ELECTION 99
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
ELECTIONS '98
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

No Time For Deals

Whichever party, whichever alliance comes to power it must make one fundamental choice. Who will it work for? Will it work for the Indian people? Or will it work for our business houses?

Election time is ripe to ask this question because this is when business houses cough up huge sums of money to different political parties and their bosses and extract specific promises of support. They hedge their bets of course. Some pay more to the Congress, less to the BJP. Others pay more to the BJP, less to the Congress. But by and large most of them pay out equally to both sides. Only the smarter ones try to forecast the winners and sidle up to them. If the gamble pays off, they move closer to the inner circle of power.

In other words, it is not just you and me who are anxious to know who will win. It is also the business houses. That knowledge helps them decide who to pay more to. Of course rishta counts. Rishta with individual party netas. The likely winner always gets that extra crore or two. So do the guys who are able to convince our business houses that they will come back next time as ministers in the new cabinet. Ministers with sensitive portfolios like finance, commerce, telecom, petroleum, law, banking, civil aviation, environment, coal and mines. In other words, ministers who can help them bend the law that little bit more to make those extra hundreds of crores. Or at least influence the decision making process.

No one ever asks you who will be the next foreign minister or the next health minister. Or the next education minister or labour minister. However important these portfolios may be, they are of no interest to our business houses. They are much more interested in knowing who will be the next petroleum minister. Or the next telecom minister. These jobs are what are known as cash cows. Or, say, commerce or banking. You can do wonders with both. In commerce you can keep fiddling with policy and tariff and make easy money every day. In banking you can help someone or, as easily, hurt someone.

The same is true for environment. Fiddle with a law like the CRZ and you could make hundreds of crores. Turn a Nelson's eye to those who are stripping down our forest cover and you will be an instant billionaire. There are ministers who have made huge money out of the railway ministry. Others, out of civil aviation by simply forcing Air-India and Indian Airlines to take buying or leasing decisions convenient for them. Satish Sharma made a mockery out of the petroleum ministry. So did Sukh Ram out of telecom.

Defence (thanks to Kargil) is now the biggest spender of all and this time there will be a huge scramble for this ministry as well. Many Indian businessmen are now quietly and discreetly fronting for global arms dealers. They may not talk overmuch about this since defence deal making is still considered politically incorrect in India but most of the recent purchases have reportedly been made with local assistance.

All these hurt us, you and me. As Indians. Corruption makes us a high cost economy. Every bribe builds itself into what you and I eventually pay for a product or a service. Whether it is a train ticket or a gas cylinder or a humble telephone call, it always includes the cost of corruption and that is why it is crucial to hunt down and punish those who take money on the sly. Otherwise, bribery multiplies. It eats into the entrails of your economy. It is never "speed money" as we call it. It is what holds India back from being able to compete with the world in terms of our products and services.

Which bring me back to my first point: Who does the government work for? The Indian people or the Indian business houses?

Let us take a simple example. Today, in many shops in Mumbai, foreign chocolates are cheaper than Indian brands. I am not talking of Korean or Malaysian chocolates. The best known international brands are also cheaper. This, I believe, is wonderful for us consumers. We now have a choice, a better choice than we have ever had. To compete, our local manufacturers will have to cut their margins. Perfect! They will now have to produce more efficiently, market better, offer lower prices. Which is exactly as it should be. In fact, why just chocolates? This could happen to soaps, biscuits, basmati rice, stationery. In fact, this could drive down prices in every product group that directly affects our lives.

But will this happen or will we see, as we have seen in the past, Indian manufacturers go the government and complain against import tariffs? The polemic is always the same. Does we need to import chocolates and soaps and biscuits and stationery when 3 out of every 10 Indians go to bed hungry? Maybe not. But it is important to do so to force Indian industry to be more efficient, more cost and quality conscious.

That is how the colour television industry has grown in India and (what is most interesting) the two biggest brands in the market today, Videocon and BPL, are Indian. Between them, they have over 40 per cent market share, demolishing the specious argument that competition hurts local industry. It actually strengthens it. You cannot forever allow your own businessmen to produce shabby products at hugely inflated prices to cheat your own countrymen. In the name of Swadeshi or whatever.

It is not that India cannot offer world class products and services at competitive prices. We can and, as the economy opens us, more and more among us are actually doing so. Creating, in the process, new world class corporations that can stand up to anything anywhere. But we need more of these. We need more companies that can hold their own in the global marketplace. We need more corporate gladiators who can go out and win the war not through protectionism or bribery but through swashbuckling skill and creative genius. Through that amazing commitment which has taken Indian enterprise to every part of the globe and enabled it to succeed against the toughest odds.

In the long run, Swadeshi kills initiative. It enslaves us to our past and does not prepare us for the future. It empowers only the weak and the corrupt, under the political tutelage of criminals and bribe takers. Modern India does not need to empower the weak and the corrupt. It needs to make a break with its past and create a new political order, a new economy based on excellence and talent and the indomitable energy to create an entrepreneurial opportunity out of our every ability, our every talent.

Only then will this corrupt empire pass. Only then will you and I find a new future for ourselves and for India. Towards this, the first important step is to recognise the simple fact that what is good for the Indian people may not necessarily be good for Indian businessmen. Even if this means having less money to burn at election time.

Pritish Nandy

Tell us what you think of this column