Population and bureaucracy: Taboo topics that PMs don't talk about

Next year — if this virus that China has exported spares me — I will turn 70. During this time I have watched 60 Independence Day speeches by 14 prime ministers.

The first three were in 1961, 1962 and 1963.  I attended those at the Red Fort where our father patriotically took us. After that I have listened on the radio and watched on television

Every speech has been an exhortation to the citizens to do their bit for the country, while the government does its bit for them. Not quite Napoleonic in form but the message has always been the same — come on, you lazy bums. But while the laziness has reduced, the number of bums has increased.

This year was no exception. An overly hirsute prime minister, the first I think to adorn a beard and long hair, spent nearly two hours delivering his message.

But like all previous prime ministers he omitted India’s two biggest problems, both gigantic, both slowing things down, both slow to change. Even now when Covid-19 has prostrated us, the prime minister ignored the problem of numbers and of the bureaucrats who make things worse.

One problem is India’s population. In 1947 India had 350 million people. Today it has 1400 million. Grasp that.

The only country in the world that has had to cope with so many people is China. But we all know what its record on human rights and democracy is.

For over 30 years now I have asked a straightforward question: if light must bend around a heavy object, how must the laws of economics, management and commerce bend around massive populations?

Illustration by Binay Sinha

No one has an answer. Nor is anyone trying to find an answer. India carries on as if we are a country of mere 200 million. There is no recognition at any level — yes, any level — that old solutions don’t, and can’t, work.

India’s population growth has been taboo after 1977 because of the forced sterilisations of 1976. India was under an Emergency then and like the Chinese government it could do what it pleased.

This has had the worst possible consequences for supply management. Ask any IAS or IPS officer who has to manage a district. He or she just can’t cope. It’s simply not possible.

The other taboo problem is India’s bureaucrats. Prime ministers don’t talk about the bureaucrats because who, in his right mind, wants to annoy the mafia? I use the term advisedly because that’s what the bureaucracy has become since 1990, an instrument of extortion, mental torture and predatory behaviour.

TeamLease has put together in a gargantuan document the instruments of bureaucratic torture, predation and extortion. It should be made compulsory reading for school children.

These two problems, population and bureaucrats, constitute massive balls and chains around the economy’s legs. Until someone solves them we are doomed to be a third rate country.

I have two solutions to offer, both highly desirable but politically and morally very difficult. That’s where we get beaten by China. It’s pursuit of economic prosperity is unconstrained.

We must punish parents who have produced a third child after 1980. And we must repeal Article 311 of the Constitution which makes bureaucrats immune from dismissal unless they are mad or sexual deviants.

Twitter: @Tca_tca