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Tuesday, July 21, 1998
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Tuesday, July 21, 1998 |
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Flood of problems It is the same story every year. As the month of June comes to an end, senior officials of various districts assure the residents that all anti-flood measures have been completed or are likely to be completed within a few days. Chief Ministers and Ministers make aerial surveys of the drains cleaned, canals desilted and embankments strengthened and then confidently tell the media that the state is fully prepared to meet the onslaught of the monsoon. The occasion provides excellent photo opportunities. The flood of statements continues till the rains start. Suddenly one finds that the much-trumpeted measures have all been washed away and one's area is in deep waters. This year has been no different. Many areas of Punjab and Haryana are reeling under flood-like situations. More than 20,000 villagers are affected in the Patiala-Sangrur belt alone. This despite the fact that the monsoon has yet to display its full fury. Nor is it exceptionally heavy this year. People are left wondering whether the much-trumpeted measures were taken in files only. If a thorough enquiry is conducted, a full-fledged scandal might be unearthed. The irony is that even after being thus exposed, the administration does not get any wiser. Things continue to move at the same lethargic pace. There are many control rooms, which do not even have working telephones. Even when there are serious breaches in canals, senior officials are not available at headquarters. Such dereliction constitutes a very serious matter and unless the government tackles it effectively, all tall claims about taking adequate measures will continue to be just claims. Since the government does not come to the public's rescue, a new trend has started. Many villages have begun depending on self-help and construct their own bundhs. Nothing wrong with that, except that since these are not scientifically designed, these end up flooding many other villages downstream. What is worse, even the government agencies at times do so, only to save the land of certain influential persons, of whom there are far too many in the country. When the situation spins out of control, everyone indulges in the exercise of passing the buck. For example, one excuse regularly bandied about is that Pakistan has made embankments on its side which lead to the flooding of large areas on this side of Punjab. The complaint is no doubt true but equally true is the fact that we have not been able to utilise the water of various rivers like the Ravi all these years and their precious water continues to flow into the neighbouring country. It is ironical that at the same time various states continue to wage a bitter struggle against each other over the vexatious issue of the sharing of river waters. Such an attitude is an open invitation to recurring floods. It is not that officials are unaware of the adage that prevention is better than cure. It is just that they are more aware of the home-grown wisdom that prevention is less paying than cure.  |
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"disaster" alarm He-men, so goes a Tamil adage, beat up their mothers to strike terror in their newly-married wives. What this means is that one should attack a soft target to send a strong message to an entrenched rival. A she-woman that she is, Ms Jayalalitha has let out an angry roar at the BJP-led coalition at the Centre while she wants to maul her bitter adversary and Chief Minister Karunanidhi and his alliance partner G.K. Moopanar. The Chief Minister earned her wrath by sending a fax message to the Prime Minister demanding immediate solution to the Cauvery water dispute with Karnataka. Thereby he upstaged the “Iron Lady” who had sent a delegation of MPs to the Prime Minister for the same purpose on the same day. This way she lost half the credit for her initiative; worse, the copy-cat Chief Minister’s friendly television channel played up his concern and projected the mighty Jayalalitha as a mere also-ran in the Cauvery sweepstakes. No doubt it is intolerable to a lady who once went on a hunger strike to force the Centre to give effect to the recommendations of the Cauvery water tribunal. Her threat to the BJP-led government is a direct fallout of her long-running battle with the DMK for political pre-eminence. All this is evident from her 10-page letter to the Prime Minister, which concentrates its attack on the “enemies within” (Tamil Nadu) and fixes a deadline almost as an afterthought. Actually, there need be no dispute over the Cauvery water this year. Thanks to bounteous rainfall, Karnataka can easily meet its obligation to release 205 TMF to Tamil Nadu. A problem will rise only next year if there is a scanty rainfall in the catchment areas. Ideally, the Centre can seek an adjournment in the Cauvery case before the Supreme Court on Tuesday and use the next 12 months to evolve a policy without either state sacrificing its interest, Ms Jayalalitha knows this only too well. Yet she has acted capriciously. There can be two inferences. One, she has developed self-doubt and even a routine administrative action on the part of the DMK and Mr Karunanidhi sets off a mental fuse in her. (Reminding the Centre of an old demand on the eve of an important court case should be considered routine.) Two, by the same token, she wants to be treated in a grand fashion by the Centre. The BJP is close to losing its patience and with no party eager to inherit a problem-riddled government, it sees no compulsion to entertain her whims every time. Ms Jayalalitha has ordered the Centre to solve a 74-year-old problem in less than 74 hours. This is ridiculous; but then ridiculous situations sometimes yield sobering results. This is the hope now. |
