A foot in the door...

As the country heads into parliamentary elections, the political scene has certainly heated up. A number of issues are being debated in newsrooms and living rooms across the nation. While politics takes the limelight (and almost every event in the country these days assumes, or is given, a political overtone), one must remember that at the centre of most of these debates lies an ideological divergence. 

At the risk of oversimplification, the most fundamental question at the heart of these debates is one that concerns the direction that the country now needs to take. And the multitudinous schools of thought eventually end up draining into one of two major streams: the ideological left or the ideological right. I am not in any way claiming that India votes on the basis of these ideologies - no, there are hundreds of other, more petty, considerations of caste, religion, lobbies - the works. My point concerns the broader debate around the policies that each constituency wants its government, once elected, to follow. On the one hand, there is the school of thought that firmly believes that India was better off following the Nehruvian socialist route, that we have been led astray by ideological Satans of the right. On the other, there is the school which believes that India has over-experimented with half-baked socialism. They believe that what India needs is more openness to market oriented growth, and that any growth and concomitant development that has come about in the past couple of decades is by virtue of this unshackling of policy.

This debate is important because the stakes have never been higher. 

Almost everyone agrees that India seems to have lost the plot. The socialists bemoan the entrenched inflation that has hit the average Indian hard and eroded real incomes. The capitalists argue that we have gone back to the days of lethargic decision making and protectionist policy-making that serves no one's interests (not even those of the poor in whose name these policies are embraced). Both agree that India needs change. While the former are baying for a return to state control and subsidy-economics, the latter are crying hoarse that the economy needs to be rescued from government and bureaucratic control, that the 'animal spirits' need to be unleashed.

Before taking one or the other side, I believe that every self-respecting Indian must give reason a chance - and decide his/her loyalties based on facts. And the facts are that neither Nehruvian socialism nor crony capitalism have got India anywhere. Yes, it is true that we have made remarkable progress since the opening up of the economy in 1991. It is also true that a concern for the poorest of the poor should be the moral compass for any government of the day. However, the governance that we have received for most of our existence since 1947 neither champions the cause of the poor nor truly unleashes the entrepreneurial spirit of the economy. 

The funny thing is, depsite all the bickering in pseudo-intellectual debates, these two schools of thought can and must co-exist. For that to happen, government needs to exit the sectors where its presence is superfluous and increase its presence in those where its absence is conspicuous - yes, the government has no business running corporations or holding stakes in them. It has no business controlling the natural resources in this country that are desperately required for growth, and which it hasn't been able to supply in the quantities that get anywhere close to real demand. One of the biggest reasons why we have a shamefully high current account deficit today, is because the government has run coal and oil production into the ground - state oil and coal companies are among the most inefficient state-owned entities in the free world. In an energy-deficient nation which desperate needs fuel to power economic growth that will both alleviate poverty and improve standards of living, being unable to mine natural resources that one possesses in abundance (and therefore having to import them) is criminal.

At the same time, government needs to increase its presence in sectors where no private corporation has been able to deliver the goods to the farthest reaches of this country. Sectors like education and healthcare have seen great stories in entrepreneurship but the truth remains that the private sector will only serve those sections of society that it finds economically viable to serve. There are millions in our villages and in the forsaken slums of our cities who do not have money to pay for their food, leave alone their medicines or for their children's education.

The government will only find funds to serve the poorest of the poor if it stops subsidizing the middle class and the rich farmers, who are the real beneficiaries of the egregious subsidy policies of the government. The food security bill, while excellent in its intentions, will never be able to serve the truly deserving sections of our society in whose name it is being championed. We just do not have the adequate infrastructure and the delivery systems to reach those people or to ensure that the benefits that are meant for them do not end up in the hands of middlemen or undeserving vote-banks.

I wish that the people of this country would see through the real issues behind these debates and vote wisely in the upcoming polls.  The current parliamentary elections will be one of our most critical ever, given that the nation has a lot to lose from losing its way - we have a foot in the door when it comes to raising India into the league of developed nations, and doing justice to our billion-plus citizens. We can either barge in and claim what is rightfully ours or allow the doors of prosperity to be shut in our face forever.