[Assam] BETWEEN THE LINES--from the Sentinel

[Ram Sarangapani]

C'da,
>I am glad to hear it has. Question is where :-)? The following
>appeared in the Sentinel a couple of days back.

Well, it has 'reached'. India has reached the world stage as a major player.
For all its inherrent problems, India has been able to hold on to democracy
and at the same time shown the world that it has the essential ingredients
of a country of ideas, of markets, resources, and of tolerance.

The economic boom of the mid 90s laid the foundation and today India sees
increased foreign direct investment (FDI), and an all time high foreign
investments in Indian stocks.

In the interview with Premji (and others), he did acknowledge the problems
faced by India in mainly 3 or 4 areas,

Infrastructure (roads/transportation)
Govt. bureaucracy/corruption
Communication (phones/land lines etc)
Poverty

Premji went on to add, that the Govt. would be forced to deal with these
problems and correct them because the air of expectation in India is very
high, and no govt. could ignore that for long.

Take the case of revamping the airports. The Govt. is now serious about
this. It realizes this is must for attracting investments from overseas. The
nuke deal is supposed to solve a big chunk
of the energy problem.
More importantly, (according to the chief editor of the Hindu at the
interview with Rose), for the each of last 25 years, 1% of Indians have
crossed the poverty line (above it). So, today we see 25% of the Indians
have crossed over to a lower middle class status and the trend continues.
This is a huge sign of progress (for a country written off by so many & some
netters).

Today, India is no longer hyphenated as India-Pak or India-China. Now Pak is
no longer said in the same breath. Its India and China. Further, China is
India's largest trading partner, and India too is a major trade partner in
China.  Most major companies in India have set up shop in many countries
(including China) and the US is not the sole market. And India itself has a
huge market for its products.

And lastly, its NOT just outsourcing of tax analysts or software in India -
most of the large Indian companies have moved up the value chain. They are
now strategic partners with multinationals like Microsoft, Intel, IBM,
Kraft, Baskin-Robbins etc etc. So its now just IT and X-Ray scans.

While Nayar's article has some truth to it, it is the same regurgitation he
has been spewing for decades. The new India has a completely different, but
pragmatic view of the country's pluses and minuses. They know of the
problems, they are now able to take advantage of inherrent skills, while at
the same time make corrections and eliminating problems on their way up.
Nayar belongs to the old school. Many of these journalists have listed
complaints over time but few solutions have ever been put forth.They have
never been innovators and have not yet been able to rid themselves shackles
of the Raj.

