A Mandate For True Reform

THE din and clamour of the elections and the post-poll governance farce are now hopefully behind us. The worst fears of many of our senior editorial commentators have been realised, and we have a "regressive", "ragtag" government in office. If they are to be believed, then we cannot expect even a semblance of policy coherence from those in power. Kaliyug is here and all is dark, a darkness that will only be dispelled when the saffron rays of policy clarity sweep the incumbent government out of office.

The intelligent reader will recognise this as motivated or (charitably) illiterate ranting, but is understandably sceptical about the United Front Government. How can such a coalition of parties possibly have a coherent policy stance? What prevents them from attritively losing their mandate through splits and defections as was the case in the past?

Both questions are fair, the latter particularly apposite given the historical record of non-Congress governments. I am certainly not sanguine about durability. However, there are two factors which differ in the present scenario. The first is the fact that previous non-Congress governments have seen the Congress as the principal opponent; that is not the case today. The present combine is contingent on Congress support, provided with the avowed objective of maintaining a secular coalition. With the present mandate, no alternative secular coalition is feasible since all such elements are either part of the Government or are supporting it. The second factor became apparent to me when I met with United Front MPs in the period of the BJP interregnum when the BJP's salesmen were exerting their persuasive skills. I asked a group of them from the North why they remained steadfastly "unpersuaded". The answer was simple: they had been told by community leaders that a vote for them was a vote against the BJP; were this mandate to be dishonoured, they would not be allowed back into their constituencies.

Secularism apart, there is a specific, if opaque, mandate that underpins the United Front. This mandate comes not from the metropolitan middle classes, nor from the new carpetbagger beneficiaries of Manmohan Singh's reforms, but from that part of the electorate that is too far from the foetid corridors of Central power to either influence what goes on there or to be counted as winners from policy initiatives that originate there. This constituency expresses its demands in different ways. In the South and in Assam, it is vocalised in regional terms. In West Bengal and Kerala, it is vocalised along an explicit economic and rural-urban divide. More recently, Hindi heartland aspirations are expressed on caste lines. The cementing factor in all these cases is a desire for what economist-philosopher Hirschman calls "voice" in the public policy process—a process that, in India, increasingly excluded aspiring groups even as power began to be centralised in New Delhi in the heyday of the Indira Raj. Prior to this, the Congress was able to vocalise new aspirations as it functioned as an effective mass organisation with clear regional voices. From the Gandhi era, through to Rao, these voices have had to leave the party if they have had to be heard.

Reform exacerbated this. It is easy to be pro-reform living in Delhi and Bombay where the health of the political economy is judged from the variety of available international cuisine, and reflected in the movements of the "Sensex". It is more difficult to accept the proposition that there has been any reform if one lives in India's small towns and, of course, its villages. Quite simply, successful reform must be more radical than it has been, and must generate more winners than it has managed to do. For this we need more reform, of a different quality and in an egalitarian direction.

Egalitarianism and inclusion require decentralisation of power. This debate has been hijacked by simplistic commentators who have equated reform with less State intervention. The consequence is that reform has been marginal in its impact outside the metros. At the national level, the Government runs a revenue deficit, meaning that it borrows to finance its current expenditures. This is universally acknowledged as an ideology-free indicator of sloppy economic management. Infrastructure continues to be poorly developed and the poorest parts of India continue to have the worst deal in this respect. Drive from Delhi to anywhere and watch the dual carriageway disappear the further you get. Food prices have risen sharply, yet subsidies are maintained. As for poverty alleviation, you only have to read the damning indictment of the Jawahar Rozgar Yojana by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India to get a flavour of the farce that is being played out on that front.

The mandate, then, is simple. We need reform in these critical areas and fast. We have a coalition with enough state governments to make immediate and radical action on these fronts possible and experienced policy-makers who have made things happen on these fronts in the South. These states are renowned for the quality of their infrastructure development and a lot can be done to disseminate this. In addition, despite the Cassandra-like wailing of economists in the mid-1980s, these states have successfully implemented simple universal welfare schemes—meals for children, clothes for women and cheap rice for all—that are the essence of roti kapada aur makan, without managing their public finances any worse than states without these schemes.

And what of foreign investment? India has many contracts but few projects. Our record of converting agreements into projects is worse than China's and even Vietnam's. Unlike projects that can exclusively make do with a metropolitan, middle-class market (cellphones, fried chicken, air-conditioners), investors in key strategic areas like transport, power, and high-tech manufacturing need to be sure that they speak with a Government that can deliver down the line. They need to be convinced that reform generates enough winners to be sustainable, a situation that clearly does not prevail today. The new Government is uniquely placed to bring this about, given its commitment to egalitarianism and the powerful unity of regional voice that it can deliver.

These reforms require proactive State intervention and strategic thinking. It isnow incumbent upon the Front to generate this. This is not merely desirable but also necessary for the political survival of the Front. V.P. Singh's government was short-lived but radical. Rao's government lived long but was feeble in its strategic thinking and hijacked by ideologues who were blind to the equity problem. If the United Front is a credible constellation, it must act and be seen to act as a Government of the enfranchised seeking to be empowered. Economic Reform can then be a durable proposition, as it becomes broad-based enough to generate a sizeable constituency of winners. The metropolitan middle classes can keep their pagers, they are irrelevant to serious economic reform. It is now up to the new Government to deliver the radical reform that their mandate expects. 

(The author is a political economist at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.)