he-man
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The Narendra Modi government is only six months old but it is quite clear that a structural transformation of the Indian polity and economy is underway. Reform of labour laws was a favourite talking point for decades, if not a century, and remained just that. Now there is significant movement with one state, Rajasthan, actually obtaining a presidential go-ahead to diverge from onerous Central labour laws. The Independence Day speech marked a significant and desirable foray into the social areas of discrimination against the girl child and sanitation. Later, the cleanliness campaign was launched — again, a much-talked about subject earlier. Now, some long-awaited progress.
India’s image abroad has improved considerably. The image of the prime minister has improved manifestly at home. Modi is a person capable of taking hard decisions, and acting decisively in the national interest. All this is showing up in electoral results. Modi’s BJP is winning in regions not thought conceivable just a few months ago. All in all, remarkable progress since May 26, and enough evidence to convince anyone that more has been done in the last six months than in the last two decades.
Which is why the disappointments with the Modi government hurt. These regrettable disappointments have been in both the social and economic spheres. Perhaps the biggest setbacks have been due to the Hindutva (or is it RSS?) agenda being pursued rather vigorously in education and “culture”.
More FromSurjit S Bhalla
Smriti Irani, education minister, reacted to the questioning of her policy of making Sanskrit compulsory in government schools by claiming that the media was distorting the facts. (What would governments do if they did not have the media to kick around?) She claimed, and this seems sensible, that she is committed to consulting and receiving inputs from the primary stakeholders in the education process, that is, the teachers and parents of students in the affected schools across the country. Can Irani please enlighten us with the data so collected? What percentage of parents want their kids to compulsorily learn Sanskrit? If a majority of parents want this to happen, then make Sanskrit mandatory according to the region’s recommendation; if not, then can we revert to status quo ante? Must everything that the Congress did change?
To what purpose?
what does External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj mean when she demands that the Bhagavad Gita be declared a “rashtriya granth” or national book? Given the foreign policy successes notched by PM Modi, is she feeling left out from the public eye? And how many national books can a multi-religious country like India have? The Quran, the Granth Sahib, one Bertrand Russell book for the atheists, one for the agnostics?
Are Irani’s Sanskrit and Swaraj’s national book interrelated with the Hindutva elements? If so, wasn’t Modi’s appeal meant to transcend such narrow non-national fundamentalist agendas? How will Sanskrit and the national book help provide education and/ or create jobs for the poor? While on the subject of the poor, what sense does it make to defend the ministership of Niranjan Jyoti? Can this reservation be justified?
This brings us to the primary reason that Modi was voted in. While the PM seems to grasp what is required, the same cannot be said for members of his party, or the bureaucracy. Starting with the budget, it has been the case that tentative, and right, forward steps on the economy have been taken, only to be accompanied by regressive ones (think the Congress!). For example, can the Modi government or Nirmala Sitharaman, the minister of state for commerce, explain exactly what India gained from the WTO fiasco? How was the eventual deal signed different from what was on the plate in Bali?
And there seems to be a lack of decisive leadership on matters related to the economy. There is a disinvestment campaign on to help reduce the fiscal deficit. That is good; the bad news is in the manner of implementation of the good. The government has just sold some shares in SAIL and plans to sell shares in Coal India, ONGC and NHPC for a revenue mop-up of Rs 43,425 crore. Not as publicised, especially by the government, is its ownership of the following amounts (in market value) of shares in ITC, L&T and Axis Bank — Rs 35,000, Rs 12,000 and Rs 16,000 crore, respectively. A total of Rs 63,000 crore, which is exactly what the government needs.
How did the government come to own shares in a tobacco company? Because long ago (in the 1990s), the government guaranteed a 16 per cent return to buyers in the government owned “mutual fund” called the Unit Trust of India. Well, the guarantee went bust — as all guarantees on speculation are bound to — and the taxpayer (and the government of India) was left with the shares of the companies in which the UTI had invested. Some 16 years later, the government still owns a large stake in the tobacco and hotels company called ITC.
I have asked several people as to why the government is not selling shares in ITC — a healthy disinvestment gift of Rs 35,000 crore. They all shrug their shoulders, say they don’t know, and then wink-wink state: the government does not want to sell ITC for the same reason that it does not want to sell Air
ndia or Ashoka Hotels. It is the bureaucracy (and politicians), stupid.
No one thought that a PM like Modi would be dictated to by the bureaucracy, but this is likely what is happening. Regarding Air India, the Modi government has formed yet another committee to look into whether it should be sold or not. Haven’t enough committees been formed on the subject? What new does Modi intend to learn from yet another committee report? To the best of my knowledge, selling Air India does not require Lok Sabha approval, let alone the approval of an opposition-controlled Rajya Sabha. Why doesn’t Modi just do it?
Now back to the wink. A suggested explanation for the Indian government (read that as politicians and IAS bureaucrats, plus others) not selling Ashoka or ITC is that they gain enormously from “kickbacks” in the form of discounted or free rooms, or discounted or free dinners, or discounted or free marriage parties. For those not knowing, more than 54 per cent of ITC revenue is not from tobacco.
Modi seems to have been captured by the bureaucracy, which is unfortunate and entirely unnecessary. Nor should he be beholden to the narrow agendas of Hindutva, the RSS or the “love jihad” brigade. So when can we expect to see the Modi we elected in economic and social policies, as we are seeing in foreign policy?
