Political slyness and the culture of silence

The trumpeters are back with a vengeance. Stung by the grim state of the economy and criticism from those who control the global media, the whiz kids of the Indian neo-liberal establishment have started repeating the same mantra ad nauseum. The ‘Indian story’ is on is the constant refrain.

The middle class is ensconced in the belief that a close embrace with the world’s ‘sole superpower’ would expedite India’s rendezvous with greatness. This belief was nurtured by this very horde over the last two decades. But alas, the global environment seems to be completely out of sync with such a stretch of the imagination. The underlying paradigm of debt-driven consumption has forced the economy in US and Europe to tank. That has not only dragged developed economies back, it has threatened the global economy as a whole.

The single-point obsession with growth is too much for the overwhelming majority to bear. This growth, when delineated, reveals that the component of profit has risen from 20% to 60% while that of labour has fallen from 30% to 20%.

But more than macroeconomic details of the Indian trajectory, what is stressing our neo-liberal mandarins is the soft underbelly of this ‘Indian story’. The corruption and scams that exploded recently have snatched the high moral ground that the Indian establishment claimed to stand on, based on accelerated growth.
Significantly, these scams are of a new genre, driven by a policy dogma that private corporations can do no wrong. Our natural resources were handed over for a song on the premise that ‘growth’ would be bolstered automatically!

Growth presupposes enhancement of productive activities, be they in agriculture or industry. But productive sectors need a congenial environment, an ‘ecosystem’, as some may put it or the development of the infrastructure sector. But for roads, water, energy and basic industry there can be no sustainable growth. Land for industry is another crucial element.

In the ‘reform’ years – the Indian establishment aggressively pushed its self-constructed fiction with total insensitivity towards public interest and transparency. But misplaced dogma can only produce cronyism, nothing less.

Natural resources are supposedly conceived as community and national assets. The government holds it as the “trustee” of the people. Since the makers of the Constitution did not conceive these natural resources to be, at any point, under the control of private, profit-driven corporate entities, their management was not defined.

Notwithstanding the current criticisms of governance, fundamentally government control does not imply private profit. But the frenzied belief that the ‘animal spirit’ of private corporations is the panacea for all growth-related challenges have led to this unregulated, super-profit inspired wrongdoing.

Far from being chastened by these outrageous consequences, neo-liberal whiz kids try to drum up continuing support for their misplaced ‘India story’. Instead of introspection, there is arrogance running riot.

Unfortunately, the PM leads this pack. Otherwise how could he justify actions of his government, claiming that the country would suffer loss of ‘growth’ if opaque allocations of coal blocks were discontinued despite adopting a policy to the contrary? Little did he remember that not an ounce of coal was produced with such an allocation? It took the glib talking skills of his new finance minister to point out that no coal has been taken out of the womb of “mother earth” hence there is no loss.

Therefore, ‘shoot the messenger’ is the name of the game. The constitutionally-assigned watchdog CAG is vilified. But this assault is not for the first time. The Opposition that waxes eloquent on respecting the CAG itself observed that “we needed Adjutant General and not Auditor General” when the coffin scam was uncovered by the same institution. Such acts rupture our moral fabric.

The government, or for that matter, all governments during this period of reforms have not cared to evolve an appropriate policy framework to sustain public interest and environment — growth that will benefit the people at large and not a select few. This eventually undermines growth.

Do we have an integrated energy and fuel policy? Are we setting up facilities that can facilitate productive efficiencies of the substantial small, medium sector? Do we care about the minimum needs of our billion-plus people? All these require focused attention on policy.

We must discuss and debate and must fix accountability.

Parliament is the forum. People must be informed. What better way but to make people privy to these crucial policy discourses. However, historically the present government and the principal opposition share a basic policy dogma. It seems the government and the principal Opposition have a vested interest in celebrating a ‘culture of silence’. No wonder Parliament is held up in a stalemate.

The writer is a member of the central committee, CPI(M)