The best way to know the self is feeling oneself at the moments of reckoning. The feeling of being alone, just with your senses, may lead you to think more consciously. More and more of such moments may sensitize ‘you towards you’, towards others. We become regular with introspection and retrospection. We get ‘the’ gradual connect to the higher self we may name Spirituality or God or just a Humane Conscious. We tend to get a rhythm again in life. We need to learn the art of being lonely in crowd while being part of the crowd. A multitude of loneliness in mosaic of relations! One needs to feel it severally, with conscience, before making it a way of life. One needs to live several such lonely moments. One needs to live severallyalone.

Thursday 27 September 2012

INDIANS DO NEED SUBSIDY – PLEASE DON’T SOUND ILLOGICAL MR. PRIME MINISTER

Concluding part of: SCAMS, POLICY HANDICAP, ILL-INTENT, ELECTORAL MILEAGE - THE POLITICAL JAMBOREE CALLED INDIA
Continued from: INDIANS DO NEED SUBSIDY MR. MANMOHAN SINGH

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But given the mindset at the moment, they won’t. Today, the Supreme Court opinionated in the ‘2G Judicial Reference’ case hearing that its verdict about auctioning natural resources was not applicable to all the natural resources. Soon, the government sprang into action and Kapil Sibal was flashing into cameras giving his wisdom of ‘enormous clarity’ on SC’s opinion. The ‘enormous clarity’ in his opinion cleared all the misdeeds on natural resources allocations including the coal blocks.

But how can he thump his feet when the SC reiterated its auction-stand on the 2G spectrum allocation scam? Does SC’s opinion today exonerate the UPA of the mammoth loot?

The ‘enormous clarity’ of Mr. Sibal and his colleagues in the government didn’t tell them the courts could still hear the natural resources allocation on case-to-case basis including the Coalgate.

The fiscal deficit illogic: Now this is what Manmohan’s main problem is evident from his September 21 speech. The way he spoke, it told us that his diesel, LPG and FDI decisions would wipe them out. Be sensible folks. There are no such immediate prospects for an urgent crisis situation (as Manmohan has told us). I would like to quote from some reports here.

They say India’s current account deficit is over $70 Billion. The target this year is around Rs. 5,10,000 Cr0re (or approximately $98 Billion)

Last year, government had failed its fiscal target. 4.1 per cent was planned but 5.76 per cent was the final figure. This year too, the story is expected to remain the same. Projections say it is expected to reach at 5.8 per cent against the planned 5.1 per cent as emerged in a Reuters poll of 25 eminent economists. Being an analysis, it may change and government can sight this but the ground realities tell the same story.

Government is in no position to lower down the expenses keeping in mind the 2014 elections. So whatever Manmohan says just contradicts him that bold decisions were mandatory as the country was heading towards a 1991 crisis. Seeing all this, the immediate measures being taken at the cost of taking risky and political decisions might be nothing more but an effort to generate fund to fund the pre-Budget populist measures.

It helps politicians in another way. Industrialists finance big-ticket expenditure like elections of the political parties. A report from the Association for Democratic Reforms and the National Election Watch tells names of many corporate houses donating to the political parties. Apart from that, the major chunk of the thousands of crores of income of the political parties comes from anonymous contributions. (Do you remember a political party representative approaching you with a receipt book in hand requesting for a donation to the party?)

Fighting elections in India is big event costing tens of thousands of crores (in absence of electoral reforms) and any political party cannot raise that much by donation simply. It has to business houses. Therefore, the government cannot antagonize the industrialists by writing off the taxes. So find some other way to fill the government’s currency chest – and the readymade victim the Manmohan’s ‘aam aadmi’. Already burdened, burden him some more. After all, what the poor fellow can do except getting worried about the reducing value of his meager income.  

Manmohan and his illogical doublespeak!

Even Raghuram Rajan, India’s new economic adviser to the finance ministry told the country should not show excessive hurry in controlling the deficit as it may impede the development process. In a different interview to the Economic Times, he refuted the claim that India is staring at 1991-type economic crisis. He said, “There has been a deterioration in the macro-economic picture, but I don't think it has brought us anywhere close to when we were two weeks short of running out of reserves. We still have significant reserves and we are not dependent on external debt anywhere near as close as we were at that point.”

Rajan does talk about dangers of the fiscal deficit and advocates about reform measures of the government but see them a long run confidence building shot.

But India of the day does need much more that these narrow-focused silly reforms that hit the Manmohan’s ‘aam aadmi’ the most.

It’s must be a matter of national priority on what to reform and when.

It is not about fiscal deficit. That is a real and present danger for India, no denying to that, but it is not as urgent as Manmohan projected. We are nowhere near to a balance of payment crisis as was the case in 1991.

Whatever that is going to be generated out of the FDI decisions would never suffice the mammoth requirement that India’s fiscal deficit needs.

India’s present current account deficit is $70 Billion and the country needs $1 Trillion of investment to come back to high growth curve. Analysts say the retail FDI decision is expected to generate FDI of $2.5-3 Billion per year for coming 5-6 years provided all states implement the move. Aviation FDI is not a big bet immediately, with potential of a few hundred million dollars only. Power exchanges are still in infancy with small capital base so don’t read much into the 49 per cent FDI decision here.

So we are not going to have a miracle anywhere on the Economy front. And the condition is not as bad as Manmohan has projected. Yes, there are issues of concern, but blindly cutting subsidies in a poor country like India while sleeping on the governance mismanagement is the real culprit.

That killing unequal distribution: Another worrying feature of India growth story is the growing social disparity. It is not that country’s wealth has not increased. It is not that the per capita income has not increased. From 1991 to 2011, size of the Indian Economy has quadrupled.

But it is also there that the per capita expenditure requirement is simply outdoing the majority of the Indians and incessant price rises are adding havoc to the already dilapidated psychological frames. The 2012 Global Food Security Index puts the world's fourth largest Economy at 66th position out of the 105 countries surveyed. India’s Human Development Index was ranked 134 in 2011 while it was 123 in 1991. (What explains this decline?)

But the comfortably numb economist-turned poor economist-turned poor politician Manmohan doesn’t want to see it or doesn’t want us to see it or doesn’t care at all, if we, at all notice it.

So an ‘aam aadmi’s Manmohan can throw a lavish party for his ‘khaas’ (special people) on completing three years of the UPA-2 where every platter cost over Rs. 7000 (in the high days of austerity that his own government had announced), reveals an RTI reply. And this government decides that the poverty line income of India would be at Rs. 3500 a month.

So an ‘aam aadmi’s Manmohan allows his ministers to splurge Rs. 678 crore on foreign tours during the year 2011-12 (in the high days of austerity), reveals an RTI reply.

Scams, policy-handicap, misplaced national priorities, ill-conceived electoral mileage – ill-intent, shamelessness, insensitivity – Indians politics of the day sucks!

P. Sainath uses the term Corporate Plunder Line (CPL), but there should be another vital term – the Political Plunder Line (PPL) – thoroughly conceived, debated and propagated. 

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/