Pinch me quick I'm having a revisionist nightmare

Pinch me quick I’m having a revisionist nightmare

If only Dr. Jekyll knew, and could actually remember the Mr. Hyde of it - that socialist nightmare of bread lines and gas lines and rationed notebooks and eighteen-year waiting lists for an Ambassador - before he drank the draught that transmogrified him! If Dr. Jekyll Manmohan Singh knew and remembered, he would not be backsliding to his former Delhi School of Economics Marxist professor ways. Which Dr. Jekyll in his senses would jeopardise his Harley Street practice, his lady-love and his very life on purpose? Later on, of course, it was too late. The repeats came on thick and fast because the bestial Mr. Hyde had possessed poor Jekyll. It’s a morality tale worth the remembering – about how easily the much vaunted Marxist dialectic can turn into a singular monomania. And just how tyrannical Marxism can be in practice, with its foolish anti-prosperity stance, its ever willingness to destroy rather than create, and most tellingly, how little it ends up doing for the poor. After all, administered loans to Congress goons and calibrated licence-permit shenanigans are not designed to benefit the aam aadmi.

I don’t know how Dr. Singh handles his economic schizophrenia. But it seems to be hitting him with increasing frequency now that he is past his third year at the top-job-but-one. But this much is sure, the thought of the implied self destruction involved has a Kamikaze quality about it. His bouts of Marxism alternated with nuclear-power-pursuing Capitalism are quite liable to judder into the body economic square on. And wouldn’t that be a pity, all of us going up in flames for the price of his Marxist nostalgia? There can be no valid argument against putting a stop to his Kamikaze economics. We must get the 9.4 per cent GDP achieving doctor back into his economically liberal straight-jacket without delay.

Trouble is, this nightmare, like others in the repertoire, is always about underlying causes. Could it be that Dr. Singh, standing in on our behalf, cannot withstand his own success? Is the death-wishing longing for the squalor of an antediluvian Marxism so strong that he feels compelled to watch its approach helplessly, with the paralysed fascination of an ant with Godzilla lumbering his way? Why does the good doctor’s mid-term course correction sound like he wants to be hit, along with all of us in tow, by one of Shri Lalu Prasad Yadav’s profit making freight trains? What happened to his Liberal World Banking phase that not only made him personally solvent but also created him into the economic architect of liberalisation in 1991? Why is the same gentleman going around apologising every second day for doing well by the country? Why is he wringing his hands in anxiety for taking India away from its creeping death two per cent per annum GDP former self?

Perhaps the cancer is in the Congress Party itself, nostalgic for its Socialist glory days of being feted and flounced in the USSR, an entity since deceased, and by the domestic gaggle of Left Parties that persist in “supporting” it, even if it’s all the way into the ground. Could it be that this new fangled success and recognition that India is enjoying is too much to bear for many Congress Party dinosaurs wedded to the Socialist era? These Congressmen have their reasons to clamour for the old ways, but what is causing a change of heart in the prime minister? Why is he feeling guilty when spurious and motivated comments are made about his being a prime minister of the rich alone? Instead of showing the grit needed to take his reforms to the next stage and the next thereafter, Dr. Singh is busy exhorting the successful to avoid flaunting their success. With the record number of new billionaires that market reforms have created, it is definitely too late to hide such bright lights under socialist bushels. But isn’t this by way of the wrong emphasis anyway? After all, the Reforms, never on an overtly accelerated path in Dr. Manmohan Singh’s government, are now practically extinguished, thus putting paid to the possibility of automatically including the many that have not yet benefited from them. By reacting to criticism the way he has, Dr. Singh is in danger of besmirching his own best legacy unless he manages to show a political acumen for doublespeak that has not been evident so far.

Maybe his current bizarre reversals and about turns are knee-jerk reactions, scared up by one election loss after another, while dreaming of former near or absolute majority days with a comfortable supporting cast of Marxists behind the Congress Party. So the mantra handed down to him may well be - the economy be damned! After all, the economy does not vote. It does appear beyond the think tank capabilities of Congress policy formation to get away from the old snake oil and bamboozle-the-public prescriptions. Instead of taking the benefits of a strong economy to improve infrastructure for the masses they would rather suppress what gains have been made and reverse the flow to achieve the uniform poverty and inefficiency they have been comfortable with for decades. But infuriatingly, it has also been the Congress way to adopt a two-faced Janus push me-pull-you tactic of milking business and industry for funds while indulging in pro-poor propaganda and populist give-the-man-a-fish sops as elections near.

Perhaps a malleable Dr. Singh as prime minister, called the “weakest” ever by Mr. Advani, elected without any grass-roots support, via a safe Assamese seat to the Rajya Sabha, was hand-picked for his lack of angularity. But Dr. Singh may actually lack conviction too because this is not the first time his economics has changed to suit the role. He has gone from Marxism to free-market policies to the present misguided “inclusive” mish-mash of subsidies and sops. This abject pandering to short term non-productive expenditure is a drain on the nation’s resources and will lead to inflation. It is the productive parts of the economy that will consequently face higher interest rates and other curbs on their growth potential. Dr. Singh knows better and should have been reluctant to follow these failed policies. But the question is, two years from the hustings, just how much Dr. Jekyll is still left in Mr. Hyde?


(1,055 words)

By Gautam Mukherjee
Thursday 31st May 2007