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The winds of change

Menka Shivdasani

EVER since the economic reform process began, it has been fashionable to criticise the policies followed by Jawaharlal Nehru. There is, of course, much merit in these arguments; he was a dreamer and not an economist. Not surprising then that he made a ha sh of things and we are still trying to find a way to get out of the mess.

But if there is one contribution that not even his most trenchant critics would find fault with -- unless they are from the Sangh Parivar -- was his advocacy of secularism. Just think about it. What differentiates India from Pakistan? If you go to the ro ot cause of the problem it is a simple premise. The creators of Pakistan believed that Hindus and Muslims were two nations and could never live together. Gandhi, Nehru and the other nationalists, on the other hand, did not subscribe to this two-nation th eory.

Who was right? You just have to turn to history for that. A Pakistan formed on the premise that religion of the people is the cement that binds the nation together broke up into two in 1971. Today, it is a state that is on the verge of collapse as spiral ing militancy threatens to take over the only glue that has held the country together -- the Pakistani armed forces.

India, on the other hand, has muddled through, despite problems, communal riots, the Babri Masjid demolition and the rise of the Hindu extremist factions. And for all this we have to thank our first prime minister.

All these thoughts came flooding back to me, watching CNN's Q&A , with Mr Riz Khan, this week. It had two journalists -- Mr Nayyar Zaidi from Pakistan and Mr Vijay Dutt, a London-based Indian journalist, who discussed an entire gamut of issues including, obviously Kashmir. (Ever wondered why Kashmir is so important to Pakistan? Apart from its strategic and political importance and the historical baggage surrounding the issue, the fact is that Kashmir is the living proof that the two-nation theory was wr ong. Here is a Muslim-majority province that is a part of India. Everyday, that it remains a part of India proves that Hindus and Muslims can actually live together.)

Mr Zaidi kept bringing religion into the discussion. For example, when the discussion turned to the Gujarat earthquake and Pakistan's support during the disaster, Mr Riz Khan commented that travelling in the sub-continent you get a feeling that there is far less hostility among the people of India and Pakistan than there is among the Governments. Mr Zaidi agreed that ``on a people-to-people basis, I do not think there is a problem between Indians and Pakistanis or Muslims and Hindus''.

When a caller called in with a question as to why Pakistan was not responding to the several friendly gestures made by India, including releasing over 90,000 prisoners of the 1971 war, his answer was astonishing, to say the least. He claimed that the pri soners were released because Indira Gandhi was about to fight an election, and since Muslims constituted a significant share of the Congress vote-bank, she did not want to fight the election while keeping ``over 90,000 Muslims as prisoners''.

Just look at the irony. Here is a senior Pakistani journalist taking the Hindu extremist line. What he is effectively saying was that Indian Muslims were Muslims first and Indians second and would, hence, be more worried about the ``Muslim prisoners of w ar'' rather than the fact that India had won the war. Obviously, extremism does not distinguish between green and saffron! Needless to say, Mr Dutt's reactions to this was factually correct.

If Nehru's belief in secularism and how it has inculcated a more rational way of thinking in us was evident in CNN's Q&A, it was his economic policies and resultant mess that were the underlying focus of discussions in a pre-budget discussion with Mr Tar un Das, secretary-general of the Confederation of Indian Industry, on CNBC's Budget Special Round Table, presented by Mr Guha Thakurta. One of the critical points being discussed was the mess in the public sector and the absence of any clear policies for its privatisation to scale it down from what Nehru had once described as ``commanding heights of the Indian economy''.

Mr Das pointed out that we were going through the ``pain of change''. We had come to the hump, he said and the uphill part was done. ``I thought it was the other way round,'' Mr Guha Thakurta commented, pointing out the various things that had not been a chieved during these years of reform, particularly in terms of privatisation. Mr Das' response was to say that even if implementation was a problem, at least the policy direction was clear. It had been a fragmented 10 years of reform, with so many changi ng governments, and the process of liberalisation was still in its infancy.

The problem with implementing the reform process, Mr Das felt, was that we were talking of large corporations with thousands of employees, whose families would be affected. ``We cannot afford social security,'' he said. ``The only way to do it is the hum ane way,'' he felt, offering VRS with large golden handshakes.

Though so many issues still need to be resolved -- for instance, we need investment back, said Mr Das, pointing out that six per cent growth was ``no big deal'' -- he was on the whole, optimistic about this year's Budget.

``I would see this as a more confident Budget,'' he said. ``Mr Yashwant Sinha's first and third Budget had an average rating. The second one stimulated growth, and the fourth one will carry more conviction, see him making stronger moves.'' Mr Guha Thakur tha did not seem to share Mr Das' optimism -- ``I think you are paid to be optimistic,'' he grinned. After all, while we may be on the right track in terms of liberalisation, the fact is, we are not going fast enough. Like Mr Guha Thakurtha asked during the show, ``What have we privatised -- one bakery?''