The political damage being caused by runaway train, bull-in-a-china-shop, eternal gadfly — call him what you will — Dr. Subramanian Swamy, MP, is prompting much head-shaking, if not downright embarrassment, within the inner circles of the ruling BJP whose leadership must be regretting elevating him to the Rajya Sabha in April. Since being inducted into the upper house of Elders, Swamy — an articulate and highly educated former economics alum and faculty at Harvard University, no less — has launched high-decibel, personalised broadsides at Dr. Raghuram Rajan, governor of the Reserve Bank of India and a globally respected economist in his own right who predicted the over-lending and cheap mortgages-driven global economic crisis of 2008.
Nor has he spared Arvind Subramaniam, chief economic advisor to the Union government. According to Swamy, these distinguished economists who have retained their Indian citizenship despite being on the faculties of the University of Chicago and Global Development Center, Washington respectively, are agents of American business and the World Bank and IMF, hate institutions of the RSS, the befuddled ideological mentor of the BJP.
In his long career as a self-confessed member of the RSS and hindutva champion, Swamy has played a major role in exposing corruption and fraud in government and public life (Jayalalithaa’s disproportionate assets case, 2G spectrum scam), contributing to the common good by his outspokenness on matters of national interest.
Over three decades ago, your correspondent in his capacity as editor of Business India and BusinessWorld became acquainted with Swamy, because the latter is well aware of the private enterprise history and traditions of the Indian subcontinent, which right until the mid- 19th century generated 20 percent of global GDP. But our relationship soured when I queried how he reconciled economic liberalism with his antediluvian views on hindutva and RSS ideology. This query prompted him to order me to “get out” of his home in Delhi.
Yet that is quintessential Dr. S. Swamy — a bundle of contradictions (his wife is Parsi and son-in-law Muslim) and political wrecking-ball — who comfortably reconciles his advocacy of second-class status for minorities as per atavistic RSS/hindutva ideology, with economic liberalism.
London heartburn
A recent sojourn in London, the city of your editor’s exuberant youth, which should have been a fulfilling and nostalgic interregnum, instead prompted heartburn. Over four decades ago, when I was a law student in this metropolis at a time when Great Britain had just lost its empire, the Labour party and belligerent trade unions were riding high, and the public sector British Steel Corporation was chalking up a staggering loss of £1 million per day, predictions were rife about the decline and fall of Britain into third world status. London itself was a grey, grimy and windy city, largely bereft of central heating.
But last month’s brief visit after a gap of ten years, revealed a neat, clean, well-governed, indeed a beauteous city rivalling Paris, Geneva and Berlin. The streets are well-washed, roads are remarkably potholes-free, traffic is smooth and orderly, pavements are wide and invitingly traversable, with every street in the vibrant megalopolis blooming with a riot of flowers of all colours and hues. Moreover, London remains the politest of all cities and the great majority of its population successfully internalises its dislike — if any — of ubiquitous minorities of every hue and ethnicity.
Why the heartburn? Because while London has steadily improved from good to better, back home, India’s metros and 50 large cities are going from bad to worse, disfigured by filth, garbage, broken pavements, traffic congestion and terrible noise pollution among other thousand unnatural shocks. The open secret of London’s remarkable development is steady devolution of administrative and (property) taxation powers to local boroughs (councils).
On the other hand, the all-important 73rd and 74th Amendments (1993) to the Constitution — the late Rajiv Gandhi’s most valuable legacy to India — which devolve similar powers to municipal and village councils have been effectively neutered by greedy state governments. Yet despite our cities being on the point of collapse, the Indian academy, establishment and ‘educated’ middle class are clueless spectators. Hence the heartburn.
Belated understanding
The 25th anniversary of the historic liberalisation and deregulation of the Indian economy in July 1991, has provoked a spate of laudatory essays and reminiscences of the landmark Union budget which abolished industrial licensing and chucked the MRTP (Monopolies & Restrictive Trade Practices) Act, 1970 among other rules and regulations which nearly extinguished the native entrepreneurial spirit of the people, into the dustbin.
Since then, the country’s annual GDP growth rate has doubled, and per capita income has quintupled even as an estimated 300 million citizens have been lifted out of absolute poverty.
But not according to Prabhu Chawla, editorial-director of the Chennai-based New Indian Express and formerly editor of India Today. In a column noteworthy for its convoluted logic (NIE, July 24), Chawla calls for a “quiet burial” of economic reforms, ascribing crony capitalism, NPAs of nationalised banks, widespread malnutrition and every other affliction the nation is heir to, to liberalisation. Astonishingly, he can’t seem to grasp that these maladies of the nation are the consequence, rather than cause, of pre-1991 neta-babu licence-permit-quota raj which wasted an entire generation of midnight’s children.
Two decades ago, I shared a speakers’ platform with Chawla during which his contempt for your editor was so patent, that he couldn’t remember my name at all. Now, I understand that it was because your correspondent was the founder-editor of Business India and Businessworld — the country’s first proponents of liberalisation and deregulation of the Indian economy.