Mind Your Business

OVER the last two months, Outlook has been carrying interviews with leading Indian industrialists to get a feel of the main concerns of Indian business as the first five years of liberalisation draw to an end. Economic reforms remain a job half-done, and it is surely one of the most urgent tasks for the next government, of whatever hue, to take charge of the economy and get it back on the course from which it strayed after the Congress Government decided to fall asleep on the job about 18 months ago. So, now that all the election manifestos are out, it's disconcerting to find that it is only the BJP manifesto that makes any attempt at systematically addressing the multifarious issues that are crying for our attention, as far as the economy is concerned.

The Congress manifesto, with an economy chapter that was reportedly rewritten after Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Director General Tarun Das' now-famous diatribe on "the cowboy attitude" of some transnationals (TNCs), is a droning on about all the supposed achievements of the last five years, with a deafening silence as far as specific policy commitments are concerned. Rather, you get non-sequiturs like "carrying forward the momentum of economic reforms...to achieve 8 to 9 per cent per annum GDP growth". The other parties are either silent on Indian business' burning concerns, or scarily retrogressive. The CPI(M) would stop all privatisation activities, and the Janata Dal would legislate to protect companies against hostile takeover bids.

 In contrast, the BJP manifesto promises a host of specific policy decisions. And barring the party's dogmatic idiosyncrasy about curbing TNC presence in the consumer non-durable market, they should gladden business. From value-added tax (a BJP government will introduce it) to privatisation of public sector enterprises (whittle the public sector down to the bare minimum), from debureaucratisation (replace the Industrial Development and Regulation Act with an Industrial Development Act) to black money (encourage capital creation through funds from the black economy) and infrastructure (allow foreign investment freely and create a strong domestic bond market to raise funds for projects).

But does anyone take election manifestos seriously anymore? Should anyone? Have not they degenerated, in the hands of our politicians, to a sort of necessary  evil, a mot-ion that has to be gone through before one gets down to the real business of sops-based campaigning? Isn't economics in India today a mere function of very-short-term political prudence? Just last week, the country's leading politicians discussed economics at the two-day-long annual meet of the CII. And some hours after the last session got over, Manmohan Singh was on Doordarshan giving the Congress election speech. While in the morning, politician Murli Manohar Joshi lavished statistics of doubtful origin and validity on captains of industry, at night, economist Singh reminded viewers of the "ideals of sacrifice" that, apparently, lie at the core of the Congress philosophy. In this era of crumbling barriers of all ilk—trade, communication, cultural—politics and economics have at last seamlessly come to be one.

The CII meet, of course, was the perfect place for this to happen. The politicians, for the most part, made campaign speeches to the businessmen, who themselves clearly saw the real agenda of the conference as pressuring the three fronts to get whatever concessions were possible. If there was any doubt about this, Rahul Bajaj, never renowned for diplomatic skills, told A.B. Vajpayee: " Paisa kisko dena hai aapke jawabon par hai (Where we put our money depends on your replies)." The meet was also the culmination of the association's clever pre-election campaign to persuade the next government to get tough on TNC entry into India.

The CII, however, clearly met its match in the BJP. Vajpayee read out a prepared speech of the sort that is commonly described as "statesmanlike", and Joshi reeled off all sorts of statistics to prove that economically, India is worse off than even Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Vajpayee defined the BJP's swadeshi policy as "our abiding faith in the creative genius of every Indian and the ability of our entrepreneurs to compete with the best in the world", and Joshi put it simply as "be Indian, buy Indian". Good cop, bad cop. Speaking different languages but saying exactly the same thing.

 With their thorough homework, clear strategy and canny dou-blespeak, the two BJP leaders—Jaswant Singh was also present but spoke little—were the most impressive of the politicians at the meet. Compare External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who, when asked about the party's manifesto being silent about future economic policy, explained rather lamely that specific recommendations have all been already made in the finance minister's Interim Budget speech. Not true, as the audience well knew. There were no specific recommendations, only a number of motherhood statements studding the budget speech: the fiscal deficit should be brought down and infrastructure problems should be tackled on a war footing and so on and so forth. Meanwhile, Janata Dal's Jaipal Reddy concentrated more on soundbytes than substance: "Stability is not really what the government should aim at (translation: the stability that the Congress harps on providing is not the sort of stability the country needs)", "Insulation does not mean isolation (translation: Indian industry should be protected from foreign competition, while being allowed to get the best foreign technology)." And the Left Front appeared to be caught in a time warp, talking of the possible efficiencies of the public sector, and other such archaic issues. So it was no surprise that the BJP leaders got the maximum applause, though afterwards there was much grumbling about Joshi's statistical legerdemain.

So does the party really intend to take the steps that it mentions in its manifesto, if voted in? Few would have an answer to that, possibly not even the BJP, which, from all indications, can form a government only through some sort of coalition, and will then naturally have to make concessions to its allies' demands and beliefs. But whatever the level of seriousness parties have towards manifestos this time around, and whoever the Indian populace votes to power, the BJP booklet is a hopeful sign. Among other things, the BJP intends to set up a disinvestment commission to take care of PSU privatisation, independent regulatory authorities for the various infrastructure sectors, and grant operational autonomy to the Reserve Bank. Well, someone somewhere has at least been thinking of separating economics from politics.