Subir Roy: Time to celebrate and worry

VALUE FOR MONEY

It is difficult to recall the nation being on as much of a high as it is today. Rapid economic growth and a Budget which does not try to fix the system as it is not broken have combined to create enormously robust expectations among both foreign and domestic investors. The result is a stock market boom that tends to go on and on.

This has been coupled with an agreement with the US giving India de facto nuclear power status. Those who felt that the 1998 decision to take India nuclear enhanced neither its economic well-being nor its security, will now feel reassured that the downside of the decision is fully and finally behind us. The sanctions are properly buried, opening the way for cooperation with global technology leaders, particularly the US, across the board.

There is no limit to what this can do for India as it seeks to leverage its technical manpower to leapfrog stages of development by using technology. Take a small example. If the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) is able to overcome US restrictions on launching satellites which are either partly or wholly US-built, then it will enable Isro to emerge as a global low-cost satellite launcher and a successful commercial player in space. If this is small, think what can come out of co-operation in vaccines.

The nuclear deal has opened the way for a rapid upgrade and massive expansion of the country's nuclear power capacity. There will be enormous gain in being able to step up nuclear power capacity safely and efficiently during a period when energy prices are likely to remain high and environmental concerns are likely to rise as rapid growth makes India a major guzzler of fossil fuels.

The deal also underlines the maturity of the Indian decision-making process. Not only is there continuity today in economic policy, it is also there on security issues. What Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the NDA had launched, Manmohan Singh and the UPA have brought to successful fruition. Had the BJP and the Sangh Parivar been in a more confident mood and not in the kind of internal mess that they are in, Vajpayee and L K Advani could well have been invited and may well have agreed to join in a kind of national celebration. If Vajpayee could have congratulated Indira Gandhi on effectively dismembering Pakistan in 1971, his successor should today be unreservedly congratulating Manmohan Singh on successfully finishing the relay race that Vajpayee had begun.

The final denouement that led to the deal is important for one more reason. One is the way it was negotiated and debated. There was wide public discourse, not the least by those within the nuclear establishment, who had serious initial reservations, which both helped refine the Indian position and indicated to its negotiators what could pass muster with the rest of the political establishment and what could not.

The Prime Minister's delineation before Parliament of what his government could agree to made it clear to the US negotiators what kind of a deal they would have to settle for if they wanted one. No other key agreement has evolved with this degree of public scrutiny and eventually broad consensus as this one has. Indian democracy has been shown to be something that actually works where it matters, and goes beyond merely holding free and fair elections.

So there is cause for widespread satisfaction and some self-congratulation. But there is hardly any cause for complacency as several parallel developments indicate. If you think the whole nation thinks it has never had it so good economically (the Sensex keeps booming) ask yourself why every other day brings news of one more Naxal outrage and violence in which growing numbers, many of them policemen on the spot, are getting killed.

Naxal- or extreme left-affected areas now stretch in a significant swathe through the middle of the country, from Nepal right down to Karnataka. That these are also forest and tribal areas can tell a lot. Significant sections of Indians from the bottom rung feel completely marginalised and see nothing for themselves in the present system. They may be deluded but who will perform the task of bringing them into the political mainstream? Naxal violence in parts of West Bengal indicates that even the left, which opposes reforms, has no answer.

This is not all. Over the last couple of weeks the verdicts in the Best Bakery case (a wrong was set right) and the Jessica Lall case (a massive miscarriage of justice was perpetrated) indicate that the delivery of justice is severely flawed for those without power and influence. The tampering of evidence with the connivance of official investigators, blatant somersaults by witnesses who often feel threatened, and lower court judges who fail to ask the right questions make a mockery of the judicial processes.

The only saving grace today""as in both the Best Bakery and Jessica Lall cases""is the higher judiciary. But who will police that layer? A newspaper report says a Bill is being brought in parliament to mete out various degrees of punishment, short of impeachment (that's the only way higher judges can be dismissed), to culpable senior judges. Thus, Indian democracy is made up of a lower judiciary that barely functions and a higher judiciary that delivers on a hope and a prayer.

Not just new laws, new methods of investigation and new training for the police are needed to make prosecution cases stick. But all this will come to nothing if there is no sharp improvement in integrity. And Naxals will not join the political mainstream unless the system and its practitioners have greater credibility. All this is commonplace but needs mentioning to underline that there is much to be happy about, but the urgent tasks ahead are hugely daunting.

sub@business-standard.com