| Security in Parliament Last week’s unprecedented acts of rowdyism in the Lok Sabha should be seen in the context of what happened in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly during the trust vote in the Kalyan Singh government. In spite of adequate television footage, showing members hurling microphones and other objects at each other during the free-for-all in the state assembly, the Speaker has so far not taken any action against even a single MLA. Had the members enacted the ugly scenes of violence outside the protected precincts of the House, each one of them would have had to answer the charge of assault in a court of law where ordinary criminals are tried. That the Lok Sabha came close to seeing UP being repeated when the Law Minister sought the permission of the Chair to move the Women’s Reservation Bill has, understandably, upset at least the senior members who fondly recall the period when the threat of being “named” by the Speaker was enough to silence an angry MP. There are those who believe that the Lok Sabha Speaker, Mr G.M.C. Balayogi, did not assert his authority for restoring order in the House, while there are others who say that such ugly scenes as were witnessed last week are inevitable because some members, who have criminal cases pending against them, have no respect for parliamentary procedures. The argument that Mr Surendra Yadav of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, who picked up papers from the Speaker’s table and snatched the copy of the Women’s Reservation Bill from the hands of the Union Law Minister, should have been suspended for the remaining period of the session is not without substance. Instead, following an all-party meeting the Speaker let him off with a warning following a formal apology tendered on his behalf. The case of Mr Anand Mohan of the same party falls in a different category. He broke a window-pane while being physically removed from the House by the marshals. Although he has denied reports that he had carried firearms inside the House, the question of frisking of members of Parliament should receive the urgent attention of Mr Balayogi. The Election Commission has identified at least 40 MPs who have criminal cases pending against them. To reduce the risk of any untoward incident taking place within the portals of the highest legislative forum of the country the Speaker may have to issue fresh guidelines. Mr Balayogi should hold consultations with the leaders of political parties for evolving a consensus on the question of frisking of MPs. The mindless resistance to being searched in their own collective interest should not be treated either as a matter of prestige or parliamentary privilege. In the absence of electoral laws for preventing criminals from entering the country’s legislatures there are few options, except to allow the body search of elected representatives, which are available to the presiding officers for ensuring that the sanctity of the parliamentary institution is not violated ever again by such acts as were witnessed in the UP Assembly last year and in the Lok Sabha more recently. |
| Parliament totters Victim of ransom & ‘dadagiri’ by Poonam I. Kaushik What have Bollywood’s villain, Ajit, his moll, Mona Darling, and Parliament in common? Nothing. Yet something. Ajit has gained a reputation for his jokes, and Parliament today seems to be reflecting his villainy, leading to a new Ajit joke doing the Capital’s political rounds. Asks Ajit: “Mona Darling, find me a place where I can do some dadagiri, brandish knives and guns, hold the country to ransom, not have policemen chasing me and get away with it all?” Replies Mona Darling: “Elementary boss! Parliament!!” Should one join the guffaws of laughter, sniggers of derision or simply dismiss it as a P.J. Not any. All one can do is to hang one’s head in shame. Because the latest Ajit crack mirrors the harsh reality of India’s high temple of democracy. Desecrated and vandalised by those supposed to be “jan sewaks”. Villainy has no caste or colour or creed. Perhaps, they believe this is the way to fulfil the people’s aspirations. Tragically, today aspirations have given way to perspiration and to unbridled one-upmanship. The voice of the masses has turned into an invoice for themselves — money, power and kursi. The sound and fury generated for self-gain has now exposed the contempt that “the conscience of the nation” has for an institution that once earned them fame and glory. How else does one describe the “historic” budget session of the 12th Lok Sabha, which will go down in history for having achieved its nadir in parliamentary performance. That it stood witness to its sharp and distressing