The swadeshis got their way on the FM. But the BJP toes a softened line on the economy as an Outlook team found out.
MY afternoon of March 20, Atal Behari Vajpayee was showing his irritation and fatigue. So when a persistent TV reporter shoved his mike into the new prime minister's face and asked who his finance minister would be, he just snapped: "I'll keep finance," and turned away. And suddenly, the nation sensed the trouble Vajpayee was having in getting the right man for the critical seat in North Block.
When the people of Chittorgarh refused to re-elect Jaswant Singh, they also gave Vaj-payee and L.K. Advani a nice new problem. Among the few ministries the BJP was determined to keep for its men was finance, but who? Murli Manohar Joshi had long had his eyes on the job, but he could put the scare in multinationals and foreign institutional investors—even domestic industry eyes him with suspicion. Yashwant Sinha? Certainly more acceptable than Joshi, but a section of the BJP does not consider him true-blue BJP, Sinha having joined the party only a few years ago. To keep Joshi at bay, the BJP even considered Advani as finance minister, but he wasn't interested.
Vajpayee then decided to go back to his first choice, Jaswant, and even put his name on the list sent to the President. But the RSS intervened: what if other defeated BJP leaders too now demanded to be ministers? Besides, Singh is seen as part of that unending Indian corporate warfare saga: Reliance versus Bombay Dyeing.
Bombay Dyeing chief Nusli Wadia is known to be close to him, and one of the few things Jaswant Singh had the time to do in his 13 days as FM in 1996 was to order the Department of Company Affairs to probe whether Reliance had unlawfully issued duplicate shares, and serve a showcause notice on Reliance Industries and Reliance Consultancy Services. Late on March 19 night, Vajpayee decided to give up his battle for Singh. Twentyfour hours later, the country had a new FM in Yashwant Sinha—the former Bihar-cadre bureaucrat had held the post in Chandra Shekhar's Cabinet.
The 61-year-old Sinha now has the chance to present his first budget; he got to present only an interim one before Rajiv Gandhi withdrew support and felled the Chandra Shekhar government. Strangely, the problems Sinha spoke about in his interim budget are the same he faces now: a runaway fiscal deficit, public sector disinvestment and spiralling government expenditure.
What will Sinha do? Says a close associate: "As a bureaucrat, he was sympathetic to the Jayaprakash movement, and talked of giving up his job and joining politics (he finally did it in 1984). He was opposed to Mrs Gandhi, and Chandra Shekhar was instrumental in getting him into full-time politics. He has no association with the RSS, but then again it was Advani who brought him to the BJP, although Sinha is seen as a liberal and should be closer to Vajpayee."
But a glance at Sinha's interim budget speech in 1990 indicates that his economic views even then were close to the BJP's. In that budget speech, he had spoken of setting up a National Savings Bank to mop up small savings from the poorer sections, while one of the mainstays of the BJP's economic philosophy is to drive savings rates up. He spoke of disinvesting in the public sector. This was months before Manmohan.
To guide him, he will have the national agenda (the common minimum programme of this government). But that document, as a top BJP leader told Outlook, "has been drafted to leave ample scope for interpretation," to enable the BJP to work out a consensus with its allies on issues, while remaining true to the party's broad ideology. There are also important details that the document glosses over. If the government earmarks 60 per cent of Plan funds for agriculture, rural development and irrigation, what happens to other sectors?
What the government could, however, end up doing is redefining the heads of Plan expenditure and including investment in power or roads or other infrastructure for rural India in the 60 per cent. Still, the national agenda's goals are lofty.
It recognises that even seven years after reforms began, it's government spending—especially in infrastructure—that moves our economy, sending off massive ripple effects that help industries grow, create jobs, raise incomes. This is something Chidambaram, too enamoured of IMF economic models, never really caught on to, resulting in a near-recession. But the question is: will the new government have the money to do the sort of infrastructure investments the economy clearly demands?
Seventytwo hours before the government was sworn in, a BJP leader—now a minister—was telling Outlook that the BJP was afraid that the government's funds situation could actually be far worse than the figures released by the UF government indicate.
No matter. All Indian industrialists we spoke to were (see box) sure that the agenda was talking the right language. Says Amit Mitra, secretary general of industry association FICCI: "If these promises are carried out, India will become a global player. For instance, the 60 per cent in agriculture promise. Even if 10 per cent of this is actually done, it will kickstart the economy."
Vikas Kasliwal, chairman, S. Kumar's group, feels that the "government has sent a strong message—that the Indian government will actively support Indian industry." But what about the extreme elements? Even as Kasliwal was speaking in Mumbai, Jay Dubashi of the BJP's economic cell was mincing no words: "Every company which has a commitment to foreign shareholders is dangerous. Look at what Hindustan Lever has done. Lever, Philips, all are foreign companies. They must be kept on edge all the time. India is not a market, it's a country."
That will enthuse many Indian businessmen, beset with low industrial demand on one side and the prospects of competing with global giants 600 times their size on the other. But if this also translates into Indian industry regressing to the complacent arrogance of yesteryears, it could be dangerous. For both Indian businessmen and the BJP.