The world wants India to do well, our challenge is at home. That is an oft stated, and valid, observation of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. This week, as he travels to Washington DC and Brasilia, he would probably recall his words with concern. So much to do at home, and yet so much time away from it at pointless talkfests. As Dr Singh himself used to joke, summitry is often tourism at public expense! The Obama nuclear summit and the Lula BRIC summit are, in fact, good examples of it. The prime minister’s real work in this second term, and he knows this, is at home.
In his first term, Dr Singh has done enough to “create an external environment conducive to India’s long-term economic development”. The time has come to create an internal environment that is equally conducive. Addressing the AICC session on 21 August 2004, the prime minister said, “The challenge for economic reform today is to breathe new life into government so that it can play a positive role where it must.” It is an agenda waiting to be addressed.
The reminder comes to us, if such reminders are needed at all, not just from the forests of Chhattisgarh, but from places closer to the world of the Business Standard reader. Like Chikkatpally in filmmaker Shyam Benegal’s latest oeuvre Well Done, Abba! Mr Benegal’s protagonist, Arman Ali, is part of our daily lives. He is the aam admi waiting, no longer just for the “inclusive growth” that he in fact sees happening around him, but for good, at least better, governance.
Mr Benegal has crafted an engaging and entertaining political satire that reminds us, if such reminding is needed, of the challenge of governance at home and the distance Bharat is yet to cover to enable India make her tryst with destiny.
The real challenge today for India, and for the prime minister, is now at home — both on the economic and national security fronts. Ensuring high economic growth that is fiscally sustainable, generates employment, with moderate inflation and stable exchange rates is a key challenge for 2010-11. While one can make speeches about double digit growth, one need not be obsessed about it. If an average of 8.0 per cent growth, which, of course, means 10 per cent and more in some parts of the country, creates enough job opportunities in manufacturing and infrastructure, the “rough edges of poverty” will get blunted.
However, this growth process will have to be fiscally sustainable. “Money does not grow on trees” is one of Dr Singh’s favourite idioms. India has to keep its debt and deficit levels under check and not allow growthmanship to put at risk fiscal and external economic stability. Any overheating of the economy, unleashing of inflationary pressures and balance of payments instability should be avoided, just as any slowing down of manufacturing and export growth should be seriously addressed.
No one knows all this better than the prime minister himself and the Union finance minister. The task before them is to ensure that their government and party understand the serious national security implications for India of not ensuring the financial and fiscal sustainability of the growth process.
The second, and perhaps at this point in time an equally if not more important challenge, is that of internal security. The massacre of security forces in Chhattisgarh by a band of Maoists is as dramatic a challenge to India’s internal security as the 26/11 attack in Mumbai was. The death toll is different, the scale and visibility of the events are different and the social class of the victims are different (which is why the Dantewada massacre competed with Sania Mirza’s marriage for television time!)
Make no mistake, India’s biggest national security challenge is at home. This is not to deny the external factor, especially to jehadi terrorism (and undoubtedly in the 26/11 attack). Even Maoist extremists may be getting some external support, as indeed some of the other insurgent groups are. But the roots of the problem are at home, and so are the solutions to it.
The solution is part administrative and part political. The prime minister must provide leadership to inspire a new effort at administrative and governance reform. India desperately needs police reform and there is no lack of ideas. Home Minister P Chidambaram will go down in history if he can initiate major police and civil administration reform. Mr Chidambaram is a reluctant home minister. He may be happier getting his previous job back, but the era of finance ministers making history is over. Mr Chidambaram is today the best man for the job of home minister and he must bring all his energies and sharp intellect to focus on the long overdue reform of India’s police and internal security system.
Much of the hard and difficult work in police reform has to be done at the state level. However, given the politicisation of civilian and police administration in most states, and rampant corruption, one cannot expect much initiative to come from the states, especially those worst affected by insurgency. The Centre has no option other than to step in and push for reform and modernisation of the internal security apparatus. The focus of such reform has to be on professionalism in police and paramilitary forces and on making the best use of available resources (some ideas have been put forward by the Kargil Review Committee, the Julio Ribeiro Committee and so on).
There is far too much global summitry these days when the peaks that need climbing are at home. What can BRICs and BASIC do for India if India will not address the basics, building itself up brick by brick?