decline, reducing it virtually to zero. Brazenly and recklessly assaulted from within and from without. That it affixed its seal of approval on political harlotry of the worst kind. That it committed and, in the process, ended up with inflicting on our democracy greater damage than the one caused by the destruction of the disputed structure at Ayodhya. Violence, scuffles, snatching of papers, breaking of window-panes and, allegedly, even carrying arms into the House was its hallmark. All over the “belun vs pagri” issue of reservation for women in Parliament and state legislatures. Epitomising everything that has gone wrong with the functioning of Parliament. Not sleaze or scandal, but loss of power, authority and relevance. Of how the once revered building has been reduced to impotence. Where accountability of the government to Parliament was blatantly trampled upon by one and all. Black Monday is how July 13 last has come to be described. The day when Messrs Yadav Inc — Laloo and Mulayam — displayed their yokel “dadagiri” and held the Lok Sabha to ransom. Obstructing the introduction of the Women’s Bill by rushing into the well of the House along with their respective broods, raising slogans and even thumping the Speaker’s table. Only to depart after their purpose had been achieved — adjournment of the House. Replayed five times over. Till all hell broke loose. As Law Minister Thambi Durai rose to introduce the Bill, one Samajwadi and a Rashtriya Janata Dal leader snatched the document from his hand, tore it into shreds and threw it into the air. Earlier, the same member snatched the proposed Bill from the Speaker’s table. Leading to a near scuffle and a free for all. Succinctly described by veteran leader Indrajit Gupta as having reduced Parliament to the streets of Chandni Chowk!  If this was not bad enough, worse came to pass the following day. Barely hours after Yadav Inc had unconditionally apologised for the preceding day’s vandalisation, another MP covered Parliament in historic gory glory. Mr Anand Mohan of the Rashtriya Janata Party, brazenly refusing to heed the Speaker’s direction to either sit down or withdraw from the House, had to be bodily evicted by the Marshals of the House. In retaliation, Mr Mohan smashed the door glass and drew blood. Then followed the unseemly but critical controversy over his having carried weapons into the House, later denied by the Speaker himself. What the women reservation controversy has brought into the focus once again is not only the issue of probity in public life. Equally important is also its exposure of how “powerless” Parliament is to stem the mounting rot. Whereby a minority can abuse its muscle power and a majority its lung power to achieve their goals. In the first case, stonewell. In the second, stall. Both believe that their tactics are a way of securing their way and say. Either way it paralysed Parliament with the presiding officers as “mute spectators” to the sordid happenings. The great tragedy of the whole episode is that the very protectors of this high temple of democracy have become its destroyers. It is irrelevant as to who cast the first stone. The onus lies on all sides of Parliament.True the government is first to blame. Despite their feigned indignation that Parliament was being prevented from functioning, the rulers did little to clear the Opposition’s misconceptions and allay fears over the issue. Sadly, drifting seems to be the new style and philosophy of life. Where principles are discarded like a bitch in heat. Where everything is game for personal gains. Screw the national interest. The popular passwords are “I”, “today”, “grab the opportunity” and “let the others go to hell”. Relegating to the background its primary task — enacting legislation and scrutinising the government’s expenditure. By thumbing their nose at their greatest power over the Treasury, the House guillotined as never before even the barest of a meaningful debate on the demands for grants. True when the budget session began on May 22 last, many expected it to be explosive, notwithstanding the nuclear blasts of May 11 and 13. The Opposition was ready with a blizzard of issues to storm the Treasury Benches. First was the nuclear bombshell. Then came the budget blues with the Finance Minister, nicknamed “Rollback Sinha”, revising the urea and petrol price hike within 24 hours of the presentation of his proposals. Followed by repeated walkouts by volatile Amma Jayalalitha’s AIADMK MPs over the non-dismissal of the Karunanidhi government in Tamil Nadu. With a government see-sawing over whether it could survive the next flash of Puratcha Thalaivi temper. If one had hoped the period of “recess” would be gainfully employed by the Standing Committees of Parliament on various ministries, one was sadly mistaken. Instead, the MPs, cutting across party lines, mainly applied their minds to bringing about new power alignments or realignments to destabilise the present BJP-led ruling coalition. In the process, no committee was taken seriously. The net result? For the first time, the demands for grants for various ministries totalling Rs 7,04,222.69 crore were guillotined without any scrutiny on July 14 last. Even the two earmarked ministries whose demands for grants were listed to be discussed in the Lok