(Article published by the News on Sunday,Karachi at the end of
May 2003)
The swearing-in of Dr. Manmohan
Singh as the new Prime Minister will mark the end of the Vajpayee
era. It brings down the curtain
on the high drama that followed the political upheaval brought
on by the election results announced on May 13, 2004. In the post-election
analyses no stone seems to have been left unturned in looking for
the reasons for the decline of the Hindu right wing party on one
side and the spectacular reversal of fortunes for the Congress
Party, led by Sonia Gandhi on the other. In the same vein, Sonia
Gandhi’s motives in first inching her way forward to the
prime ministership and the subsequent decision not to accept the
exalted post have also been analysed in great detail by commentators
in India and abroad. When the dust – perhaps not the heat
generated in the electoral battle – finally settles down
the parting remarks of the outgoing Prime Minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee were, in a way, prophetic when he said that while his
Party had lost, Indian democracy had won. It is an apt summation
of the recent elections by a statesman who has left an inimitable – and
indelible - imprint on the art of running coalition governments.
An equally pithy conclusion appeared in the French daily, Le Figaro.
It captured the essence of what had taken place in India in mid-May
2004 when it said that ‘within a week, India had in any case
given a superb lesson in democracy to the world; a democracy whose
star will remain Sonia Gandhi, ‘foreigner’ or not’.
While Sonia Gandhi will continue
to call the shots – having
ensured a vice-like grip on the party that she resurrected virtually
single-handedly - attention will shift to Dr. Manmohan Singh. The
former Union Finance Minister, author of the post-1991 reforms,
is reputedly one of the cleanest figures in Indian politics. A
man of innate humility, impeccable manners and unfailing courtesy,
he will head the country’s first-ever Congress-led coalition,
christened the United Progressive Alliance (an appellation reportedly
chosen by Manmohan Singh himself). Several months ago, when he
could hardly have dreamed of becoming the Prime Minister – at
least in not so short a while - a foreign journalist asked him
as to what he considered to be the most important issue before
India. Manmohan Singh had no hesitation in replying, ‘the
mass poverty of India’.
And herein lies the rub. The Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) lost the elections because – as per many - it had not paid sufficient
attention to the needs of rural India. The incoming dispensation
is bound to get its priorities right in this regard, more so since
it is dependent upon the left parties for its stability in Parliament.
Although the new government might be able to make an initial dent,
it will soon hit its head against a hard reality. Hardly any government
at the Centre is likely to be in a position to make a meaningful
reduction in rural poverty unless it seriously tackles the issue
of population proliferation. With 20 million more mouths to feed
every year and 9 million fresh entrants into the job market where
is the question of being able to usher in poverty reduction for
the masses in India or, for that matter, the subcontinent, no matter
how sound the government policies. To cite an example, easily comprehensible
by lay persons, of the horrendous nature of the runaway population
growth on the subcontinent, suffice to say that even if ten thousand
persons could be transported to new colonies in far away lands
every day of the year, it would not make a significant dent in
the growing population mass – most of it low birth weight,
begotten by misery-stricken people, living in sub human conditions.
There are many other reasons for good policies generally falling
by the way side in the countries of the subcontinent. In India,
the sorry state of administration in states like Bihar is a case
in point. The Bihar model of governance has become a byword for
governance degeneration. Uttar Pradesh and a few other states could
also go the Bihar way, if they are not careful. What is true of
India applies equally to Pakistan and Bangladesh. Rural poverty
and the general decline across the length and breadth of the subcontinent,
except in a few isolated pockets, will remain the order of the
day unless the governments of these countries give overriding priority
to population stabilization, albeit in a non-coercive manner.
(Compulsion
of the Chinese variety need not come into it for the simple reason
that failure to stabilize population is more on account of organizational
infirmity than the many other reasons generally cited. It is estimated
that today up to fifty per cent or so of births taking place are
the result of unwanted pregnancies). Evidently, meaningful population
stabilization may not be achievable at this stage without concomitant
emphasis on women’s emancipation and much higher outlays
on health, hygiene and education. Higher allocations by themselves,
were they to be made in future due to altered priorities, will
still not yield the desired results because the administrative
instrumentalities of the governments of the subcontinent for implementing
these decisions at the business end have been blunted and corrupted
to a degree that makes them practically useless as harbingers of
change in the positive direction. To compound the problem, many
governments, immediately on assuming office or just before elections,
resort to unabashedly populist measures that can never be a panacea
for poverty reduction. Yet state after state goes in for such populism
in spite of fiscal deficits running into double digits.
By the same token, it would be
unfair to solely blame the outgoing BJP government for the ills
that afflict rural India in UP, Bihar
and several other states. In quite a few of these states BJP governments
were not in power. Massive central allocations for programmes that
could have made a difference, or should have made a difference,
were frittered away – the famous fodder scam in Bihar is
just one example - by the regional satraps who destroyed the strong
foundations of law and order and administration that obtained in
these states during the British rule and in the early decades following
independence. Latent governance stability existed in most of the
states of the Hindi heartland till well into the 1970s. Emergency
and the Sanjay Gandhi induced dispensations put paid to good governance.
In Pakistan, and subsequently in Bangladesh, the rot had started
much earlier. It has gotten institutionalized to a far greater
degree than in India. India is fortunate in its diversity, plurality,
the strength of institutions like the higher Judiciary, Election
Commission and, as demonstrated in the recent elections, the rock-solid
deepening of democracy. What continues to astound observers from
around the world and the
Indians themselves is the remarkable
perceptiveness of the average Indian voter, who with unfailing
regularity continues
to give the boot - both at the Centre and the States - to governments
that fail to perform or to leaders who become too powerful and
arrogant. Elections in India are the great levelers. During elections
2004, Indian voters have put all political parties on notice, perform
or bite the dust. This remarkable feature of Indian democracy will
now have a spillover effect in many other countries of the subcontinent,
especially Pakistan. The yearning for true democracy, Indian style,
could become irresistible for the people of Pakistan and many other
countries that watched the Indian exercise with amazement, exhilaration
and a touch of envy. Like the Bollywood films the pull of Indian
democracy could prove irresistible. It could sound the death knell
for authoritarian regimes on India’s periphery. The change
could come sooner than expected.
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