RESTART: THE LAST CHANCE FOR THE INDIAN ECONOMY
Mihir S Sharma
Random House India, 2015
362 pages; Rs 599
Mihir Sharma is well-known to readers of Business Standard. His articles are incisive, sharp, hard-hitting and have a good measure of sarcasm. In his book Restart, we see one more aspect: impatience. Mr Sharma is in a hurry to cut the fluff and get to the point; to give a list of policy measures gone wrong from time immemorial and initiatives to fix them. He understands that the answers are not simple, that there are multiple pressures on policymaking and vested interests about which he writes extensively in the book. But he still believes that the way to go is to take the route of rapid and drastic reform. Reform that does not exploit the farmers and the poor; that does not stop manufacturing and industrial growth; that does not compensate farmers for parting with their land at the current rates laid out by the recent land acquisition Bill but compensates them "fairly". While he criticises successive governments for taking the middle path and not taking tough decisions, the solutions he provides are certainly not far from the middle path. No, sir, they follow the golden average.
This we grant: Mr Sharma has a unique approach to identifying problems, at using statistics and drawing conclusions. Add this: he has a unique way of connecting with his readers. If we are used to people pressing the metaphorical panic button, Mr Sharma has a whole panel of buttons that he keeps pressing like a trained pianist.
His style is conversational and direct. The data are usually camouflaged in diagnostic and dialogic sentences without the need for tables, graphs or analyses. He has done the homework and knows the data. He expects the reader to take him at his word. So far, so good. But what if the data are to be interpreted differently? How does one engage with him and pick up a nuanced argument? While Mr Sharma himself has fairly nuanced arguments, he gives his readers no choice to frame their questions. He asks the readers' questions himself and answers them.
This style is ideally suited for an opinion piece in the op-ed page of a newspaper (pink or otherwise), where one is short of time and, therefore, the need to trust the writer for doing the background work, but does it suit a book-length work in which one has the luxury of a more informed style of conversation? No siree, that is not his style. Nope. Not at all.
Talking about why the second airport in Mumbai (that is so important for national development) is held up, he says, "… the Union environment ministry was worried about 160 acres of mangroves - the gloomiest plant known to man, even if you include the weeping willow." He then goes on to ask: "Are mangroves perhaps endangered? Nope. They're being depleted, but are not endangered" (page 131). He goes on to argue that the depletion of mangroves on account of the new airport is about 0.24 per cent of the mangroves in Maharashtra. He does not use (possibly) the more relevant statistic that it would be about 1.11 per cent of all of Mumbai's mangroves. Nor does he counter the argument of ecological fragility of the coastal zone. On the contrary, he could have made his argument even stronger if he used this statistic against the total acreage of mangroves in the entire country!
Does this remind us of somebody else who uses statistics equally powerfully to make a point? You guessed it: P Sainath. It is interesting to see that these two gentlemen have divergent views but such a similar style. While Mr Sainath laments the reduction in the number of "cultivators" and the nature of the agrarian crisis culminating in farmer suicides, Mr Sharma dismisses these arguments as being "disrespectful to mathematics and common sense", talking about how the police "define and categorise 'farmers'" (page 26). While Mr Sharma argues that suicides are a function of complex interplay of economic, cultural and psychological factors, his larger statistic of comparing the suicide rates of the "so called farmers" with the national statistic of Japan or Bhutan is taking Mr Sainath's specificity away to a generalisation of suicide statistics.
Mr Sharma's book has a wide canvas, goes deep into history and uses statistics, anecdotes and episodic events effectively to narrate a coherent tale. This tale becomes sharper because he has done his homework, knows his numbers and has a big picture in mind. His style is chatty and engaging. However, Mr Sharma becomes quickly predictable both in his analysis and in his final solution. But if you are left with a sense of disquiet and discomfort at the end of the book, as I have been, then he has achieved his objective of making the point that the Indian economy is in a mess. That is the point he makes effectively and convincingly.
The reviewer is with the Centre for Public Policy, Indian Institute of Management, Bengaluru
mssriram@gmail.com
mssriram@gmail.com
