New economy, old pains

By Harish Khare

YESTERDAY, THE former Prime Minister, Mr. Vishwanath Pratap Singh, was offering a token protest at the Chennai Port against the import of highly-subsidised agricultural products. No major political party shares Mr. Singh's concern. The lonely furrow that he plows only underlines the structured dishonesty that has crept into our party system. Indeed, an entirely artificial - and politically bogus - distinction is being sought to be invented between the BJP and the Congress on the issue of globalisation and its implications for the domestic economy.

First it was the Congress which, during the Narasimha Rao- Manmohan Singh era, pretended that globalisation/liberalisation was a painless process, that there were no hidden costs for any section of the society, and that it was only ``continuity with change''. That was the time the BJP developed the propensity to appropriate for itself the nationalist mantle and accuse the Congress and the subsequent Congress-supported United Front regime of selling out on national sovereignty. The last major economic resolution adopted by its National Executive (July 1997) before the BJP got to form the Government at the Centre had talked of ``the false slogan of globalisation, the fatal attraction of unrestrained consumerism, the aping of the West, the concern for the comfort of the few at the cost of the vast millions, the lurking dangers to our cultural values and the emerging threat to our sovereignty...''

Now, with the zeal of a new convert, a BJP-led Government has moved into the fast lane to globalisation at breakneck speed. Like its predecessor Governments, the Vajpayee regime also maintains the fiction that globalisation will bring prosperity for one and all, and that no one will have to pay any price. The NDA Government has vigorously committed itself to the second generation of reforms, and even presumably ``social justice'' men such as Mr. Sharad Yadav and Mr. Ram Vilas Paswan are being enlisted in the task of privatisation. This is not surprising. What is surprising is the entirely futile argument whether the BJP Government was in too much of a hurry to remove quantitative restrictions on imports or whether it was the Congress regime that committed the original sin.

Minus the artificial posturing, there appears to be a compact at the elite level, cutting across the political divide; no political party of any consequence - especially if it is part of a ruling arrangement - has allowed its ideological pretensions and political formulations to come in the way of supporting the ``consensus on economic reforms'', that endearing euphemism for an unapologetic pursuit of the twin agenda of liberalisation and globalisation. ``Compulsions of coalition politics'' has become the most convenient mantra to explain away any compromise at the cost of the masses. Only three days ago, the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, was putting in the mandatory appearance at the most exclusive gathering of the World Economic Forum. Mr. Vajpayee has yet to address a single public meeting where he could preach to the masses about the inevitability of ``hard decisions''. Nor does any political party or leader summon the courage or the intellectual conviction to spell out what these hard decisions are and at whose expense, and that some people will have to suffer before everyone ends up gaining in a reasonably equitable manner.

Simply put, globalisation means that the foreigner - trader, businessman, investor, backed by his Government's economic, and diplomatic clout - is insisting on a piece of the domestic action. This foreigner is forever threatening that he will take his dollars elsewhere - China is mentioned most automatically - if the Indians do not open the door wide enough for him. The foreigner is not on a charity mission, he is out to make profits, which he will do naturally at the expense of the local trader and the indigenous consumer. Globalisation is touted as a two-way traffic in which the Indians are challenged to test their competence and products against the best (and subsidised) goods from outside. May be some Indians too are benefiting from this presumably two-way traffic. May be. But if it is working out so wonderfully, why can political voices be not raised in defence of these beneficiaries of globalisation/liberalisation?

On the other hand, it is easy to identify those who are finding the going tough. First, there is that section of corporate India that had bank-rolled Project Vajpayee in 1997-1998 in the hope that a ``nationalist'' Government in New Delhi would raise the protectionist walls so high around North Block that the desi``entrepreneur'' would wear down the foreign competitor in the same manner as he short- changed the Indian consumer all these decades. Now the same corporate India groups are getting nervous that the Vajpayee regime too is unable or unwilling to rig the rules of the game in their favour.

Second, there is the lower middle class - the LPG constituency - in urban and semi-rural areas that was just beginning to feel comfortable with illusions of affluence, spiced with delusions of Hindutva; this constituency is now being castigated by the BJP ideologues as ``vested interests'', who are demanding continuation of subsidies and who are depriving the real poor of the benefits of economic reforms. The economic editors bemoan that a Mamata Banerjee is being molly-coddled on the eve of the Assembly elections so that she can carry on the fiction that ``reforms'' come without cost.

And, the ``loser'' third group consists of the agricultural community. The peasant castes which have over the years sought to protect their post-Green Revolution economic prosperity by seeking political alliances with regional outfits such as the Akali Dal, the Haryana Vikas Party and the TDP. Now these very communities find themselves feeling the pinch of the import of agricultural products, as part of the WTO mandate.

These ``losers'' will naturally and understandably keep making their unhappiness known. They will enlist political parties and leaders in their cause; unless there is a willingness to minister to these new pains with wisdom and honesty, the polity may experience convulsions whose outcome cannot possibly be calibrated by anyone, especially by those who preen themselves as the bedrock of stability. As it is, governmental stability in New Delhi is a somewhat precarious arrangement. Unless our political establishment is willing to address honestly these pains, disorder and chaos may rudely disrupt our collective reverie, triggering a new cycle of flight of capital, instability, etc. Or, alternatively, the ruling establishment can try the option of distracting national attention away from economic pains by cranking up spurious political disputes. Kargil today, Kashmir tomorrow; and, if nothing else will work, there is always the old reliable ``communal tension'' option.

It is imperative, therefore, to recognise that the process of globalisation imposes inherent inequalities on a developing country such as India. Inequalities of information, skills, and above all, of mental toughness. Our decision-makers at the very top have to toughen themselves to fight out this unequal battle to the best of our collective advantage; this is the true test of the much-touted deshbhakti. We cannot delude ourselves by putting our faith in the inherent reasonableness and civility of the rest of the world, particularly of the West.

But this battle cannot be won at the elite level alone. Masses will have to be mobilised in this battle if the country has to withstand the WTO-related pressures and unfairness. Just as successive Governments have imaginatively used the domestic opposition to stall concessions on CTBT, it is time to speak honestly to the country about the demands and expectations from abroad in the name of globalisation. The rulers will have to trust the citizens if they want ``reforms'' and the New Economy to become a collective enterprise.

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