Sabha — Agriculture and External Affairs — were given a short shrift. The reason? Lack of time and inclination. A long-serving parliamentarian maintains that never before has the Lok Sabha applied the guillotine without scrutinising the demands for grants of at least a few ministries. This time, Mr Vajpayee was hopefully expected to revive healthy traditions and ensure that the demands of at least the key ministries of Defence, External Affairs and Home would be discussed. It was the same story when it came to the passage of the Finance Bill on Friday last. The near-vacant Opposition benches and partially full Treasury Benches stood testimony to the importance given to financial matters. Arguably, why should our pampered hon’bles lose their sleep? After all, it is only the common man who has to bear the brunt of rising prices and inflation. Not those who thrive on subsidies. Themselves, of course. When the membership of Parliament has become an end in itself — a passport to influence and affluence. Why bother about the mundane business of the House. Also, the time spent on its prime function of law-making has sharply declined. The first Lok Sabha spent 49.80 per cent of its time on law-making. The total for the Tenth Lok Sabha came down to 17.38 per cent. But the actual time spent is certain to be markedly less. The maximum time was spent on “other matters” or unlisted issues. Compare this to a mere 4 per cent by the first Lok Sabha. What is more, the duration of Parliament sessions has slumped from an average of 100 days a year to 75. True, what is important is not the total length of time that Parliament meets but the use to which it is put. But if the purpose is drowned by lung power, what’s the use. In this milieu, who should one turn to? And who should bear the cross? It can be said that the people jolly well get the “jan sewak” they deserve. Thus, both the accused and the accuser stand indicted at the bar of history. However, as the Twelfth Lok Sabha continues to work, it is time we gave a serious thought to rectifying the flaws in our democratic system and to urgently usher in a change. In sum, the MPs’ need to search their souls. For how long will they continue to mortgage their conscience to unabashed gimmickry and cheap emotion? When myopic partisan politics will recklessly paralyse Parliament. Providing cold comfort neither to the actors nor to the cheer leaders. When will the wheel turn a full circle — back to making Parliament truly the high temple of our democracy? Our newly-elected MPs need to answer just one question: Whose Parliament is it any way? Theirs or of the people? — INFA |
| Nuclearisation: time for caution by Rakesh Datta This month the world has entered into the 53rd year of the nuclear era. It was on July 16, 1945, that the first nuclear device was tested secretly at Alamogordo, New Mexico, by the USA. Project Manhattan, as it was called to develop the bomb, was designed mainly out of the fear that Germans were attempting to develop such a weapon. Originally, it was Germany which had experimented the fission of the atom in 1938 and was believed to be ahead of the USA in this field. But it was the Americans who actually brought it into the field of battle by using it against the Japanese which by 1945 had become the primary political, social and military objective of the USA. Hiroshima was bombed on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. One was an army centre while the other was a naval and industrial district out of the nine industrial districts of Japan picked up for the nuclear attack. The destruction of the two cities put an end to the Japanese war efforts and World War II. But it also made it clear that the world will never have another nuclear war. This was despite the fact that the threat to use the bomb was attempted several times thereafter. Consequently, when the use of nuclear energy was seen in the non-military area such as medicine, propulsion, excavation and power, its more visible role was witnessed in its emergence as an instrument of deterrence. This is notwithstanding the fact that there has been continued progress in building nuclear weapons the world over. The stockpiling of nuclear weapons has been meticulously planned. Being a preserve of the developed world, it is dictated by tested and established doctrines. For instance, even looking at the geographical spread of nuclear weapons states (NWS), they had kept a safe distance from each other. The crow-flying distance between New York and Moscow is 4061 n.m. Even during the most turbulent phase of their adversarial relationships they formed a ring of countries around them. On the other hand, New York and Chinese areas are 5,950 n.m. apart. France and Britain are best of allies. Beijing and Moscow share common boundaries but possess vast strategic depth. Moreover, there were no grave political differences which could cause a war between the two. It was Russia which first helped China become communist and later to gain nuclear capability. Unwittingly, much credit for bringing peace to the world goes to the development of nuclear weapons because of their MAD capability. Most of the non-nuclear weapon states too want to address their unending regional disputes through the course of nuclear deterrence. It is an unhealthy development. As