--Ram



On 3/2/06, Chan Mahanta <cmahanta at charter.net> wrote:
>
> Ram posted : [Assam] India Has Arrived
>
> I am glad to hear it has. Question is where :-)? The following
> appeared in the Sentinel a couple of days back.
>
> cm
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> BETWEEN THE LINES
> Price of Development
> Kuldip Nayar
>
>
> B udgets in the early years of independence were an
> enigma wrapped in secrecy. India's economic base
> was limited. The dependence was, therefore, on
> the ingenuity of finance minister. Crises could not be pulled out of
> a hat to maintain the morale. Yet he would do the rope trick because
> the government's popularity depended on that. The haves grumbled over
> fewer benefits than before but realised that they still had enough.
> Other people did not count in the scheme of things. The growth rate
> averaged 3.5 per cent annually but it did not disturb anybody's
> sleep. The debate after the budget would not be whether the proposals
> had merit but whether they gave the country an ideological tilt,
> close as we were to the culmination of freedom struggle.
> One point that evoked discussion was the distance between Jawaharlal
> Nehru's way of development, the socialistic pattern with the state
> playing prime role, and Mahatma Gandhi's concept of self-sufficient
> countryside without interference by the state. Over the years, the
> first became urban in character and the second rural. One got
> associated with the growth, however slow and slovenly, and the other
> with values and idealism.
> The first has manifested itself through consumerism. The other has
> got stuck in simple but marginalised living. One has all the opulence
> and wasteful expenditure whereas the other has all its adverse
> fallout: poverty and neglect. Nehru's associates, lessening day by
> day, still talk radical and they recall the period from Karl Marx to
> Harold Laski. But the Gandhian followers, close to the ground, have
> grown skeptical of ideologies which draw inspiration from abroad. New
> India has moved away from it and the governance is directed towards
> higher growth through globalization or whatever the means.
> It is difficult to run away from the plazas, the malls and the new
> eating places. But of what use they are or the multi-storey
> buildings, big dams and foreign direct investments when at least 300
> million people, more than the entire middle class, are destitute?
> Those who live below the poverty line are roughly 400 million,
> official figures testify.
> All budget speeches - Finance Minister Chidambaram's are no
> exception - applaud the role of the farmer or small man. But there is
> very little left for him when the real beneficiaries have eaten from
> the plate. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been promising the
> countryside a good deal for some time now. But agricultural growth is
> stagnant. The import of food grains is, in fact, ominous. Rural
> unemployment is rampant. Farmers are committing suicide, not only in
> Andhra Pradesh and Kerala but in the soya-belt of Punjab and the
> cotton-growing areas of Maharashtra. It has been noticed at many
> places in the countryside the students leaving schools and colleges
> and opting for work on the fields.
> There is a loud demand for another Green Revolution. But this may
> well be wishful thinking. Farmers have no money to invest in land to
> make it productive. The corporate sector, if given a chance, will
> convert it into another industry, changing the very ethos of the
> countryside. Land is for people, not people for land. Bhoodan (gift
> of land) did not work. Even what was offered was being reclaimed.
> Even in the distribution of bhoodan land, an element of corruption
> had crept in. No inquiry was ordered because some important people
> were suspect.
> The Employment Guarantee Scheme that the government has introduced
> in 200 districts is only a palliative, not a solution. The government
> has yet to spell out specific schemes for employment. However, the
> budget on defence and security has been increasing year after year.
> The explanation is that the naxalites and the desperate people in
> Kashmir and the north-east are to blame. Pakistan also comes into the
> picture. Maybe, the reading is correct to some extent. But what about
> the causes that are responsible for the deterioration of the economic
> condition? The budget is of little help to those who are at the lower
> rung. The government says that it has no money. But its bureaucracy
> is bloating and the non-plan expenditure increasing.
> Have our priorities been wrong? The first five-year plan which Nehru
> formulated was to industrialise the country so as to lessen its
> dependence on land which is a victim of whimsical monsoons. Some may
> interpret it as a scientific approach. But it has been left half way.
> Services have done better than industry. On the other hand, people
> living in villages, India's two-thirds of population, have been left
> high and dry. Nehru initiated land reforms and had to amend the
> Constitution - it was India's first Constitution amendment after
> independence - to implement them.
> Still, he could not give land to the tiller free. All that he did
> was to put a ceiling on the individual's holding: 18 acres per
> family. Sheikh Abdullah in Jammu and Kashmir was the only one in the
> country who gave land to the tiller without compensation. Nehru
> wanted to emulate him but he could not do so because the Congress was
> dominated by kulaks. The landed aristocracy still plays an important
> role in the party.
> True, there is a case for constituting a commission to go into the
> land reforms. But does the government have the guts to do so? Vested
> interests in the party will not allow that to happen. Nonetheless,
> with land getting divided and re-divided among children and their
> children, there is a fragmentation of holdings all over the country.
> This affects food production as well. Some way must be found to
> redistribute the land.
> As things are today, discontentment will grow. Already, the dalits,
> the tribals and the marginalised farmers are migrating from their
> village in search of job. The basic fact that India must face is: it
> has not enough land for the people who depend on it. The countryside
> can be made attractive. The best schools can be opened there. It does
> not matter if teachers are given salaries five times more than they
> get in cities. The standard of teaching should be so high that
> students from cities could prefer to travel to the countryside for
> studies there. Not only teachers but doctors should also be tempted
> to go to villages. Salaries should not come in the way. The purpose
> is to focus attention on the countryside where most people live.
> We talk of the good of society. Is this something apart from and
> transcending the good of the individuals composing it? We may mock at
> the Gandhian values. But what type of society is it where the
> individual is "ignored?" Whatever name we may give it, the progress,
> however impressive, is creating more and more disparities. Probably,
> this is the price the development of sorts exacts. Can we pursue this
> path without peril?
>
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