The negative story

How many remember “Shining India” of the BJP in 2004, or “Incredible India” of the Congress”? Only a few months ago, many business people, chambers of commerce, Congressmen and ministers, were using superlatives to describe India and our progress. Few remembered the dismal comparisons every year in the Human Development Report of the UNDP, that show India behind most Asian countries every year, on per capita incomes, literacy, maternal mortality, infant mortality, etc. We look better only by confining comparisons to the Indian sub-continent excluding Sri Lanka.

We crowed over our strong banking system dominated by state-run banks, and firmly regulated by the Reserve Bank, unlike the situation prevailing since 2008 in the US and Europe. But we ignored the hundreds of millions of rural poor without access to affordable credit. We said we were the second fastest growing economy in the world, (though this had been the case only for four years), the growth accompanied by rising inequalities, and of a services dominated economy, not one dominated by the real economy of agriculture and industry. In a terribly poor country it is these sectors whose production can reduce poverty. Our boosters never mentioned that agricultural productivity in India was declining and was slower than say, China, for most crops.
This was a result of agricultural science not reaching farmers, lack of easy access to credit, adulterated fertilisers, pesticides and seeds, irrational pricing of agricultural products, huge profits to middlemen. We believed the propaganda put out by government about how well we were doing as an economy.

Almost half our population has no access to electricity, and burns dried leaves, etc in unventilated shacks resulting in the highest incidence of tuberculosis. We are a cruel society to our poor, with malnourished children, poor quality health and education services where available, little or no social security against illness and unemployment, large inequalities of income, poor access to affordable credit and “free” government services available only after paying off petty bureaucrats. The lot of our poor is dismal.
For many years, the government has ceded control over almost a third of the country to the “Maoist” movement. Little is done to woo the people back, and to train disciplined police forces and intelligence to deal with the militants. Indeed there are many instances of the government forces supplying arms to them. Separatist movements have been using violence and terror in the North East and Jammu and Kashmir where our armed forces have for decades lorded it over civilian populations with the aid of laws unsuited to a democracy. The BJP has forgotten the visionary leadership of Vajpayee and insists on treating Jammu and Kashmir like any other part of India, forgetting the long and violent history.

Chinese incursion

We have been kept in the dark about incursions by China into India, where they have defaced border markings. The threat to the Bramhaputra because of Chinese diversion of the river in Tibet is u underplayed. When a river agreement is to be signed with Bangladesh, the shortsighted and parochial chief minister of West Bengal sabotages it, at the cost of West Bengal and the whole of India. Extremists from among Muslims and Hindus have unleashed terror in different parts of India and governments have been unable to create intelligence networks and well-trained and equipped police forces to combat them, despite spending vast sums ostensibly for this purpose. Many mass murderers of Sikhs and Muslims remain unpunished.

The economy is in poor shape. A few years of services oriented growth gave GDP growth above 8 per cent. It has been accompanied by double-digit inflation. Growth has now declined but government is unwilling to tighten and make expenditures efficient, leaving the RBI no option but to raise interest rates and push down growth. Exports are growing rapidly but so are imports, dominated by oil, gas and increasingly coal. Our vast reserves of gas and coal are poorly exploited by inefficient nationalised companies like Coal India, or private lessees like Reliance, creating growing energy shortages. Our food economy is badly managed, with inadequate storage and diversion of cheap grains for the poor to the market. Imaginative infrastructure projects and social welfare schemes are used to divert vast sums of government funds to private pockets. Infrastructure development remains slow. Social welfare schemes reach only a fraction of the target beneficiaries. Wherever you look government has special and corrupt interests to whom goods and services are given free or below coast, many times for a bribe. The poor benefit only partially.

Accountability of politicians and bureaucrats is non-existent. Investigating agencies are controlled and distracted from their work by their bosses in government. Prosecutions with hard evidence are delayed indefinitely, the evidence is inadequate and the prosecutions are perfunctory. The guilty escape punishment and retain the stolen national funds. Many of these criminals sit as elected representatives in central and state legislatures. Some even become ministers!

India has the façade of a functioning democracy and the institutions that accompany it. None of them function as they should and most appear to be meant for the private profit of incumbents, not for the benefit of the people.