Surjit S Bhalla: PM: Signs he is a 'changing

JADU ECONOMICS

Signs are that henceforth we will see the "old" Manmohan Singh

The first year of Congress party rule has ended, and most analysts have given it a thumbs down. The coalition that Congress runs is composed of the Left, the confused, and the moral.

But more problems reside within the Congress""especially via the anti-reform and anti-sense policies advocated by the Congress Left. Thus, very few people bought the story that the PM, Mr Manmohan Singh, had not been a reformer because he had been constrained by coalition politics.

There are signs that Mr Singh is breaking away from his captured past. The occurrence of these signs so soon after the first year anniversary (May 21) is likely not co-incidental. It appears that Mr Singh has given notice to the Left, wherever they reside: this leader is not for pushing around""not any more.

What are these signs? Three: one indicative, one subtle, one bold. The indicative sign was provided by Mr Singh being frank with the reporters en route to America. The inference from his discourse (in which he said that neither he, nor the Congress, needed lessons on being patriotic) is that Mr Singh is finally getting tired of receiving jumping orders from the Left.

Singh stated the obvious, and did not state that if anybody has been unpatriotic, historically, it most likely is the Left (e.g. its love affair with Russia and China; and its abiding love affair with those whose pictures adorn their offices, homes and hearts).

The subtle, and truly brilliant, sign was contained in Mr Singh's Oxford speech. He has been criticised for being gracious, reflective, and honest about the role of British as colonisers of India. There is no one, not even the British, who claim, today, that colonialism was a good or even a desirable part of anyone's history, either as coloniser or colonised.

But the Left believes that colonial rule was all bad, like communist rule is all good, mass murderers like Stalin and Mao included. Funny that the Left does not see communism as colonialism, but that is another story. Mr Singh's transgression, according to the Left, was that he conceded that some good, for India, had emerged from the colonial experience.

Without getting into pyrotechnics, let us try and answer the following question: given that India's destiny was to be colonised, was the British colonial period "better" for India than an alternative coloniser, e.g. the French, the Spanish, the Portuguese, or the Dutch?

How are we to measure better? In 1950, India's inheritance in the form of standard of living, per capita income in PPP terms, was better than say Indonesia, a Dutch colony ""about 30 per cent higher. It is purely another story that the situation is entirely the reverse today""and a story that has precious little to do with British colonialism.

This 30 per cent less poor India statistic is not proof of anything because to start off with, India was the richest colonised country at the time of colonisation. True.

So what about the post-colonial experience? If the institutions and language that we inherited from the British (democracy and English) are more productive than the legacies of other colonialists, then there was some "value added" from British colonialism.

With this yardstick, British colonialism has been a resounding success. We are all proud of being the first developing country democracy in the world, and the rest of the world has only followed.

Would we have been a democracy in 1947 if we had not been colonised by the British? Certainly no individual argues that, and especially not an Indian politician, who has been the major beneficiary of this British liberal order.

As fate would have it, and primarily because of the super-economic and super-political power of that other British colony America, English is today the lingua franca of technology, software, music, etc. If you know English, you are at a major advantage in this increasingly globalised world.

Don't believe me? Just ask the Chinese. And don't ask the Marxists if they think English has been beneficial""ask the kids of the Marxists. Elected Marxists like Buddhadeb Bhattacharya of West Bengal have applauded Mr Singh's Oxford speech, in stark contrast to the unelected but prominent Left leaders who think the speech was a sellout.

The third departure""from the beaten track of the left-over or overtly Left""is the path breaking Indo-American nuclear agreement successfully negotiated by Mr Singh. The import of the agreement has been widely recognised""it changes, and considerably enhances India's role on the world stage. It provides India with what it needs""power of both kinds, respect, and increased capacity to grow faster (via enhanced status as a destination for investment).

There are very few agreements that America will sign over the next 20 years that will be as strategic. The agreements we signed earlier with Russia were more like agreements between a coloniser and the colonised. The nuclear agreement with the US was among strategic equals""they needed it as much as we do.

For Manmohan Singh to break out so soon after his miserable first year in office is significant; and break out not just once, but thrice. With these imaginative departures, Mr Singh has begun the long road to recovery as not only the leading statesman of India, but one of the front-line leaders of the world.

ssbhalla@gmail.com