Off the mark

The voice of the poor is most difficult to hear. You make efforts to hear them. The voice of the rich and affluent are too easy to hear. They're everywhere. 

And there lies the explanation for disoriented commentary on the Narendra Modi government in the first 50 days in the office. Not that all of them are undeserved, for Modi sowed their seeds by his brazenness in forming his Cabinet, which is, arguably, full of "Yes, Prime Minister" men.  

But first turn the focus on magnitude of lamentations post-budget. Some have commented to the extent to suggest that sky has fallen. Predictably, loads of advice have poured in for Modi and his colleague Arun Jaitely. 

Undeniably, India is a country of advisers, who offer their services mostly free. And mostly they are unmindful of the fact that hardly any one is keen for their well thought out advice. 

Furthermore, India is blessed with majority of its population who suffer from stereotyped thought process. And a large number of Indians are affected by the opinions of the rich and affluent, who enjoy ease and comfort in transmitting their vested interests as "independent analysis". Niira Radia tapes are just some confirmation of the malaise.

Post-Budget lamentations mostly veered around missing "big bang". We should forgive these anglicized commentators, for their little knowledge of language and governance. Evidently clear from the origin of "big bang", it's a phenomenon too rare and full of unprecedented consequences. Indian economy saw such "big bang" reforms in 1990s; first orchestrated by P V Narsimha Rao and Manmohan Singh combine and secondly by Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Yashwant Sinha duo.

Perusing to find out what "big bang" reforms Jaitely could have done but did not, one would come across suggestions to scrap "Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA)", "National Food Security Act (NFSA)", "dust-binning retrospective tax", "hammering away subsidies -- diesel, urea, LPG, Kerosene, etc.", "taxing big farmers", etc.     

Wishful thinking is too common. And they are passed on as well-thought views most of the times.

Could Modi and Jaitely scrap MGNREGA and NFSA? No, they can not and would not. For a great majority of people in this country have no secured means to ensure two meals a day. Almost half the Dalit (Scheduled Castes) population are dependent on MGNREGA for their livelihoods. That holds true for Scheduled Tribes (ST) also.

This blogger in a previous post titled "Red ant eaters" has illustrated field stories on how senior citizens work with their daughters-in-law from Mahadalit community in Bihar to run their families, as their young men idle away time with social ills for lack of jobs. Vast swathes of the country have not yet seen industries. And, undeniably, more than half of India's population are economically vulnerable.

And, therefore, to think that the Modi government can scrap MGNREGA, one needs to delude oneself with high dose of opium. 

But the widely unknown fact is that the state governments are no more able to spend MGNREGA funds as they had been doing in 2006-12. That was due to the performance audit by Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) and a few CBI cases. Even though it being an Act and, therefore, the government bound to provide for whatever the demand is, the fact is that expenditures under this head is going down. From the high of Rs 42,000 crores a few years ago, it's now about Rs 28,000 crore a year. And demand for jobs under it's going down also because of vulnerable people having earned enough to buy small parcel of land tp work on their own. 

The National Food Security Act is fundamentally a bad law. Not that it would suck over Rs 1.49 lakh crore each year to implement it in its entirety. It's bad, because it considers 75 per cent of population in rural and 50 per cent in urban areas deserving of almost free foodgrains. This is like splurging. That too when government estimates that 4 per cent of grains meant for public distribution system (PDS) ends up in black market. 

The business of subsidy is undeniably highly profitable for a few. Even without NFSA, government's food subsidy burden is close to Rs 80,000 crore a year. Barring Chhatisgarh, Odisa, Tamil Nadu, food subsidy through PDS has only fattened a class, which includes bureaucrats, politicians and middlemen 

And amendment to the NFS Act to limit beneficiaries to not more than 35 per cent population (currently 67 per cent) and ensuring Aadhar enabled PDS delivery system could give a robust direction to deliver the benefits to needy only.

Dust-binning retrospective tax, introduced by former Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee who handed over death warrants to industry and investors, could not have been practically possible for one simple reason. India has been dragged into international arbitration by Vodafone. Therefore, dust-binning it would have adversely affected the ongoing litigation.    

Rest of the possible "big bang" ideas are not really big bang but procedural in nature and doable as well. 

One digs to look for specifics to justify a lack of confidence. And Modi is himself to blame for this lack of

confidence in his Cabinet. He chose a bunch of ultra-loyalists as his Cabinet colleagues. And, he, thereby, shut the windows for free flows of ideas. His basket of talent is too narrow to instill confidence, that he can do a Vajpayee on Indian economy.   

The Modi cabinet is so inexperienced that it's very well vulnerable to become prisoners of suave bureaucrats. Inexperience of Modi ministers has already been exposed in the current Budget session of the Lok Sabha. If not for Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, the government could have been ripped apart for being callous in Parliamentary matters.

Post script

July to October is a period when prices of onion, tomato shoot up and leads to hullabaloo for a few months only to revive a year later. A seasoned bureaucrat having seen all of it for four decades had to say this:

"Onions and potatoes can easily be grown in pots. And it can be done rooftops and balconies easily. so,

while a lot of people grow flowers in pots, time has come that some vegetables like ladyfinger could be grown at home. So, in place of breast-beating lamentations on price rise, people should just take a little effort to become self-reliant in vegetables and that's doable also."

One would believe that individual actions too when aggregated can make a big difference. And that too when the flavour of the time is organic farming. So, why depend on vegetable carts; have your own small farm at your home.