Politics drives reform to grassroots ……T K ARUN
IT IS conventional wisdom in middle class India that politics is hostile to economic reform, that the only way to carry out serious reform is to transfer policymaking out of the hands of politicians and into institutions placed one remove or more from the pulls and pressures of politics. This common sense of the chattering classes is uncommonly mistaken. Politics is, right at this moment, broadening the base of reform, allowing the edifice that is built on top to remain stable even as it rises ever higher.
Politics, in this conventional wisdom, is what politicians do to keep the multitude happy in its ignorance and demanding and demeaning neediness. This could mean bankrupting the exchequer by doling out subsidies, foolishly pre-empting greenfield projects by refusing to take over and consolidate land occupied by an unruly and unreasonable horde of the multitude, provoking their baser instincts to channel their passions into violence against one another, pandering to bigoted community leaders and endangering national security. Reform, in contrast, is what suave experts think up in committees that meet in civilised comfort and draw upon the wisdom of advanced economies, for adoption as policy and the law by politicians who at least have the sense to understand what is patiently explained to them.
As the advanced economies whose expert advice and regulatory proficiency we have always been urged to make our own flounder in recession, Indias unwashed multitude is keeping fast moving consumer good companies moving in the right direction on the stock markets, adding more than 10 million phone connections a month, lapping up two-wheelers and demanding an occasional chartered helicopter to let an upwardly mobile bridegroom catch up with his upperwardly mobile bride. The rural and semi-urban masses also throw up several crore micro-entrepreneurs who survive the financial meltdown and resultant domestic credit squeeze without a hitch, even if for no virtue other than their exclusion from the credit system, formal or informal.
Lalu Prasad in his Bihar chief minister avatar is the epitome of anti-reform politics, according to conventional wisdom. Lalu Prasad, in his avatar as railway minister is, of course, hailed by the conventionally wise, as a brilliant reformer. But historians are likely to assess Lalus 15 year rule of Bihar, which brought the state to its knees, as the period which readied the state for its ongoing march out of mediaeval backwardness to prosperity, even if under a different political leader. Leading subaltern groups to acquire agency and voice is Lalu Yadavs chief pro-reform accomplishment.
Such groups used to see themselves as people condemned by fate or their previous births to live out their lives as toilers whose only chance to survive is to do the bidding of their superiors, meekly subjecting themselves to exploitation and oppression. Not any more, thanks to Lalu Prasad, Mayawati, Naxalites, and other political formations who seek to draw power from the disempowered. Once traditionally subaltern groups start seeing themselves as people who have a right to dream, to move up in life, that is when economic reform begins. Once they provide the masses this realisation and the energy to move out of oppression, such political formations can become a hindrance, much like a cocoon that nurtures the caterpillar but has to be pierced and thrown asunder for the butterfly to soar to light. But while they are at it, they deserve the wholehearted support of all reformers.
Empowering the disempowered to become creative, productive human beings this is a task that politics alone can hope to achieve. And this is the starting point of economic reform. Once the masses realise that they too can rise out of poverty and go much beyond, not by lottery or games of chance, whether televised or otherwise, they cannot be stopped from creating prosperity for themselves and raising the growth rate of the economy to sustained double digits.
The beauty of our competitive polity is that, once this process of empowerment begins, parties have to compete to provide ever better means of realising the ambitions of the multitude. Inclusive growth, inclusive banking, greater spending on healthcare and education, rural roads all these become standard parts of mainstream political programmes. This feeds reform and growth even further.
India cannot grow if only an elite prosper. For Indias growth to be sustainable, the participatory base of that growth must encompass every Indian. Inclusive growth is the right means to achieve that. It is not the case that by merely raising the slogan, the present government has brought about such growth. But it has outlined the right priorities, and it would be difficult for any successor government to reverse those. And that is the success of politics as economic reform.
Broad-based, participatory growth is the key to sustained prosperity
Drawing in the people at large into this growth process calls for substituting subaltern passivity with human creativity
Not reform measures but politics of empowerment and inclusive growth can bring about this transformation
Drawing in the people at large into this growth process calls for substituting subaltern passivity with human creativity
Not reform measures but politics of empowerment and inclusive growth can bring about this transformation