Three men, three forces, three visions. Recently, as if to aid those of us peering through the Delhi fog to try and discern what 2014 will hold, Rahul Gandhi, Narendra Modi and Arvind Kejriwal all tried to make clear, in differing degrees, what their vision of India's future was.
Each man has, of course, a competing social vision. Mr Kejriwal believes in probity above all; in his world, the right people in the right jobs always do the right thing. To his detractors, this is an essentially middle-class vision of politics, an IITian's response to this class' long-standing contempt for Indian politics' careerists and strongmen. (The People's Republic of China is run by engineers, people say, and the dams get built on time.) Rahul Gandhi, unquestionably, cleaves to the cuddly hypocrisy that has been the Congress' culture since Independence: inept attempts at inclusiveness that conceal cold communitarian calculation - but also the broad, cosmopolitan social liberalism revealed in its stand on Section 377. Narendra Modi, meanwhile, wrote a blog post recently that made it clear that he intends to run away from his record of exclusionary governance in Gujarat. His legions of acolytes - who multiply daily, gathering to feed on the prospect of power - insist he is not the man he was in 2002, the man who warned after the riots of plots from "Alis, Malis and Jamalis". But his claims to heartfelt sorrow over 2002 fell well short of an explanation of his attitudes then, or even of an apology for a failure to anticipate or stop rioting. He and his pro-Section 377 party are, in terms of social policy, what they always were.
But it is the three different economic visions that are surely more important, given the times? Perhaps. But it is intriguing how each overlaps, in a way, with the social vision that they embody.
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For Mr Kejriwal, the country is poorly managed because it is corrupt. Prices are high because people not like us have stolen money that belongs to people like us. Electricity tariffs are a conspiracy. Privatisation of water is an American plot. Once in power, he will perforce compromise to a degree on these long-held beliefs. But the broader track of his economic programme is clear. He insists he is not anti-business; but then, you don't have to say out loud you're anti-business to view all of it with blanket suspicion. There was a time in this country, not so long ago, when all wealth creators were suspect. Mr Kejriwal is very much a man of that time. He is a man who believes in upholding laws, not in altering them to enhance growth. His party believes efficiency is born of prohibitions and controls - in banning water tankers, in controlling private-school fees. Prices are too important a factor, he believes, to be left to the market. Ideally, "the people" should decide what prices are. Some of us see a contradiction in that.
Then there is Rahul Gandhi. Long silent, he has made a series of startlingly reformist statements of late. Addressing the industry body Ficci, for example, he called for labour law reform in order to increase the size of the manufacturing sector. This is an obvious reform. But it is one that no politician has so far advocated. Narendra Modi, for example, has called only for a constitutional amendment to make labour law a state subject - something so unlikely to pass that it takes that reform off the table. Later, Mr Gandhi also insisted that Congress-ruled states remove fruits and vegetables from the scope of their draconian agricultural marketing acts, allowing for direct sales. This is another obvious reform - but, nevertheless, so long delayed that it's a startling direction for Mr Gandhi to take. So far, everything he has said on such subjects appears, well, straight out of pink paper editorials. But the question of credibility remains. Where were these strong statements of support for radical economic change all these years, when his government was struggling to create a consensus for reform? Mr Gandhi's absence in creating that consensus has been matched by his unwillingness to dirty his hands with implementing them as a functionary of the government. In the absence of effort, even a seductive vision of the future will be questioned.
Finally, there is Mr Modi. His stand on economic issues so far has boiled down to: "Trust Me". And "Gujarat". Unquestionably, Mr Modi has run his state with clockwork efficiency - other than that small and unimportant matter of riots, of course. Little administrative fixes, such as to Gujarat's electricity, have had big effects. Mr Modi has also shown a genius for choosing effective bureaucrats, and for making ineffective ones work harder. But, in other ways, both he and his party stand, essentially, for exactly what the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) stood for. They believe in subsidies - Mr Modi attacked cuts in gas subsidies in front of an audience in Himachal Pradesh, forgave debt interest to his state's farmers, and actively woos infrastructure investment using the same methods that got the UPA in trouble. Even Gujarat's well-publicised manufacturing growth, as an article by R Nagaraj and Shruti Pandey in Economic and Political Weekly pointed out recently, is dependent entirely on two petroleum refineries from Essar and Reliance: "Incremental manufacturing output is mostly coming from a single industry - petroleum refining - whose share in gross value added in the state's registered manufacturing has risen from four per cent in 2000-01 to nearly 25 per cent a decade later." They summarise: "The only dramatic difference [to Gujarat's industry] has been the emergence of import-dependent and export-oriented petroleum refining, which has few linkages with the state economy."
Note, then, the three alternatives. Mr Kejriwal's nostalgic, activist state. Mr Gandhi's strong reformism but weak credibility. And Mr Modi's take-no-prisoners approach, but with a doubtful end in mind. Perhaps economic policy vision is closer to social perspectives than we realise.
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