I’m neither a psephologist nor a political pundit and whilst I’m definitely not going to analyse the election results, I would certainly congratulate the BJP for its decisive better-than-last mandate and wish it all success in its most daunting set of tasks ahead. But even before I come to those tasks – I just thought I would recall the five lessons I learnt from these elections: 1) Values and ideologies are dispensable, replaceable by thousands of crores of Electoral Bonds with regulators helplessly looking on; decorum and etiquettes are dispensable – replaceable by high-decibel expletives and shrill divisive fakes, lapped up by exulting voters; 2) Manifestos and Deliveries are dispensable, replaceable by persistent chest thumping on failures, creating exactly an opposite perception – one of great success; 3)Enthusiasm of the 15-million-strong-army of first-time voting youngsters enamoured of images of a rugged “super-hero” a-la-“The Avengers: End Game” or a “The Game of Thrones” or say a “Bahubali” (thanks to networks and 4-D Hindi dubbings)will go deep-set, even if jobs have to wait or farmers have to continue in distress, no worries!
So, you have the anchor of a respected channel asking a group of youngsters, in an interior UP village, whom they would support – and there comes the super-hit-chant…“….Modi-Modi-Modi-Modi…!! not only for this election – but for ever”……almost hysterically -urging more air strikes but going dead-quiet when asked whether they would themselves join the faujis if given an opportunity! No wonders, I told myself– we just love to be ‘safe’, following a strong leader – we hardly harbour intentions to lead! Remember the Pews Study last year! (a good 55% of Indians support autocracy, and more than 27% want a “strong” leader!); 4) Caste arithmetic thankfully, heading for a sunset! and finally 5) If 70 is a good retirement-age – I learnt that our Electoral Laws desperately look for a rebirth – our founding fathers perhaps never even in their dreams, envisaged situations which these polls went through – but that’s another debate and I would like to focus now on the agenda which in my view would be pragmatically important!
Why I said “pragmatic”? – Quite obvious – there are at least 3 most important agenda points which would continue to be scraped only on the surface but would never be dug deep into, viz: a) Radical Electoral Reforms; b) Top Level Judiciary and Investigative wings reforms and c) Dealing with mega corruption cases – everybody up there seems happy without these – I would rather concentrate on the doables and would rather view the days coming, through Kahlil Gibran’s “The Time” (from “The Prophet”) particularly…“The timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness. And knows that yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.”
My Take: Let’s first take a quick stock of the “today” before we tread Gibran’s “tomorrow”! For the first time in two decades our economy has hit a structural slowdown – and the finance ministry puts it rather candidly– “India’s economy appears to have slowed down ‘slightly’ in 2018-19 and the factors: declining growth of private consumption, tepid increase in fixed investments and muted exports.” In my view, it’s much more than that. It’s a sorry case of misreading warning signals and mishandling the resultant mess! The point really is one of a miserably lopsided growth. Our growth-story has been a growth of consumption by just 10 crore people of our 130 crores and when finally their consumptions having plateaued – now without any investments, without FDIs, without exports, we seem to be caught in what economists term as a “middle-income trap” and I can add, with my 45 years in national economy, coming out of such a trap, will be difficult even with a missionary positivity and impossible with a denial mode (as our outgoing government seemed perpetually to be in).
Let’s see now, whether what I said makes sense – and just examine this: FDI inflows have fallen by 1% again last month with job intensive sectors like pharma and telecom worst hit; the IIP has in fact shrunk; both private and government consumption as well as fixed investments are on down slides; GVAs in agriculture and industry both going down; vehicle sales fall 16%, (biggest fall in 8 years); domestic air-travel in fact contract by 4.5% (a first in 5 years); NPAs touch 12 trillion (up from 2 trillion, five years back); shortfalls in direct-tax collections of no less than Rs 82,000 crores; the NBFC crisis and liquidity crunch; the 59-minute-loan losses and unemployment rates at 45 years’ highest at more than 6% (the last received numbers from the labour bureau 2 years back mentions urban unemployment at Goa at 10.1% the national average then was 4.9%) and riding on these – the slowest economic overall growth in 5 quarters at 6.4% and finally – the abysmal data handling (GDP data, employment data, FDI data, crimes data et al)– all of these are a plate-full for the new government.
The government has to prioritise the following: a) attend to each of these warning bells – they can’t wait any longer; b) address inequality of distribution of wealth – we are 103rd of 119 in Global Hunger Index and 140th of 156 in World Happiness Index; c) concentrate on sustainability – we are 177th out of 180 in World Environment Index (where 1.2 million die each year of air-pollution); d) grab opportunities of Chinese downslides; e) don’t be browbeaten on Iran sanctions and finally e) allow Constitutional Institutions professional freedom.
And in conclusion: It’s essential for the India of tomorrow to dream –the government’s job only it is, to create the ambience for them to dream – we need their dreams, Kahlil Gibran’s …“tomorrow – today’s dream.”!
(Binayak Datta is a Finance Professional and has been Company Director and CFO in large MNCs and Indian Corporates.
