Policies, politicians & politicking

Our leaders must learn to put 'country above self' if progress is to be achieved

China's successful manned space flight last week, making it the third nation to achieve this (after Russia and the US), raised inevitable questions about India's space programme. Several American newspapers speculated that this would speed up India's plans to put a spacecraft on the moon. I hope that does not happen.

While the achievement of Shenzou 5, the craft that carried Yang Liwei around the globe 14 times in 21 hours, is to be admired for its scientific acumen, it is not one to emulate. What we should aim for is China's superb economic performance; and what we should worry about is that India "" despite improved performance over the last 10 years "" continues to under-perform.

In the late 1970s, India and China had virtually the same per capita incomes. Now China has almost double India's per capita income of $ 480. China has a literacy rate of 86 per cent compared to India's 62; the mortality rate for every 1000 live births during the first five years of life is 93 for India and 39 for China. These are the domains where, without grudging China's achievement, India should try to learn from its northern neighbour and speed up its own programmes.

The tragedy of India is that our politicians do not have big enough ambitions for the economy and for the quality of life of the common person. They talk about upholding India's culture but fail to realise that the first prerequisite for that is a prosperous economy and robust standard of living.

The reason for this neglect is the near full-time obsession that Indian politicians have with politicking. The aggressive ambition that Lee Kwan Yew had for the Singapore economy or Park Chung Hee for Korea and the relentless plans and initiatives that emanated from their offices have not been witnessed in India since the early years of Nehru.

One reason for this is no doubt our maturing democracy and the pressures of electoral politics, which consumes the time and energy of politicians and which autocrats like Chung Hee and Kwan Yew did not have to bother with.

But given that we value our democracy, we have to learn to work with it and still provide leadership and initiative. The lapse of Indian politicians is the failure to recognise that, while in a democracy it is expected that the government will respond to what people ask for, it is at the same time the responsibility of those who govern to provide leadership.

A story that Lyndon Johnson liked to tell was that of a school teacher, who went for a job interview, and was asked by a member of the interview board, "Is the earth round or flat?" The teacher hesitated a little and then said, "I can teach it round or flat." The tragedy of our politicians is how reminiscent they are of this hapless teacher. They are so keen to have the job that they are willing to accommodate any demand.

A good democratic leader must be someone who does what is in the interest of the people and not just what people ask for. This is what good leadership is about "" recognising that the majority at times fails to understand what is good for itself and that what the people would want for themselves in retrospect may be different from what they demand now.

The leader must be prepared to work in the enlightened interest of the people instead of always catering to their immediate demands. This of course means that a good leader has the risk of losing an election, just as the teacher may not have got the job had he answered "Round" and there happened to be a religious zealot on the board.

How else can one explain why, despite all the big talk by our politicians, India's investment rate continues to stagnate though it is widely recognised as a key factor for faster growth, and why India continues to be one of the most corrupt nations in the world. But changing either of these entails stepping on toes.

To push up investment one needs to cut down bureaucracy and subsidies, both of which lead to over-consumption and wasteful spending. Moreover, cutting down bureaucracy will have the important side-effect of boosting business and trade.

From an interesting set of statistics, recently made available by the World Bank, we know that to start up a business (that is, to fulfil all government paperwork and regulation) it takes 88 days in India, 55 days in China and 2 days in New Zealand and Canada.

And the cost to fulfil all the start-up regulation for a new business, as a percentage of the country's per capita income, is 51per cent in India, 13 per cent in China and 0 per cent and 1 per cent in New Zealand and Canada, respectively.

These are the kinds of achievement that we should target and these are the areas where we should lament our current performance. But to change these will mean confronting widespread opposition to start with.

Likewise, to control corruption one must be prepared to make enemies. While corruption can never be zero, if the top two or three leaders in government are really determined, cutting down corruption to half its present level is quite an easy task (helped no doubt by the fact that half of our present level will still be quite high).

But of course it will hurt some powerful people and there will be segments of the bureaucracy that will be very upset with this. Some of these people will try to influence popular opinion and carry out smear campaigns against the politician who makes a serious effort to control corruption. And the ouster of the politician cannot be ruled out.

But that it is the lack of precisely such a politician, one who is willing to choose between flat and round, and risk his own career, that is holding up India's economy from full-throttle performance.

One can find many other policies, which may not look good on the face of it but are good for the common man. Consider the case of airports (and likewise for seaports). Indian airports are widely recognised to be substandard. But a politician who argues for a few world-class airports in India will not be popular in India and will quickly come to be thought of as an elitist.

Now, it is true that the first beneficiaries of good airports will be the wealthy, who use airports most. But good airports, by facilitating travel, can increase tourism, trade and investment in India. And, in addition, if some of these airports manage to become hubs for international travel from Europe to the Far East, they can create enormous amounts of jobs in India.

In the long run, the benefits of world-class airports and seaports to the general public in India can be huge. So even if one were not concerned about the well-being of the rich (and that should certainly not be the main concern of politicians), the case for such a policy is

strong.

The reason why we do not see such a policy is because it appears elitist and therefore entails some electoral risk on the part of the politician who espouses it.

(The writer is professor of economics and director of the Programme on Comparative Economic Development at Cornell University)