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By Rashme Sehgal
Lord Meghnad Desai, Professor at the London School of Economics, has been commentating on the Indian economy for the past four decades. He believes that India can rid itself of the problems of acute poverty, deprivation and ethnic conflict only if it adopts the path of rapid economic development. He also believes that globalisation holds the key to helping integrate India with the world economy
How would you rate the performance of the Manmohan Singh government?
 It is a continuation of the economic policies pursued by the earlier three-four governments. The core economic team of Montek, Chidambaram and the prime minister remains committed. They will have to overcome the Left, which remains anti-growth though it does so under the banner of redistribution and by being pro-subsidy. The present government is a poor mixture of two contradictory ‘isms’ -- one for and the other against economic reform.
Aren’t you being too harsh on the Left?
I would dub the CPI (M) party as being the equivalent of the RSS for the Congress. They are anti-reform and completely xenophobic. What the country needs is a secular-reform combination; the Left is secular but not pro-reform. They do not give a monkey about the poor. Their concern is limited to public sector employees. They are interested in promoting a dole culture. The problem here is that the middle class receives a lot of dole. The poor do not receive dole and so the Left is caught up in the rhetoric of redistribution. They are using the poor to protect the privileges of the middle class. Everyone knows that the whole public distribution system does not help the poor. The money is not percolating down; rather it is reinforcing a self-serving state apparatus.
Are you saying that the key to progress lies in rapid economic growth?
India needs to achieve a growth rate of between 8-9%. The only way this can happen is to concentrate on a growth paradigm. This will require a single-party majority, or else a coalition formed by the Congress and the BJP, since these are the only two parties with a national perspective. If both these parties can combine, we will have a growth perspective in place. The Chinese used rapid growth as a solution for their internal problems. In India we lack a single will, a single vision. Every coalition has its own RSS, and this has taken its toll on development.
But both parties adhere to a completely different ideology. The Congress claims to be secular while the BJP can hardly be called secular…
In India , the division between secular and communal has become completely blurred. The Congress was secular for a very brief period of time. During the time Jawaharlal Nehru was alive. Just because the Muslims vote for a party does not mean that that party has become secular. The Congress leadership has been deeply Hindu in its outlook. This attitude was further bolstered by Gandhi’s religiosity and his failure to challenge caste. On the other hand, the BJP is only interested in contrasting Hinduism with Islam, as though nothing exists outside such a juxtaposition.
I can’t see the RSS having a future in modern India . Nor can I see young people marching around in short trousers. The BJP was lucky to have escaped the RSS during their tenure in power. They deserve better than that.
Are you opposed to reservations for Muslims?
Reservations are a sign of backwardness. I am willing to support reservation on the basis of gender, poverty or disability but not on grounds of caste, religion or untouchability. How can you create a secular State if you can’t create a secular society? If you go on entrenching caste formations it is not possible to have a secular State.
Are you implying that India does not have a clear response to modernity?
Its response to modernity remains muddled. Being a multinational State it cannot forge a single-minded response to development as has been done in China . Modernity means different things to different people. Here one finds all the jumble and muddle that existed in Europe before the ‘enlightenment’. The lower castes have used the ballot to grab state resources. This has led to further entrenchment of the caste system. Only rapid growth can dismantle this. The people have to look at a vibrant private sector and not at the public sector for job guarantees.
Of course, India has had to face other problems. Being a multi-religious State, the Hindus have one response (to modernity), while the Muslims have another. Then there are all these regional, linguistic and caste parties to contend with. There is Jayalalitha, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Laloo Prasad Yadav and others whose concerns are limited to their respective states. They will not break away from India but they are not interested in doing anything outside promoting the interests of those groups that support them. For example, Laloo only cares about the Yadav-Muslim combination because they support him.
Do you support the government bill on women receiving equal rights to property?
This is the belated arrival of human rights for Hindu women. Muslim women continue to remain outside the purview of such a bill. We still do not have a single law in this field.
India can make nuclear bombs but it cannot provide clean water. It remains very much upper caste in its need for martial glorification. Regardless of illiteracy, we want to have a Security Council seat in the United Nations.
You seem to have an extremely pessimistic view of the Indian nation-state… India has a corrupt democracy, which is implicated with criminality and incapable of decisive leadership. It is also unable to tackle the challenges posed by globalisation. No reduction in poverty took place in India between 1950-80. Those were wasted years of slow growth and complete self-indulgence. They were also completely anti-rural poor. These (years) followed the upper caste paradigm of making India militarily capable. The rapid decline in poverty only started in 1980, when Indira Gandhi abandoned the idea of self-sufficiency and took a large loan from the International Monetary Fund. In 1991, the bottom fell out of India ’s experiment with socialism. The government went bankrupt and had to make several humiliating trips abroad begging for foreign credit.
In 1960, South Korea had the same level of income as India and Pakistan . But by 1995 its income level was 25 times higher. They proved that economic success is possible in India .
Have you always supported globalisation?
India remained unknown to the rest of the world prior to globalisation. For four decades after Independence , it epitomised a combination of under-performance and moral arrogance. Now people are talking about Bollywood, beauty queens and IT. India needed to come out of the shock of ’91 in order to shed its old sloth.
Let me cite an example. The UK has been an enthusiastic member of the concept of a single market. South Asia has gone the opposite way. In 1945, South Asia was a single market, practically a single currency area. In the last 55 years, South Asia has built barriers against the flow of goods and people divide it into four separate countries with four currencies. Due to restrictions on capital and labour, South Asia lost its advantage as a single economy.
(Rashme Sehgal is a freelance writer and journalist based in Delhi )
InfoChange News & Features, January 2005
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