohan Singh does not appear to think like her; he has taken on board a letter, sent to him by 14 industrialists on October 10, that broadly echoes his own recent statement that economic progress should not be hijacked by internal dissension.
Mr Premji’s comment at Wipro’s results press conference on October 31 was essentially a précis of the October 10 letter, to which he was a signatory. Nothing in his comments or the letter – the second in ten months – can be considered “perception”, especially when it comes to the second stint of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA). It is a fact, not perception, that no major project has got off the ground in this UPA term, on either environmental grounds or opposition to land acquisition. The infamous “no-go” diktat on coal mining put on hold investments in critical infrastructure investment projects worth Rs 40,000 crore, and a recent decision for case-by-case relaxation can hardly be called policy. True, neither issue should be wished away, but as the letter astutely points out, there is a need to distinguish between “dissent” and “disruption”. As for land acquisition and rehabilitation, the issues have become so contentious that no industrialist worth his profits wants to venture into new projects for fear of encountering frenzied farmer agitations. Yet, the government has done little to produce workable solutions, with the long-awaited draft land acquisition and rehabilitation legislation suffering a surfeit of socialism that is unlikely to enthuse industrialists or the land-loser.
The industrialists’ letter has expended several paragraphs on corruption, the issue that has exercised middle-class civil society. But unlike the many activists, the letter highlights the burdens corruption imposes on the poor and addresses the issue realistically. Pointing to the need for a well-crafted Lok Pal Bill, it suggests such a law will only address episodic rather than systemic corruption. For that, the letter points out, judicial, land, electoral and police reforms are needed. No one can accuse Mr Premji and his peers of suffering from perception problems on these issues either. There is a backlog of 31 million cases in the courts, a quarter of the members of Parliament have criminal charges pending against them and the police force is scarcely a model of civic uprightness. These are facts.
Neither Mr Premji nor the other industrialist signatories can be called activists in even the broadest sense of the term. They are respected business leaders with a strong stake in the progress of India and Indian society. In a sense, they have a stronger case than does Kisan Hazare to lobby against corruption since they are beneficiaries of the dismantling of the egregious licence raj. If Ms Soni’s comments reflect the government’s thinking, then it is the UPA that is suffering from a problem of perception.