said by Fairchild, “The most distinctive mark of a cultured mind is the ability to take another’s point of view,” and nations being no different from individuals, nearly 10 of them in the Asian continent are developing nuclear weapon capability though covertly. It includes Israel, Iran, Iraq, Mongolia, South Korea, North Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia and Japan besides India and Pakistan, which have now declared their nuclear status. This 53rd year of nuclearisation has marked a major shift. It is for the first time that India and Pakistan have openly challenged the nuclear weapon supremacy of the Big Five. It is a dangerous trend because it is again for the first time that two bitter adversaries — India and Pakistan — which share common borders with a ready agenda for war and have already fought three wars have pronounced themselves as nuclear weapon states. It is a significant post-Cold War development and is bound to affect the established nuclear doctrine which has so far prevented a direct clash between any two nuclear weapon states. But now we have a nuclear Pakistan threatening to use nuclear weapons against India. This calls for rewriting the nuclear doctrine pursued so successfully till now. The world is aware of the fact that India has been governed by a mature leadership since Independence. India was the pioneer in successfully introducing a new political doctrine for peace. It is in sharp contrast to the situation in Pakistan suffering from an anti-India syndrome. Yet the world is not alarmed by the change in the destructive status of Pakistan. How sad! Nuclearisation in South Asia is being watched with interest, and most of the big powers would be interested in seeing a nuclear conflict in this area. India must guard itself against this design. India’s leaders must maintain restraint while making statements. Never make hawkish statements, please. (The writer is a Reader in the Department of Defence and Strategic Studies, Punjabi University, Patiala.) |
 75 YEARS AGO The Kenya problem The fight between the white settlers and the Indian residents in the Crown Colony of Kenya has reached a life-and-death struggle and its just settlement will be the acid test of the sincerity of British statesmen who at the Imperial Conference of 1918 thought it diplomatic and expedient to proclaim that India was an equal partner in the Indo-British Commonwealth. It is easy to indulge in fine phrases at such conferences which strike the imagination and attract applause. It is difficult to act up to them when all the implications of such fascinating phrases are realised. When the terrible war against Germany was so ruthlessly waged, India was asked to participate in it both with men and money because the wicked “Germans had subordinated every consideration of justice and the general human welfare to a monstrous national egotism”. When the war is now won, all considerations of justice and fair play, so far as the Indian settlers in Kenya are concerned are to be thrown to the winds. Indians have been in that colony for over 300 years. They have played not an inconsiderable part in reclaiming the jungle-lands of the colony. They were the pioneers of trade in the country there. But all consideration of fair play must give way before the monstrous British national egotism. |
| Banker’s hand by K. Rajbir Deswal He was my coursemate when I was doing my post-graduation in a university. He came from an urban, well-to-do family. From no angle did he look robust and rugged; rather he always wore a girlish look and had a feminine style of walking and talking. To touch him was to touch a touch-me-not. His hands, in particular, I was fond of, for they were very cushiony, fleshy, buttery, plumpy and soft or like thawed cotton to sink in. We had met after a gap of about a decade and when I had shaken hands with him. His hands had undergone an unpleasant change for the worse. They were now very hard and had turned coarse-skinned. Even the blood-red lustre of his palms had gone. What happened to his hands. I kept wondering. All I knew, till then, about him was that having done his MBA, he had joined a bank and did a two-year course in handling foreign exchange. Now he was serving in a branch of that bank in a village. He did not belong to a family of soldiers nor was he a tiller of land. He wasn’t a mechanic, nor a hard-nut cracker — not even temperamentally. Was he hard up exercising with dumb-bells? No. Then what? All these questions kept me baffled while I was shaking his hands. I couldn’t make even the wildest guess. Ultimately, my patience gave way, and with curiosity I asked him the reason for his hands becoming so hard. Finding me really concerned, he informed me that he had to catch a bus daily to reach his office, in a remote village. He alighted at a local station and there was one Jugar. They call it “Peter-rehra” and “Sky-lab” too. This vehicle (not even referred to in the Motor Vehicles Act) has four wheels, a steering wheel, an engine mounted on the chassis connected without suspension to the wheels. It is almost a menacingly moving Christmas tree. He has a tacit understanding with the owner of this Jugar who always offers him a seat (?) in the bargain, by his side, because the rest of the vehicle has crowded benches on the