Tag: Growth

Growth Wallah’s: Yeh Dil Maange More

Arundhati Roy and P Sainath  are voices that counter the neoliberal growth narrative of growth at any cost and painting growth as a linear story line. A story line where labor rights, environmental commons are commodities to be discarded as these cannot be listed in an IPO on Dalal Street. I grew up during the late 80’s and the 90’s where I transitioned from Doordarshan to Cable TV to 4G internet on the phone and where a vada pav in the mall costs 50 rupees. Where having an overpriced KFC is cooler than having tandoori chicken in the popular culture now a days. IT Sector has created a class of socially mobile class of credit cards and cool cars, but cannot finance them as IT firms are retrenching them. Suddenly, class consciousness hits home. Growth is not cool, when you are handed a pink slip in one hours notice.

Growth means the communities at the margin in Langigarh and Jaitapur have no voice in the resource and nuclear capitalism of Shining India. The growth discourse is panned out in tv panel debates and the holy shrine of Davos.

Arundhati Roy’s Capitalism : A Ghost Story is a class essay book on the fissures of the growth story. Growth has a rosy narrative when it is painted in Malabar Hill and not Dharavi or a Middle Class Mira Road in Mumbai. The middle class are sold the aspirational growth stories for them to buy in when a techie-MBA education does not render the critical thinking skills to understand the globalisation dynamics which help us to assess the next work wave.

Dibakar’s 2012 film Shanghai showed that a lands owner sells his land in lieu for being a security guard in a mall on the same piece of land ironically drinks bottled water with pride.  As Asim Shrivastava’s seminal book Churning the Earth demonstrates a treatise on how the SEZ boom is a land grab scam and how industrialisation causes ecological degradation in every respect.

Mr Modi has made development as the national totem. Although non inclusive growth is not cool, when religious minorities feel unsafe. One year of decent selfie taking does not make for development. Modi’s Foreign Policy and Defence Regime is aggressive and competent though. There is a long way to go in order to accommodate all aspirations. Delhi is not Amdavad oops Peking.

Infrastructure, Welfare & the Rhetoric of Development

A few days back, Mr. L K Advani praised Shivraj Chouhan for his exemplarily efforts in transforming his ‘BIMARU’ state into a development hotbed. The locus of comparison was centered upon the notion that Narendra Bhai’s Gujarat was already progressive as Gujaratis have been culturally entrepreneurial by character. There is a grain of truth certainly in this argument.  Chouhan ji has developed Indore has an industrial hub of central India with major automotive and manufacturing majors operating out of the region. Indore has a fantastic urban transportation system too. Amdavad also has a cool BRT system in place with the Metro project under way. BJP Governments have often equated ‘infrastructure development’ with the paradigm of development. Infrastructure catalyzes regional growth by connecting the rural with the urban; the producers with the consumer. It is a growth multiplier indeed. Welfare hand-outs to the poorest of the poor such as the Right to Work Scheme helps the poor as well as yields political dividends as the UPA win in 2009. Effective public good delivery requires robust infrastructure and institutional controls to seal the leak called graft. The poorest of the poor cannot simply depend on the cruel ‘market’ for the benefits of trickle down to seep down to them. Government welfare schemes are the only way out for the weakest of our society to survive with dignity. The Right to Food Bill is vital although it accounts to humongous expenditure. In the aftermath of the Bastar carnage, the rights of the poorest are again back on the front burner of national conversation. I am just sick of the Spot Fixing Coverage. BCCI and IPL are trivial issues being used to divert the people’s attention from critical issues such as Women’s Rights, Systemic Graft and essential legislative business. India is a sub-continent in terms of religious and ethnic diversity and different solutions will be needed to deliver inclusive development. No Gujarat Model, no MP Model matters as Chairman Mao quipped as long as the cat catches mice, it does not make a difference if it is white or black.

 

Is the Secularism Question, really secular?

In India the reality is that the discourse on secularism boils down to trivial politics. As per the 42nd amendment (in 1976) to the constitution the politically contentious term ‘secular’ was added to the preamble. So it seems that Secularism is a relatively recent addition to our dictionary of political discourse.  A ton of writings has already been authored by intellectuals and scholars from the social sciences, so I would not mind adding my two cents to the burgeoning literature volumes with this post. This question about secularism is overbearing the entire national conversation in the run-up to the next national polls, hence it is vital that secularism as a notion is de-constructed to release its essence, to make meaning out of the term.

Secularism essentially calls for the separation of the Mandir and the Mantri-land, but India has been a state where religion has been a personal affair but at the level of the state, faith is not a guiding force as in the case of Islamic Theocracies in the Mashreq.  Secularism as a term is mis-construed as minority appeasement as it is equated with reservations and soft approach towards terrorism (which is highly debatable as left wing extremism has been in India since the late 1960’s and Mahatma Gandhi was killed by a right wing hindu fanatic). It has been intensely politicized to the extent that ‘Sickularism’ is a term imposed by the Indian Right on their left wing ideological cousins.  The Indian Right treats the Hindu community as a monolith, but as a 79% block it has many sub-divisions such as backward and schedule castes who do not align themselves very comfortably with the ideology of Upper Caste Dominated Right.  There are also states in India where Christians (North East), Sikhs (Punjab) and Muslims (Hyderabad City, J&K) are in the majority along with major minority populations in large states. In short, the whole secularism debate is a complex one. Minorities too have to shed the victim mentality mindset to be a part of the national conversation on growth. It is a two way traffic always. Give and Take; business and trade-off are the most important tool in ensuring secularism.

Power Politics is played out in the name of secularism.   We have the 2nd largest Muslim Population in the World and the right has no option but to accept it. The Left has to make peace with the fact that India has been culturally as a Civilization: ‘Hindu’. The Congress also has to offer India development along with minority protection which in 1984 it miserably failed in Delhi. The BJP has to make overtures to moderate Muslims to be the part of its growth story plan, which in Gujarat it has conveniently excluded.  Every major political party is guilty of a political sin in a mission to garner votes. And I have not started to even comment on linguistic politics in Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu where Hindu from Samastipur is politically pitted against Hindu from Konkan.

The conversation on secularism has to be elevated on a practical platform. How do we embed secular ethos in policy design and planning?

The questions should address broader notions of secularism such as ecological and social justice, equity and economic efficiency in access to welfare rendered by the state. Petty Power Politics in the name of Faith and Identity is easy but regressive; can win one election but there are larger, critical matters at stake in governance.We need to raise above trivial definition based contests on secularism to one, on inclusive growth coupled with equity.