|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
A strong state for day-time growth? He champions the 1991 economic reforms, which are aimed at shrinking the role of the state, but runs down Dr Manmohan Singh, though indirectly. “The Prime Minister’s silence (in the wake of scams) raised questions over his integrity in some people’s minds”, he writes. “They concluded sadly that Manmohan Singh the leader was a failure” (page 232). The man whose reforms catapulted India to 8-9 per cent growth and is heard with respect by global leaders at international fora is dubbed a failed leader because he does not talk often and loud enough. Written in a conversational style and free from jargon, the book shines in parts. Being a reader of his newspaper columns, this reviewer did not find anything exciting. Instead of building one argument in one chapter and taking it further in the next, he keeps returning to subjects he likes. Anna Hazare pops up in page after page. On one single page (211), he discusses Anna Hazare, Plato, Aristotle, Petrarch, Hannah Arendt (political thinker), Marx, Lenin and Mao. He can play on words to hold the reader’s attention but just think over what he actually says. “India has law and China has order, but a successful nation needs both”. About himself, he says. “I am at heart an old-fashioned liberal, the kind that mushroomed in the towns of India in the nineteenth century and whom Chris Bayly has described with gusto in his recent book, Recovering Liberties: Indian Thought in the Age of Liberalism and Empire. One thought Indian towns threw up too many socialists, Leftist and Left-leaning youngsters in the last century, but old-fashioned liberals?
Gurcharan Das is at his best when he talks of corruption since he has industrialist friends who claim 10 per cent of their costs are in “managing the system”. They pay “weekly bribes” to labour, excise, fire, police, octroi and sales officials. “Corruption begins right when you are born – your parents have to bribe someone to get a birth certificate – and ends when you die – your children are forced to ‘buy’ your death certificate’ (page 120). Such a sad state of affairs leads one to demand a minimum government, a la the US Republican Party. The biggest threat to India, he says, stems from its decaying institutions, including the bureaucracy, the judiciary, the police and Parliament, and suggests their reform. The writer says the bureaucracy has become “an obstacle to development”. When his IAS friend asks his son to consider joining the elite service, he quips: “Dad, only corrupt and inefficient people join the IAS”. Very perceptively, Gurcharan Das comments on the political parties, which he says cater to the “victim in us” and pursue the “politics of grievance”, and adds: “No party reflects the spirit of a rapidly growing India”. If the institutions are decaying, the Prime Minister does not provide leadership, the political parties are not growth-oriented and the bureaucracy is creating hurdles, how can a strong state emerge? The hard fact is regionalism is gaining ground. As things fall apart, the Centre finds it difficult to hold. The Prime Minister’s role should be seen in this context.
|
|||
|
|
|||
THE choice of the title makes one think Gurcharan Das shares the belief that India grows at night when bureaucrats and politicians – whom he so viciously derides — are asleep. But he also makes “a liberal case for a strong state”, which means a greater role for these very gentlemen, who are accused of holding back reforms and perpetuating corruption. He says Gurgaon grew rapidly because the government focussed on Faridabad and neglected it. The growth, however, is chaotic in the absence of a strong state. 