Course correction needed | The Indian Express | Page 3
India’s image abroad has improved considerably. The image of the prime minister has improved manifestly at home. Modi is a person capable of taking hard decisions, and acting decisively in the national interest. All this is showing up in electoral results. Modi’s BJP is winning in regions not thought conceivable just a few months ago. All in all, remarkable progress since May 26, and enough evidence to convince anyone that more has been done in the last six months than in the last two decades.
Which is why the disappointments with the Modi government hurt. These regrettable disappointments have been in both the social and economic spheres. Perhaps the biggest setbacks have been due to the Hindutva (or is it RSS?) agenda being pursued rather vigorously in education and “culture”.
More FromSurjit S Bhalla
- No Proof Required: Go on, do a Volcker, please
- No Proof Required: Who is the real target?
- A cut in time saves nine
Smriti Irani, education minister, reacted to the questioning of her policy of making Sanskrit compulsory in government schools by claiming that the media was distorting the facts. (What would governments do if they did not have the media to kick around?) She claimed, and this seems sensible, that she is committed to consulting and receiving inputs from the primary stakeholders in the education process, that is, the teachers and parents of students in the affected schools across the country. Can Irani please enlighten us with the data so collected? What percentage of parents want their kids to compulsorily learn Sanskrit? If a majority of parents want this to happen, then make Sanskrit mandatory according to the region’s recommendation; if not, then can we revert to status quo ante? Must everything that the Congress did change?
To what purpose?
what does External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj mean when she demands that the Bhagavad Gita be declared a “rashtriya granth” or national book? Given the foreign policy successes notched by PM Modi, is she feeling left out from the public eye? And how many national books can a multi-religious country like India have? The Quran, the Granth Sahib, one Bertrand Russell book for the atheists, one for the agnostics?
Are Irani’s Sanskrit and Swaraj’s national book interrelated with the Hindutva elements? If so, wasn’t Modi’s appeal meant to transcend such narrow non-national fundamentalist agendas? How will Sanskrit and the national book help provide education and/ or create jobs for the poor? While on the subject of the poor, what sense does it make to defend the ministership of Niranjan Jyoti? Can this reservation be justified?
This brings us to the primary reason that Modi was voted in. While the PM seems to grasp what is required, the same cannot be said for members of his party, or the bureaucracy. Starting with the budget, it has been the case that tentative, and right, forward steps on the economy have been taken, only to be accompanied by regressive ones (think the Congress!). For example, can the Modi government or Nirmala Sitharaman, the minister of state for commerce, explain exactly what India gained from the WTO fiasco? How was the eventual deal signed different from what was on the plate in Bali?
And there seems to be a lack of decisive leadership on matters related to the economy. There is a disinvestment campaign on to help reduce the fiscal deficit. That is good; the bad news is in the manner of implementation of the good. The government has just sold some shares in SAIL and plans to sell shares in Coal India, ONGC and NHPC for a revenue mop-up of Rs 43,425 crore. Not as publicised, especially by the government, is its ownership of the following amounts (in market value) of shares in ITC, L&T and Axis Bank — Rs 35,000, Rs 12,000 and Rs 16,000 crore, respectively. A total of Rs 63,000 crore, which is exactly what the government needs.
How did the government come to own shares in a tobacco company? Because long ago (in the 1990s), the government guaranteed a 16 per cent return to buyers in the government owned “mutual fund” called the Unit Trust of India. Well, the guarantee went bust — as all guarantees on speculation are bound to — and the taxpayer (and the government of India) was left with the shares of the companies in which the UTI had invested. Some 16 years later, the government still owns a large stake in the tobacco and hotels company called ITC.
I have asked several people as to why the government is not selling shares in ITC — a healthy disinvestment gift of Rs 35,000 crore. They all shrug their shoulders, say they don’t know, and then wink-wink state: the government does not want to sell ITC for the same reason that it does not want to sell Air
ndia or Ashoka Hotels. It is the bureaucracy (and politicians), stupid.
No one thought that a PM like Modi would be dictated to by the bureaucracy, but this is likely what is happening. Regarding Air India, the Modi government has formed yet another committee to look into whether it should be sold or not. Haven’t enough committees been formed on the subject? What new does Modi intend to learn from yet another committee report? To the best of my knowledge, selling Air India does not require Lok Sabha approval, let alone the approval of an opposition-controlled Rajya Sabha. Why doesn’t Modi just do it?
Now back to the wink. A suggested explanation for the Indian government (read that as politicians and IAS bureaucrats, plus others) not selling Ashoka or ITC is that they gain enormously from “kickbacks” in the form of discounted or free rooms, or discounted or free dinners, or discounted or free marriage parties. For those not knowing, more than 54 per cent of ITC revenue is not from tobacco.
Modi seems to have been captured by the bureaucracy, which is unfortunate and entirely unnecessary. Nor should he be beholden to the narrow agendas of Hindutva, the RSS or the “love jihad” brigade. So when can we expect to see the Modi we elected in economic and social policies, as we are seeing in foreign policy?
Course correction needed | The Indian Express | Page 3
Except for the Sanskrit part, he surely does not like it much.