rear. In obligation for being thus accommodated “suitably”, he has to carry a brick in his hands and, in the event of the driver applying brakes and still Jugar running, what this trained banker has to do is to immediately put the brick before the front wheel and stop the vehicle. Once, he said, the uncontrollable wheel had almost crushed his hands, which had never handled brick-like things and were used to doing accounting work, counting currency notes, signing vouchers, issuing token, etc. It is after carrying this brick, to and from his place of work, for the seat that he gets — of course, after making payments too — that his hands have become so sturdy and hard. Alluding to Gabbar Singh in “Sholay”, I tell my friend jokingly if the “Jugar-wala” really tells him, “Yeh haath mujhe de-de, banker!” Isn’t this one good reason in support of brain-drain? |
| REAL POLITIK Will govt arrest economic decline? by P. Raman The protest fast undertaken by BJP Vice-President K.L. Sharma earlier this month amply highlights the country’s deteriorating economic health. A responsible leader close to L.K. Advani, Sharma had never indulged in pranks. He was only trying to warn both his Chief Minister-friend and the Union Government led by his party against the disastrous fallout of economic mismanagement. But sadly, none of the septuagenarian leader’s colleagues in the government took his fast — which new-generation reporters call “dieting” — seriously. It has valuable lessons for every political party. The Opposition is too busy with peripheral issues and have little time for such mundane matters. Even the Left has failed to take advantage of the innumerable hardships being faced by poorer sections of the people. The Congress, the main Opposition, is preoccupied with its own problems. Interestingly, strategists of various political parties propound curious theories to justify the Opposition’s own inaction — and some in BJP readily subscribe to this. One such theory is that the entire political culture, the attitude of the voters and their responses have undergone such sweeping changes that economic issues like steep increase in prices, shortages, disruption of services and erratic supply of electricity and water have ceased to be election issues unless they occur just on the eve of or during the elections. Thus, a crafty establishment can allow such deterioration until a few months before the polls and prove its efficiency by remedial measures through election-eve supply management. Even Opposition strategists cite their own experience to prove the wastage of resources and energy by resorting to “unproductive” protest campaigns and mass mobilisation when elections are too far ahead. By the time the elections come, the tempo built up by such agitations might have died down and much of the issues forgotten. Often, bigger politically engineered emotional issues might have overtaken the impact of the ‘expensive’ mass mobilisations on issues affecting the common man. Thus the protagonists of this theory like to lay more stress on last-minute emotional gimmicks without giving time for others to effectively counter them. Another assumption is that mass campaigns like rallies and demonstrations are gradually losing their effectiveness as a means to arouse public opinion. The elite, with little loyalty either to the state or society and the middle classes, has begun keeping off participatory politics even if the issues directly affect them. Thus like the elite of the old empire enjoying the deadly fight by the gladiators from their cushy seats, the middle class, too, watches sports without sweating themselves and mass protests without participation — all on the ‘TV’ screen. All such new theses on the changing political psychology might need further research. But what all this tells is that attitudinal changes on the part of our new brand of politicians. People are being seen as mere voters and issues are weighed on the basis of their short-term consequences on an impending election. This explains the irresponsibility and adhocism on the part of the government and insensitiveness on the part of the Opposition. The four months of the BJP rule has been marked by the total absence of any coherent economic policy. Announcements of decisions and concessions came in bits and pieces. Ministers came up with their own decisions without any overall coordination. Lack of proper deliberations in the Cabinet leads to subsequent climbdowns. The Prime Minister himself had to repeatedly contradict ministerial pronouncements to save the government from embarrassment. The modifications and withdrawals of hikes announced by Yashwant Sinha on fertilisers and petroleum are enough to highlight the kind of pulls and pressures the government is being subjected to. The faltering and clumsy manner in which Sinha had handled the Budget has been one of the factors that prompted the Moody’s, Standard & Poor, and Duff & Phelps to downgrade India for foreign investment. The constant pressures from allies, lack of political will and leadership failures to evolve a well thought-out policy tend to accentuate the present economic crisis. It has affected practically every sector except, possibly, agricultural prospects. Prices are rising with no sign of any serious effort to arrest the trend. A steep