Gujarat polls: The assertion of entrepreneurs

The community wants its rightful place in national politics, and will get it

The election results of Gujarat have been analysed by the losers, namely the poll forecasters and other assorted media experts, most of whom had egg on their face. The real loser, namely the Congress Party, as usual declared victory for Sonia and Rahul. Then there was a cacophony of voices regarding inane things like Hindutva/ Moditva, etc.

Most of the analysis missed out an important point — that Gujarat is asserting and claiming its well-deserved role in the national scheme of things. Gujarat has the most entrepreneurial and risk-taking group of communities and individuals, with a Diaspora spread far and wide, in East Africa, Europe, USA and East Indies. In post-Independence India, their tallest leader, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was not given much importance -in a sense, he lost the prime minister’s chair due to Gandhi’s decision regarding Nehru. Not many national schemes/ monuments are named after him and another leader from that state, Morarji Desai, is completely forgotten.

The contribution of Gujarat to our economy is mind boggling and it continued with its entrepreneurship even during the Nehruvian era of license quota-raj. But, unfortunately, in the peak planning era of the fifties and the sixties, policy formulation was undertaken by experts who can be broadly classified as liberal and vaguely progressive. A significant number of them belonged to the Bengal province. The Mahalonobis model adopted during the Second Five Year Plan gave a boost to their ideas and ideology. We find that very few experts from the western part of India, particularly Gujarat, were involved in the economic and planning affairs of our country during that time.

This got strengthened in the post-Nurul Hasan period - he was education minister in the early seventies - wherein most of the social science institutions were filled with progressives of various hues.

Entrepreneurship was derided and treated with contempt. It was considered as “bania mentality” and the by-now infamous Nehruvian thunder of “hang the traders from the nearest lamp post” became a part of intellectual folklore. Indian thinking and worldview was appropriated by a small but vociferous group of progressives who cheered re-naming Dharamtala in central Calcutta as Lenin Sarani. Risk-taking was considered as blasphemy and getting government jobs became the ultimate human achievement.

Then came the major impetus in the form of liberalisation, after the catastrophic foreign exchange crisis of the early nineties. Before that, the ultimate Gujarati businessman and risk-taker, Dhirubhai Ambani, had shown that the government was extortionist and hence, rather than bend rules, entrepreneurs needed to formulate government rules to get ahead in business. That is a major breakthrough in entrepreneurship in our country. Coupled with liberalisation, this slowly brought about the decline of the progressives.

It is another thing that many children of these arm chair revolutionaries of the sixties and seventies have since graduated from management schools to enter investment banking and other fields with six-figure monthly salaries.

But the press and the electronic media still have the “progressive boomer” generation babies who cannot comprehend what is taking place. It is the assertion of the “bania” or entrepreneur against the State. Ironically, it is the Centre which has been putting shackles on these risk-takers, for they also want a place in the high table of politics, not just business.

This assertion of Gujarat has to be distinguished from the complaints of say West Bengal. West Bengal has a huge grievance industry that believes it was wrong on the part of the British to shift the capital from Calcutta to Delhi. The grievance industry talks about price equalisation, imperialism, etc. In other words, Bengal asserts that all its problems are due to — imaginary or real — enemies who are outside the state, when it has itself destroyed all entrepreneurship in chemical/ engineering and computer industries, where it was a leader in the forties and fifties.
 
The assertion of Gujarat is different. It is based on achievements rather than grievances. It wants its rightful place in the Delhi durbar since it has been growing in double digits, has spectacular achievements on the electricity and water fronts, and is the only state with courage to make stealing electricity a criminal offence. In a sense, the assertion of Gujarat is a logical culmination of the process of liberalisation and the emerging global entrepreneurship of Indians. The idiom and the contours of the debate are changing from that of caste, socialism and imperialism to water, electricity and small business. The three pillars - non-alignment, socialism and secularism - of the Nehruvian era, which are the prime mantra of the progressives, are all dead.

Gujarat did not talk the language of caste and it is a tectonic change from the identity politics so much the favourite of the progressives. Gujarat is enthusiastic and does not want to be ignored in this era of business and risk-taking. Gujarat wants to occupy its role in national politics. That is the message this election has served.

When the economy liberalises and business flourishes, it is but natural that entrepreneurs would like a major role in running the affairs of the country. The two-sector socialistic planning model of the fifties handed over political power to one group and now the liberalised, entrepreneur-worshipping economy will give importance to another set of people, who will occupy the Delhi chairs. Nothing to be surprised.

R Vaidyanathan
Professor of Finance & Control, IIM-Bangalore
Views are personal. Feedback may be mailed to vaidya@iimb.ernet.in.