Commentary/Ashok Mitra
The moribund worship at the altar of the moribund from other lands
They have also another grievance to post with the authorities:
the last vestiges of restrictions on the import of consumer goods
must go. Without a wonderful feeling inside, they cannot persuade
themselves to indulge in risk-taking, which investment activity
basically is. That feeling is a function of the availability of
lush, imported consumer goodies, durable as well as non-durable.
The wealth they -- the country's well-heeled ones -- have accumulated
and propose to accumulate is for the purpose of enjoying the high
life; there can be no high life without imported luxury consumer
goods.
One straightaway runs into a dilemma. If goods that tantalise
are freely imported from overseas and are consumed in a gala manner,
no resources would be sparable for investment and capital formation:
consumption does not complement investment, it detracts from
it.
The chronicle of the past six years is a fairly non-complicated
one: India's non-growth is the outcome of the government's withdrawal
from the arena of investment activity, even as the bourgeoisie
embarked on the fast-track consumption, thereby killing off the
possibility of private savings compensating for the retreat of
savings and capital formation on public account.
This dilemma of choosing between domestic savings and domestic
consumption has not been resolved. And the wretched foreign investors
have chosen to play hooky. The climate of blind conformism, however,
discourages candid admission of uncomfortable facts.
If a hypothesis
or a strategy fails to click, the obviously logical next step
is to abandon it. That step will be taken; the present arrangements
have ensured high living
for those occupying society's upper cluster; it is they who really
matter in the polity. The Deve Gowdas will therefore keep asserting,
morning, afternoon, evening and late in the night, how much they
are beholden to the Narasimha Raos for the trail the latter had
blazed.
Barring miracles, the nation will remain a prisoner of the destiny
copycat liberalisers have ordained for it. A few hucksters will
continue to make hay, while the rest of the community will keep
groaning under the burden of joblessness and high prices. But
suppose something gives some part or parts or the Union of India
refuses, after a while, to go along with the charade? Suppose
some of them indulge in a rough stocktaking. The gains from opening
up the economy have been minor, and these gains have been most
unequally distributed between classes and regions.
A class uprising, straddling the whole country, against the nongains
of globalisation is unlikely; the working class movement is much
too inchoate and disorganised for that kind of homogeneous reaction.
A particular region of the country may not suffer from similar
constraints or inhibitions though. The stretch of the North-East,
for instance, has gained little nothing just from liberalisation,
but from being a part of the Union over the past half a century.
A number of other regions or states have gone through a not dissimilar
experience. The citizenry of these states have not, till now,
allowed their resentment to shade off into rebellion. Nor have
they provided encouragement, till now, to dissident groups itching
to take the lawless road.
Suppose persistence with liberalisation measures aggravates income
inequalities and intensifies the sense of deprivation amongst
those occupying the lower depths of a State. Unemployment, specially
urban unemployment, is likely to swell with every day. As sources
of livelihood shrink with the progressive automatisation of both
manufacturing and services, social discontent will intensify.
At a certain juncture, sections and groups, who feel that they
had had enough of liberalisation, could want to break away. They
might insist on choosing a different development model for themselves,
a model which reinstates self-reliances as both the primary objective
and the primary instrument of growth. They might want to abrogate
deals and contracts which, according to their judgement, amounts
to a re-sale of the country to foreigners and thereby rudely
thwart central policies. And they could insist on a different
moral code to guide public affairs from what it has been in the
recent period.
These are terrible thoughts, but not inconceivable ones. Dear
reader, you are absolutely right. Such thoughts are provoked by
the spectacle of the native lot of the moribund worshipping at
the altar of the moribund from other lands.
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