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Playing god

I am always amused by the hypocrisy of our political system. The swift pirouettes that are practised in the name of changing priorities, the compulsions of globalisation and, now, the need for economic resurgence.

Actually, most of this is plain bullshit. All we are doing is making simple semantic alternations in our lexicon of what is politically correct, what is not. What was wrong yesterday is right today. What is right today may well turn out to be wrong again tomorrow when our political masters change. In the process, all we are achieving is a blurring of distinctions. In other words, definitions of right and wrong, correct and incorrect, good and bad are no longer valid for the long run. Everything is short term. What was so wonderful yesterday (like the Mahalanobis model of economic growth based on eloquent socialistic rhetoric or the public sector Nehru once described as the temples of modern India) are now seen as relics of an ideologically depraved past that must be quickly dismantled and replaced by new, more savvy, market friendly ideas.

And what are these new, more savvy, market friendly ideas? Precisely those that were once accursed as criminal, capitalistic, exploitative of the weak and the poor, defying the needs and aspirations of millions of Indians living below the bread line. In other words, the bad, the wrong, the wicked is now suddenly in fashion. The good lies buried, spurned. Take the case of the economy. For years, we grew up believing in the enduring virtues of state capitalism. What the government did was always right, proper, honest. Even though it was often wasteful, violative of our constitutional rights, and sometimes downright stupid.

The reason was simple: the State was the voice and aspirations of millions of Indians. Numbers lent legitimacy. Even the worst decision, if it was approved by vast numbers of people, was assumed to be right. This was democracy at work. Even when thousands of workers did not work, fought for higher wages, held industrial production to ransom, and sometimes succeeded in bringing even the State to its knees, it was politically fashionable to support them, to clap from the sidelines and say: This is good for India, this is good for all of us who have been exploited by a cruel, unfeeling system led by greedy moneybags and their political mentors.

Everyone was on the same side. The voters; the netas; the media; students; the middle class intelligentsia. They were all on the side of the poor, the weak, the politically fashionable class who appropriated the cover of the have-nots. The haves were to be intimidated, extorted, punished. For many good reasons but largely because they were seen as the outcasts in a society that celebrated the have-nots.

That is exactly why V P Singh was everyone's favourite finance minister. Not because he was honest. Which he was, yes and no. Yes, in financial terms. No, in political terms. Not because he understood what weaker castes and minorities wanted. Which he did but which he also exploited without qualm. But because, truly speaking, he was the first great vigilante of our political system. The man who chased crooks relentlessly. So anyone that Singh pointed his finger at was instantly branded culpable. A crook of the highest order. Be it an 80-year-old S L Kirloskar, who was picked up at midnight and harassed by Singh's blue-eyed brigade of tormentors. Or Rajiv Gandhi, whose secret Swiss banks account number Singh would dramatically read out from his pocket diary at election rallies.

The nation conveniently forgave Singh his indiscretions when later, after years of harassment, Kirloskar got off scot-free and Singh's own regime failed to prove a single thing against Rajiv apart from the fact that he was friends with the despicable Ottavio Quattrochhi.

The nation forgave Singh for being the right tit that he was simply because he spoke the language of the poor and the dispossessed. The fact that he did nothing at all for them, either as finance minister or later as prime minister, apart from unleashing the Mandal Commission purely with the intent of containing his own deputy, Devi Lal did not enrage his vote bank.

They continued to be impressed by what he said, not by what he did. In fact, it was from Singh's regime as finance minister that things actually turned. That, suddenly, the bad boys were no longer the bad boys and the good boys in tatters were no longer the heroes of the system. That is when the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund started influencing our economic policies and more and more people started looking westwards to solve India's chronic poverty problems. People started saying, albeit in hushed whispers, that may be it was not such a bad idea after all to open up the economy and stop worshipping the state as employer, provider, god.

P V Narasimha Rao quicked the pace. H D Deve Gowda, I K Gujral, A B Vajpayee lent it further legitimacy and, today, the whole sence has changed. The all-powerful, all-correct state is now seen as a stupid, insufferable, unnecessary intervenor in the economic process -- a bull in a china shop -- who has by its acts of omission and commission, actually more commission than omission, brought the Indian economy to such a sorry pass.

Suddenly the vast, unwashed, uneducated masses are seen as the villains driving the economy to ruination. Union leaders have been hunted into oblivion. Marxists are a dying species. A few socialists like Mulayam Singh Yadav and Laloo Prasad Yadav, George Fernandes and Nitish Kumar have survived but in drag. Mulayam and Laloo pretend to be closet Mussalmans while George and Nitish Kumar swear by Hindutva and the bomb! They all steer clear of making economic policy statements and, for all practical purposes, sound like Ayn Rand fans at a Nazi reunion.

So what do we have in place now? An economy opening up swiftly. Where the prime minister attends more business conferences than farmers' rallies. Where a chief minister openly describes himself as CEO of his state and struts about with a fancy laptop costing 15 times the annual income of the average salary earner in the state. Where the finance minister exhorts transnational corporations to invest more money in India and take the best terms available. Terms better than what Indian businessmen would get. Indian businessmen, on the other hand, are being exhorted to pay a small fee and clean up their past crimes. Except that these are no longer described as crimes.

In the new lexicon of a liberalised economy these are mere indiscretions committed in an era that was unfair, discriminatory, backward looking. In fact, in the new era, Indian businessmen are being encouraged to do the very things that they were once punished for. Investing overseas. Importing consumer goods. Spending dollars to build brands and grow their presence in international markets.

Frankly, I am not against any of this. This is the right and perhaps only way to move ahead. The Marxists are spitting against the wind when they protest. The Congress is being its usual devious self, criticising the Vajpayee government for doing exactly what it would have done under identical circumstances. But what amuses me is when we simplify the issues and see India as emerging from the dark ages into the bright light of liberalism and a free economy.

Untrue. India has always been a great nation functioning at multiple levels. While the overground economy, under the control of four political masters, has always reflected the politically correct idiom of its times, the black economy (which is as big, if not bigger) has followed its own independent course. The very ideals we are now trying to enshrine in our economic agenda, like allowing market forces to get a free hand, are those that have always driven our black economy.

You can accuse Dawood Ibrahim and his cohorts of extortion and crime today but these were the very people (with Haji Mastan and Karim Lala) who kept the windows of free enterprise open in India. They were the ones who ran a parallel economy which functioned precisely on those very principles that we are today describing as crucial to economic growth. This black economy that they grew and nurtured was based on the very ideas that look so fashionable to our political economists today. Under the persuasion of the West.

In the sense, whatever crimes they may have committed, they kept the flame of free trade burning -- as we know it today -- and without their spirit of daring and enterprise, the Indian economy would have been strangled by now. By the bluebeards of our bureaucracy.

Funnily enough, it is these very criminals who have now reversed roles. They have assumed the old role of the State. By extorting the rich, providing criminal employment for the poor. By playing Robin Hood exactly as the Indian State did in the '50s and '60s. Pretending they can redistribute wealth more equitably, more just than the way we are. In other words, while the State now speaks the language of liberalisation and propagates the laissez faire of the underworld, the underworld wants to become the State. Through intimidation, extortion, the romance of crime. To create a just order that redistributes wealth more equitably. Or at least pretends to. Just as the State once did.

Pritish Nandy

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