Of course corruption cases are rising and it is affecting the people's morale. But the state governments of BJP, including Gujarat under Modi, do not have saintly record on corruption, nor have they been able to derive. Harish Gupta The Economist is read with enjoyment and pride in many educated homes of the world, including the developing countries. It is liked for its dry wit and it provokes the intellect for its liberal views. But, above all, it is regarded as bellwether for Western (read American) view of happenings around the world. Half the circulation of the 170-year-old British publication is in the US, and unlike Fox TV and such other ham-fisted publicists of the American official view, The Economist is nonpareil in its subtlety.
But it is losing its class. Or so it appears in a highly one-sided article on Congress president Sonia Gandhi in its current issue, snidely titled "Tryst with dynasty". The magazine has been a consistent critic of the Nehru-Gandhi family since the 1960's, so it is quite unexpected that, with Sonia Gandhi, there will be an interruption in its jeremiad against the family. It says: "In recent elections, notably in 2009, the (Congress) party has relied on urban votes as well as rural ones. The younger, better educated and middle-class are a rising share of the electorate. To them, Mrs. Gandhi and others look seriously out of touch."
However, if somebody is seriously out of touch, it is none but The Economist. In the 2009 general election, Congress under Mrs. Gandhi increased its number of Lok Sabha seats by over 41 per cent, from 145 (in 2004) to 205. Its vote share too went up by two per cent, which is no mean an achievement for an incumbent party. How could it happen if the "younger, better educated and middle class" urban voters did discard Mrs. Gandhi as an old bag?
The article says, in effect, that NREGA, food security and such other rights-based anti-poverty measures that are attributed to Mrs. Gandhi have caused GDP growth to dip to 4.5 per cent. Besides, according to the writer, these are all mere electoral sops: "the road to office, paved with good intentions". It bizarrely overlooks the grave outlook of the global economy since 2009, including looming recession in The Economist's home country, Britain. If it were free from political agenda, which unfortunately it is not, it would have taken the opinion of an army of professional economists known to be on its rolls. And it is most likely that they'd have complimented India, rather than berating her, for clocking a near-5 per cent GDP growth in the current financial year. Besides, spend on NREGA is insignificant in relation to the government's overall social sector expenditure. Its less than Rs 30,000 crores this fiscal which is a drop in the ocean. Moreover, it is daft to argue that the poverty amelioration programmes are a ploy to garner votes. The Indian political reality is that the poor people who're their targets can't see beyond the state government, so the credit, if any, goes to the party in power in the state which is often not Congress. It is in the 1980's that Indira Gandhi in her final term till her assassination, and Rajiv Gandhi till his electoral defeat, launched a slew of anti-poverty programmes. But Congress never won the majority of Lok Sabha seats by itself since then. This alone should remove the fog from the alleged relation between welfare and electoral fortune that conspiracy theorists tend to believe.
It is undeniable that Western interest in India under UPA rule is dwindling and The Economist's contrived onslaught on Sonia Gandhi is a reflection of that. Now that the US is about to wind up from Afghanistan, there is a lowering of its interest in India as an ally in South Asia. It still wanted India as a major buyer of its products and services, which it is, but India's faltering growth has put a squeeze on its consumption, making it a market which is no longer "hot". Nor is India an unquestioning buyer of American military hardware and a sycophantic follower of the American diktat in every international forum. It is the Western irritation over India under UPA that may be making The Economist jittery.
It also explains why there is a sudden rush of interest in Narendra Modi. His ban on travel to Europe after the 2002 riots in Gujarat is soon to be lifted and, if Delhi's diplomatic grapevines are to be trusted, the US too may re-consider its earlier denial of visa to Modi. In the recent past, there has been a profusion of admiration for Modi in the western media, describing him as strong on governance, and, by implication, criticizing UPA for the rising crime graph and graft charges. To them it is of little consequence that policing is on the "state" list, not "union". Of course corruption cases are rising and it is affecting the people's morale. But the state governments of BJP, including Gujarat under Modi, do not have saintly record on corruption, nor have they been able to derive, on their turf, a fool-proof system to check graft.
But the real problem with Modi is that he is a splitter, not a unifier. [ Read More ]
