VISION OR CONSPIRACY?
Dr. Jai Maharaj
Forwarded message from "G.Subramaniam" <gsu...@comcast.net>
[ Subject: VISION OR CONSPIRACY?
[ From: "G.Subramaniam" <gsu...@comcast.net>
[ Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2005
VISION OR CONSPIRACY?
- Everybody, except the communists, wants a prosperous
India
Commentarao S. L. Rao
The Telegraph
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
The author is former director-general, National Council
for Applied Economic Research
[Caption] Destroy, to take over
Everyone would like to see a strong and prosperous India
with enough opportunities and good living for all. There
are different routes. But the experience in many
countries is that improved productivity, efficiency and
quality in producing goods and services, including health
and education for the poor, open economies and
competition, achieve rapid growth with equity. From their
actions in the year they have run the United Progressive
Alliance government from outside, the communists appear
to be against this route. They would rather redistribute
wealth. They do not accept that individual incentives
lead to growth, and that the communist method will keep
the economy at low levels of efficiency and productivity.
Many suspect a much more ominous plan behind communist
obduracy. Their well-thought out strategy for India might
replicate their successful strategies in gaining West
Bengal. It begins with frightening away existing industry
and new investment through militant labour actions. It
includes stimulating law and order problems with acts of
random violence. On seizing power, they capture mass
votes, as in West Bengal, by land reforms. They place
their cadre in strategic positions in government at all
levels so that they have an unbeatable electoral machine.
Meanwhile, industry and investment flee and the economy
deteriorates. After achieving full control over the state
machinery, they stop labour militancy and violence to
attract investment, as in West Bengal.
The communists are for restraint on consumption, more
simple lifestyles and heavy taxes on the rich. They have
opposed disinvestment in public sector shares. They
fomented the violent labour agitation in Gurgaon. They
would rather bankrupt the oil companies than permit end
prices to rise despite input cost rises, thus gaining
brownie points with voters. They are sabotaging power-
sector reforms by demanding amendments in critical
portions of the Electricity Act 2003. They oppose
improved efficiencies in the public distribution system.
Their thrust for a colossal national giveaway through a
guarantee of employment to all families along with many
other actions show that they are working to a plan. They
are opposed to any rapproachment with the United States
of America. The plan is to frighten investment, bring
industrial decline and use the chaos for gaining power
nationally. A “Third Front” will give them this power.
Some elements in the communist agenda, reflected in the
national common minimum programme, were doubtless
appropriate. The communists pushed for the social issues
in the NCMP. But a “human face” to reforms is not a
communist innovation. It has been in the semantics of
reforms from the Narasimha Rao days. His “middle path”
was a reflection of his concern to go forward at a pace
that would not hurt the poor and vulnerable. But without
reforming government, no amount of money will deliver
services to the poor. The communists are silent on this.
Indeed, India under different governments developed a
consistent reforms model that is unique. The rupee is not
yet fully convertible despite the many who have wanted it
done since the early Nineties. The economy is still
closed to foreign investment in selected sectors. We have
resisted any attempt to cut our protection for
agriculture. We have not changed labour laws and continue
to have the same laws even in the special economic zones,
unlike China. Our public sector remains largely as it
was, both in ownership and in government control. Little
is privatized. Even the sale of shares in stateowned
enterprises was spasmodic and is now halted. Subsidies on
many products like fertilizers, power, kerosene, LPG and
so on, continue. Price control on pharmaceutical drugs
remains, although now somewhat more flexible than before.
Basic commodities like coal remain under government
ownership. Import duties remain higher than in most other
countries. Electricity under mostly government
ownerships, with communist help, bodes to be in permanent
darkness. Higher and professional education remains
largely with the government and is heavily subsidized.
Despite all the rhetoric in favour of the poor (starting
with Indira Gandhi’s Garibi Hatao), we have yet to
successfully deliver health, education, nutrition, gender
equality and upward mobility to the majority of the
lowest among the scheduled castes and tribes and
religious minorities. This failure is not the result of
any cold-blooded rationality of our reformers to push
ahead with reforms even at the cost of the poor. It is
because of the inability of our administrative system to
spend the allocated amounts and deliver such social
services to the needy.
The poor prefer quacks to the government health centres,
except when the ailment is so serious that it needs
hospitalization. Subsidized foodgrains and oils get
diverted from the poor for whom they are meant, as do
kerosene and other goods. Government schools are in a
shabby state. Our cities and towns are vast festering
sores of filth and congestion. I have not heard any
communist even whisper that we badly need administrative
reforms in India to improve the quality of life and
opportunity for the poor as for others. Communists are
against improving efficiency and productivity even for
benefiting the poor.
Communists do not believe that better management can
actually help the poor. They would rather procure, store,
transport and deliver as rations, millions of tonnes of
foodgrains. They are unwilling even to countenance any
alternative that will avoid this complex logistical and
inherently corrupt effort.
The communist approach to the public sector (although not
in Bengal where they are now in the reconstruction phase
after having destroyed its economy) is that, however much
of a drain, the public sector units must survive. They
would like petrol, diesel and kerosene prices to be
pegged even when the input crude prices are exploding.
They do not care if electricity is sold below cost and
huge losses incurred by state government enterprises.
They want all subsidies and infructuous government
expenditures to continue. They have only one approach to
the government’s financial deficits: tax the rich. They
refuse to accept that high taxes are counter-productive
and do not lead to higher revenues, while they push back
growth.
In the world of more openness to ideas, markets, goods
and services and increasingly, to people, the dominant
motivation is materialistic and consumption-oriented.
This may be good or bad. But the shift is inevitable. No
country has tried to stop it except Myanmar, North Korea
and Cuba.
In our domestic policies, all parties except the
communists appear to favour strong action to stop the
terrorist movements labelling themselves Maoist or
Naxalite. They are against weeding out illegal
Bangladeshi immigrants and sending them back to
Bangladesh. This protects their Muslim vote-banks (which
include Bangladeshis). This also explains their pro-Arab
and anti-Israel stance.
Except the communists, all parties seem to have
recognized the realities of a unipolar world. The US
dominates the world in every respect. Both the Bharatiya
Janata Party and the Congress have simultaneously
developed stronger relations with the US as with Asia and
our neighbours. The communists would rather improve
relations only with China and the Muslim world. For them
China is no threat and our nuclear explosions could not
have improved our strength in relation to China. The
enemy for them are the US, and the Western and capitalist
countries.
There appears to be a sinister method in the Indian
communist conspiracy of not promoting the national
interest, and destroying it so that the communists can
pick up the pieces.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1050817/asp/opinion/story_5097678.asp
End of forwarded message from "G.Subramaniam" <gsu...@comcast.net>
Jai Maharaj
http://www.mantra.com/jai
Om Shanti
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The terrorist mission of Jesus stated in the Christian bible:
"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not so send
peace, but a sword.
"For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the
daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in
law.
"And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
- Matthew 10:34-36.
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harmony
poor.
"Dr. Jai Maharaj" <use...@mantra.com> wrote in message
news:nAafI0026uNUja@KnaUs...
Dr. Jai Maharaj
Jai Maharaj
http://www.mantra.com/jai
Om Shanti
In article <puPMe.8103$Pl1.2606@okepread02>,
"harmony" <a...@hotmail.com> posted:
> communists are like catholic missionaries: they can prfit only from the
> poor.
>
>
>
> Dr. Jai Maharaj posted: