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. 

Worshiping poverty

There is much to gain from poverty. In contrast to Mao's war cry in China that "power flows from the barrel of the gun", the political power in India flows from the hungry mouths. There is no better shortcut in politics than being seen fighting the war against poverty.

But in the last 66 years, the war against poverty has only added more poor to the population. This has worked well for those who reap political dividend out of the growing numbers of poor. Those concerned with questions of their bellies in variably would not ask larger questions of erosion of their collective prospect.

Therefore, it's understandable why the Sonia Gandhi lead Congress, with drum-beater Rahul Gandhi, and the "famed" economist Prime Minister Manmohan Singh are keen to thrust Food Security Act at a cost of Rs 1,30,000 crore a year on the nation. The China model of growth is naturally brushed aside by the priests of poverty temple with one single broom called "democracy with socialism". Therefore, any comparison with China is largely "thinking aloud" or day-dreaming by the "idle" academician.. 

Add another Rs 30,000 crore annually (Rs 1,50,000 crore, $ 38 billion, so far in six years) sucked in by Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), which would imply that India commits over Rs 1,60,000 crore ($ 40 billion) annually in the political battle against poverty. Further add another Rs 60,000 crore ($ 15 billion), which the banks let go in bearing the cost of the loan waiver of the farmers' debts, which was pushed through to buy votes for the UPA-I. The nationalized banks had taken a body blow from this act so much so that the government had to infuse more capital into them later.   

Incidentally, projects worth Rs 1,50,000 crores ($ 38 billion) of the railways are stuck for want of funds. No wonder the railways minister Pawan Kumar Bansal yawns when he speaks on the subject of bullet trains to an audience, which is largely foreign.

He knows the money in India goes to perpetuate poverty and not to build the nation. Over Rs two lakh crore ($50 billion ) is locked into unproductive activities essentially designed to "buy" votes. They create their own web wherein the life-breath of India struggles for oxygen (investment).

Admittedly, the bullet trains would not bring the poor out of their poverty curse but the infrastructure development does lift a lot of people out of the vicious cycle. 

Thirteen years ago former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on his birth day, 25th December, launched the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojna (PMGSY). A large number of states have actually

A PMGSY road in the Puri district of Odisha which brought
in apartments amid paddy fields, while helping the villagers
to engage in a number of economic activities like
poultry farms, etc. 

been able to make remarkable changes in the lives of the poor who now engage in gainful employments through a host of economic activities.

If the rural road connectivity can give such windfall to the people in villages, one may imagine what could be the spin off if large projects are executed without waiting for years for the World Bank and Japan to sanction loans.

No wonder India's famed growth is now tottering at fiver per cent rate. "If India has to grow at eight per cent rate, the railways will have to grow at 11 per cent, which is currently three per cent. The funds have to be pumped into the railways infrastructure. It's not just desirable but unavoidable," said Mr V. K. Gupta, Managing Director, Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC).

But the money is locked in activities which buy votes. "We are going to give you legal rights for foodgrains. We have given you MGNREGA. We waived off Rs 60,000 crore of the farmers' loans," Rahul Gandhi tirelessly reminds his audience everywhere; be it Karnataka or Uttar Pradesh or Bihar.

The government would like people to believe that Food Security Bill, which would cover 67 per cent of India's population, would ensure a savings of an average Rs 4,400 in the hands of the poor, which would consequently be spent in their additional consumption.  This would spur demand!

But the government avoids mentioning that by sucking 62 million tonnes of the foodgrains out of the market, the massive price spiral and the collateral damage in inflation could starve the very engine of the growth in the end. The savings of Rs 4,400 in one hand would be outmatched by erosion of a minimum Rs 10,000 from another hand, who would not spend on their demands. So, the demand may not be spurred but spiked.

For the last four years, the high inflation has baffled all. It has left the RBI (Reserve Bank of India) clueless, while drying up credit for businesses to expand and in the end bringing down the Indian economy to its feet.

One is compelled to believe the maxim that "speak as if your audience consists of idiots"; and such speakers apparently abound in the UPA dispensation.

The Bihar leader Lalu Prasad Yadav was shocked to find the Tughlaq Road, where he resides in Delhi, lined up on both sides by the SUVs on which the Sarpanch and Mukhiya (village headmen) lined up to seek tickets to contest the Assembly elections recently. 

The MGNREGA helped the petty politicians in amassing wealth. It's not confined to Bihar but is a feature of India.  In a recently held conference of the Panchayati Raj at Vigyan Bhavan, the Union ministers kept staring at rural women leaders. It was not for lust but for the fact that the rural women leaders were loaded with heavy gold jewellery. "That's what the MGNREGA has done," quipped one Union minister, with lips pressed hard against each other to stifle a laughter at the state of India's policy making.

Politics in India demands "quick-fixes". It does not matter if such "quick-fixes"further fortify the temple of poverty. The analogy of the head of the ruling party being the chief priest of the temple of poverty and her son being the conch-blower may not be far off the reality.

Habits die hard and the Congress leaders would like to continue worshiping poverty in place of commissioning programmes, which can actually take out the poor from the vicious cycle of poverty. 

The power truly flows from the empty stomach of the poor.