fall in exports is leading to a more adverse trade balance. Growth of the real gross domestic product is set to fall menacingly. Even foreign exchange reserves are showing a sign of steep fall due to a variety of reasons. The government has not made any bold move to arrest such dangerous trends. The latest figures show that inflation is picking up at an alarming rate with the wholesale price index crossing the double-digit mark for the first time in 14 months. The rate of rise has been steady in April and May. It has crossed 7.41 per cent. The inflation rate based on the consumer price index — which is more relevant to the common man — hit 10.5 per cent in May. What is still worse, the full impact of the 1998-99 Budget levies is yet to be absorbed by the economy. When this takes place there is bound to be a further rise in prices. The across-the-board hike in Customs duties and raise in excise duties for certain manufactured products are set to lead to cost-push inflation. The worst affected by the recent price rise will be those in the lower income bracket. This is because the index for primary food articles has risen by 9.72 per cent and that of vegetables by a whopping 54.95 per cent. Ironically, the current rise in prices of primary commodities coincides with a rash of discounts on manufactured consumer goods ranging from cosmetics to TV sets and computers to passenger cars. This paradox in favour of the rich apart, the BJP Government’s Budget had persistently tried to underplay the threat of inflation. Contrary to this, the economic survey had firmly warned that the new fiscal year would require special efforts at supply management in primary articles. Equally intriguing has been the BJP Government’s total disinclination to firmly deal with the price rigging at the retail level and deliberate slowdown of supplies at the level of big traders. Fear of displeasing influential sections seems to be inhibiting the government to deal with the situation with the necessary political will and administrative promptness. More worrisome is the fact that it is accompanied by the continuing slowdown in industry, already two years in the making. There seems to be no hope of a better industrial growth in view of the economic sanctions, a sliding rupee and sagging stock market indices. All this has hit business confidence. If certain measures reportedly being considered by the government is any indication, we are heading for stagflation. Equally disturbing has been the trends on the foreign trade front. During April-May, the trade deficit in terms of dollar had more than doubled from $ 842 million to $ 1857 million. This is in spite of a decline in the oil bill by $ 474 million. While exports during the period rose by only 3.43 per cent, imports were higher by 22.73 per cent. Had the reduced oil import bill not come to the rescue, imports might have been still higher, further worsening the trade balance. At this rate the trade deficit for the whole year may reach an unmanageable $10 billion. Earlier in the year, Union Commerce Minister Ramakrishna Hegde had set an export growth target of 20 per cent for 1998-99. Against this, the export growth rate for April-May has been just 3.43 per cent. Adding to the worry, even exports of textiles are not rising at the desired rate because of a drop in non-exports to the ASEAN region and stiff competition (cheaper textiles) from China and other countries. The fields where the export performance has been fairly satisfactory are software, chemical and plantation products. With such a dismal performance, the government has no option but to helplessly watch the steady fall in the rupee. This , in turn, will further upset some of the future calculations in foreign trade and foreign investment. Take for instance, Yashwant Sinha’s ambitious Resurgent India Bonds to be launched next month. The five-year scheme is expected to net Rs 2 billion from NRIs. The poor response to a similar scheme in 1991 has been found to be due to the exchange risk for the NRIs as result of the tottering rupee. This time, it has been decided that the SBI, government and the borrower would equally share the exchange risk. This means the whole scheme is going to be a costly venture for the exchequer. The BJP Government should also take note of the serious warning on the overall performance of the economy. The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, a private think-tank, has predicted that the real growth in the gross domestic product will slip to just 4.5 to 5 per cent during the fiscal 1998-99. This will be due to a fall in the growth of private consumption expenditure and decline in investment activities. It has also predicted a fall in the industrial growth rate to around 4.5 per cent from 6.6 per cent. The outlook warns of a decline in foreign exchange reserves by about $ 3 billion by the end of the current year. The downgrading of India by foreign agencies like the Moody’s should add to the government’s worries. For a development strategy that heavily depends on foreign investment, this is bound to upset all our ambitious investment calculations. The saddest part of the present situation is that the government is showing total helplessness in dealing with such challenges. |
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