No doubt about it. 1997 Booker prize winner (God of Small Things) Arundhati Roy is India’s finest exponent of long-form advocacy journalism. In numerous riveting 14-15 page essays for several periodicals, particularly the Delhi-based weekly Outlook, Roy has repeatedly exposed the infirmities of global and Indian capitalism and the self-serving machinations of India Inc’s leaders, presenting enlightening evidence of their acts of omission and commission.
Roy’s latest oeuvre is a compelling polemic titled ‘Capitalism: A Ghost Story’ in Outlook (March 26) in which starting with contemplation of billionaire tycoon Mukesh Ambani’s newly-built 27-floor residence in Mumbai (“a temple to the new India, or a warehouse for its ghosts?”), which with its soaring bright lights has “stolen the night” from the people of Mumbai, Roy excoriates the runaway excesses of post-liberalisation India’s capitalists and complicity of “300 million of us who belong to the new post-IMF ‘reforms’ middle class”.
Much of Roy’s polemic against India’s robber-baron capitalism is warranted and true. It cut your editor, who in his previous avatars as editor of the country’s first two business magazines was among the first champions of private enterprise and opponent of neta-babu licence-permit quota raj, to the quick. Certainly, having experienced the self-centricism and uncaring primitive capital accumulation instincts of India Inc in my current avatar, my admiration for democratic capitalism has diminished considerably. However it has not been extinguished for the simple reason that flawed as it is, the democratic-capitalistic system of governance is preferable to its alternatives. Through the electoral system and rule of law, it permits reform and correction. Communism, Maoism, Naxalism, fascism and other dictatorial systems are self-perpetuating (North Korea, China, Syria) and don’t allow dissent and non-violent self-correction.
It’s curious why the erudite Ms. Roy can’t grasp this. In any of the leftist people’s dictatorships with which she seems enamoured, her polemics would have earned her midnight arrest and a bullet in the back of the head, if not worse. True, post-liberalisation Indian capitalism has become brutal and sordid, but it can be controlled by rigorous implementation of the rule of law (including the stalled Lok Pal Bill). And it is to this infirmity that Ms. Roy needs to profitably apply her formidable advocacy skills.
Poverty definitions
Despite new skeletons popping out of its hundreds of hidden cupboards every day, the lame duck Congress-led UPA-II government seems determined to complete its remaining two years in office, routinely ignoring all calls for the resignation of its tainted ministers who have brought it shame and opprobrium. But one opposition call which the party’s high command should heed in its own self interest, is for the exit of Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman and chief executive of the Planning Commission.
Last month this worthy presented the nation a new definition of affluence by drawing a poverty line of Rs.28.65 in urban areas and Rs.22.40 in rural India, albeit for the year 2009-10. What this actually means is that anyone earning a paisa more than these pitiful amounts per day to cover rent, food, clothing, education and health, among other expenses, is doing alright and shouldn’t be entitled to the meagre government handouts and subsidies given to citizens living below the poverty line. Although a frequent flier, Ahluwalia doesn’t seem to be aware the federal minimum wage in the US is $7.25 (Rs.370) per hour. Or that the official minimum wage for farm labour in India itself is Rs.125 per day.
Some egg-head economists absolve Ahluwalia, arguing that in setting the new poverty line, he has merely followed the daily calories intake calculus of the late economist Suresh Tendulkar and adjusted it for inflation. But surely, Ahluwalia who has been CEO of the reportedly 20,000-strong Planning Commission had enough time and resources to rework the Tendulkar formula and calculate a realistic poverty line to make a real estimate of the number of poor nationwide.
Yet while Ahluwalia had the resources to do this, he perhaps didn’t have the time. According to a shocking news report in India Today (May 14, 2011) which has not yet been denied or contradicted, after assuming office as CEO of the Planning Commission in 2004, until January 2011 Ahluwalia had flown abroad every ninth day (42 trips) on mysterious official business at public expense, incurring an expenditure estimated at Rs. 2.34 crore. For himself he has drawn a very high poverty line indeed.
Brave statement
Headmasters seem unaware, teachers seem indifferent and so the issue of road safety and defensive driving is seldom on the curriculum of even the highest ranked and respected schools. But the price of this neglect is very steep.
For the number of vehicles on its roads, India suffers the largest number of road accident deaths and injuries worldwide, with China a distant second. In 2010, 140,000 Indians were killed and 500,000 injured in road accidents. This is the equivalent of a fully loaded jumbo airliner crashing with no survivors every day. The socio-economic loss is staggering: an estimated Rs.90,000 crore per year.
A recent report of the National Transport Development Policy Committee, headed by Dr. Rakesh Mohan, former deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India, reveals that the poor maintenance of road networks costs the country about Rs.35,000 crore per year in terms of lost output, spoilage of produce and vehicular repairs and maintenance. According to the committee, a massive Rs.900,000 crore is required to replace 40,000 km of eroded roads in rural areas, and 10,000 km of secondary roads.
However, the report pulls its punches by failing to squarely identify pervasive big-time corruption within government at the Central, state and municipal/panchayat levels, as the prime cause of the annual slaughter on the roads and loss suffered by the economy with government officials hand-in-glove with road-building contractors, who use sub-standard material and are repeatedly given contracts (instead of being blacklisted) to rebuild roads after they disintegrate. However, it does say that government policy seems to be to “build, neglect and rebuild”.
Given the committee’s kid-glove criticism of official corruption in the report, that’s a brave statement.