From a socialist dogma to a glimmer of hope

From a socialist dogma to a glimmer of hope

Significant beginnings are harbingers of the future. What “Rosebud” was to Citizen Kane, "The Meiji Restoration" to Japan, the “Long March” to China. “The whiff of grapeshot” to Napoleon, “Anand”, to the future of Amitabh Bachchan, the first five years of liberalisation will be, to the future of India.

In these five years, economics emerged as a political statement so powerful that the future will not be able to ignore the brief season when the reforms policy was introduced. The voter has spoken in several voices but the final tally consists of one part in favour of Hindu resurgence, one part in favour of modernisation, and a third, which is a fractured amalgamation of regional aspirations trying to meld itself into one entity.

The question before the country today is should secularism be upheld at great cost by an ostrich-like denial of the three pronged-popular mandate or should it be tempered by the compelling logic of blending all three verdicts of the voter? The United Front combined vote means that the States want more autonomy and they will have to be given it. Resources will have to be more equitably distributed. Decision-making will have to be decentralised.

The majority Hindu community will have to be given its demand for a pre-eminent position so that the insecurity bogey of becoming second-class-citizens in their own country is removed. Denied, this groundswell has taken the BJP from a negligible two seats to 195 along with its electoral allies. Denied some more, it will ensure the full manifestation of a saffron regime with a hard right agenda come the next election!

The country must continue on its path of modernisation initiated by the Narasimha Rao Government. Under his courageous leadership the Congress Party jettisoned the creaky socialism that might have garnered more votes but does nothing for the modernisation of the country or its hopes to play a significant role in the community of nations. It is not surprising that with the disturbance of the status quo brought about by the Rao administration, the other unresolved problems of over centralisation at New Delhi and the paranoia of the 82 per cent Hindu majority vis-à-vis the minorities, should also appear and demand to be addressed.

The apprehension that the century plus old Congress Party could disappear because of its departure from its original principles of socialism and swadeshi brings an example to mind. For the entire 19th century, the British parliament saw governments run by either the Whigs or the Tories. The 19th century was a time of remarkable economic stability with the economic index for the entire century pegged at four per cent! Then the new century produced the upheavals of the two World Wars, and after that, the world changed completely.

The old Whigs virtually disappeared to be replaced by the Labour Party. Since we have based our parliamentary democracy on the Westminister model, is there a case in point for us to expect elements of the BJP and Congress to merge into a party of the right while all the regional forces and other like minded entities coalesce into a party of the Left? It would certainly shrink the ballot paper from its bed-sheet like proportions and provide the electorate with clear cut alternatives hitherto denied.

Will this new formation which some people see emerging from the historic verdict of the people become the shape of things to come? It is interesting to note Mr. HD Deve Gowda’s outburst after being denied the opportunity to form a Government at the Centre on May 16th, 1996. He said, “I am leaving for Karnataka, we will not bother to vote against the BJP. After all, it is a Congress-BJP coalition.” Has he prophetically articulated the future? More importantly, is it after due consideration, the appropriate response to the verdict of the people for the 11th Lok Sabha?

On the matter of economics becoming a political statement, let us examine some recent history. After decades through which no Indian dared to visualise a strong resurgent economy on par with the best anywhere, today we are witnessing a growing band of industrialists asserting they will create transnational corporations, that they can modernise and compete internationally, that there is no need to hand over the country to wholly-owned subsidiaries of foreign companies. They might have an ulterior self-serving motive of course, but several of them mean what they say. It was not so long ago that many of the same worthies moaned endlessly about inferior manpower, inferior infrastructure, red-tapism, political interference, lack of commitment, constraints of growth owing to dogma, and ended up saying that India would therefore remain a Third World backwater for close to eternity. They implied then that they were thoroughbreds constrained and if their shackles were to be removed they could fly like the wind. Perhaps it is time to call their bluff and then we can see who is part of the wheat and who is only chaff.

The socialist years were like a long session of study and preparation for the day we would come out to claim our destiny. If we really could not stand the cant in that period we could join the bully-boy bureaucracy at home, or skip to foreign shores and become “clever Indians”. There was a virtue made out of mediocrity that coloured our thinking.

Internationally, we saw for ourselves the failure of systems that denied their citizens the goodies of life. They did not grow strong. In time, they were hard pressed to provide even the onions and potatoes of daily existence. The amazing thing is we saw ourselves as a variation on this theme of deprivation, thanking God for the fact that we had enough to eat, that we could at least buy inferior goods, that we could avail of indifferent education and health services. We gradually gave up on expecting anything more, thinking it would not ever come to pass.

Now all that is changed. We know now that there is no glass ceiling we cannot break through if we try. The country has taken out its notebook and pencil to make its wish lists. The bourses indicate a yearning for economic growth never before witnessed and pessimism about retrograde steps that could be taken in support of socialist dogmas.

The Indian polity has grown up. We now no longer ally ourselves with the post-colonial have-nots in celebration of non-alignment. We do not shrug and say we just do not have the money to improve things and so must lump it as it is, resigned to deterioration and decay in the name of principle. We have been talking seriously of an integration with the world economy, of a free floating currency, of untold billions pouring in, to give us a chance to catch up, and be second to none.

Why has this happened? Is it because the polity is reflecting a broad consensus on this bid for prosperity? Has the evidence already before us convinced the electorate that there is every chance of becoming a first rate nation after all? If this is so, we should be suffused with hope for the future, because once we have dared to believe in our destiny, we have destroyed the mental shackles of a Third World apology forever. All that remains is to build detailed consensus on issue after issue as they hurtle past us towards implementation.

( 1,241 words)

By Gautam Mukerji

First published in The Pioneer www.dailypioneer.com on Wednesday, June 5th, 1996 in the main OPINION slot on the Edit Page.