Economics of a failed banana vendor

THE POLITICS of pushing unpopular economic policies in developing countries, most notably in India, is a bit like the yarn I heard from a Pakistani colleague in Dubai about a failed banana vendor of Karachi. When his bananas began to rot for want of buyers, the vendor did not give up. Kela Malaai, Kela Malaai, he shouted. Translated from the street cry in Urdu, he was now selling ‘cream bananas’, or something close to that.

The failed ‘India Shining’ campaign of the Vajpayee administration was essentially a badly miscued attempt to sell an economic dream a la the banana vendor that the voters eventually rejected in May, one full year ago.

But ask any dispassionate analyst if anything has significantly changed in this past one year of Manmohan Singh’s rule, say with regard to the Common Minimum Programmme which was put into shape by the triumphant Congress party and its UPA partners with gusto, and the answer predictably is not going to be too flattering for the government.

This was a government that was given a mandate to focus on the ‘aam aadmi’, the common man. Having largely been out of depth on this crucial issue, the government’s apologists can only try to deflect the argument by parroting that the people’s mandate was not “anti-economic reform”.

But they are unable to deny that the main reason for the defeat of the previous government was the widespread dissatisfaction with its economic policies. Whether one chooses to call them ‘reform’ — which was always a misnomer for the combination of pro-rich and welfare-reducing policies that characterised the past decade — is of course another matter.

As the government’s critics see it, growing inequality, the deterioration of and higher charges for public goods and services, along with the absence of adequate job creation, were probably the most significant issues that led to the defeat of everyone who pushed the so-called reforms down the people’s gullet since 1991, and more definitely so since the last six or seven years.

It is therefore an almost set pattern, not unique to India, that there is a large mismatch between electoral politics and the economic package that are eventually dealt by the winner. No one knows this better than Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself.

If we see it closely his team today is not very different from the one under P.V. Narasimha Rao during whose 1991-96 tenure, Dr. Singh was finance minister. The opposition during the Rao period, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party, used to regard Dr. Singh as the right finance minister in the wrong government.

And the two together – the opposition and the Narasimha Rao government – appeared to have worked out a convenient arrangement as if to somehow keep the focus on economic policies. This is where the rise of Lal Kishan Advani’s Hindutva and Manmohan Singh’s economic policies assumes a common feature – they seem to need each other.

Dr Singh presented his first budget in February 1992. By December that year, Advani had led his hordes to raze the Babri mosque. The following year’s budget was dominated the Bombay blasts and the anti-Muslim pogrom in the country’s financial hub. It was decisively realized that discussions on communalism and secularism were any day more rewarding politically than any debate on a budget could ever be, particularly if it contained measures that the vast majority of the people would not readily accept.

Last week a similar charade took place. The BJP-led opposition walked out of parliament and Dr Singh went after them pleading to attend the last hearing of the finance bill, the heart of the budget session.

Ironically, Dr Singh’s legacy endures and thrives on the absence of discussion no matter who governs India. This has been the case since his 1991-96 inauguration as a free-market guru, a hairpin turn from his leadership of the South-South cooperation perspective.

In India’s parliamentary democracy, a finance bill is one of the three readily available occasions for the opposition to try to defeat the government. The other two occasions are the motion of thanks to the president’s address and a trust vote, should one be required for a government to prove its majority.

And look at the spurious excuses trotted out by the BJP to abandon the Lok Sabha during the last two weeks of the budget session which in any case is to end on May 13. The one ruse that took the cake was the complaint to President Kalam that Dr Singh’s government had tried to stop a meeting between former premier Vajpayee and President Musharraf. When forcefully shown that it was a lie, the BJP began to claim that it was only quoting a press report on the matter. In other words the opposition boycotted parliament, among other reasons, on the basis of a fake newspaper report.

While any excuse to forestall discussions on economic policies possibly with mutual connivance is the order of the day, the political class is not ready to brook a moment’s delay in the presentation of the budget. The budget speech for fiscal 2002-2003 was delivered to a packed and applauding Lok Sabha on February 28, the day Indians were raping and killing Indians in Gujarat.

Dr Singh is believed to have taken India to a high growth path. But facts and figures tell a slightly different story. Just before the so-called reforms were heralded, when India was reeling under three consecutive years of drought in 1985-88, the growth was reduced from 4.3 per cent in Rajiv Gandhi’s first year in office to 3.4 per cent in 1987-88.

A massive programme of rural regeneration had led the economy to bounce back to the highest growth rate ever recorded, the only time Indian economic growth crossed into double figures — 10.6 per cent in 1988-89.

This was followed by 6.8 per cent in 1989-90, Rajiv Gandhi’s final year as prime minister, an average of 8.7 per cent over his last two years — the highest two-year average ever attained by the Indian economy. And we were not yet a free market economy. Happy anniversary UPA and encore, says the BJP, as it lurks expectantly in the wings.

WITH THE BJP-led opposition continuing its boycott of parliament, Lok Sabha’s only communist Speaker Somnath Chatterjee says he was “unhappy” and had “almost thought” of running away.

“Certainly I haven’t had job satisfaction .... Well, it’s not a satisfying job I am doing, I can tell you,” he told a private TV channel last week. “But since the people have put me there, I’m not running away. I had almost thought of it but I’m not now running away.”

—Email: jawednaqvi@yahoo.com

Cooperation for a freer press

IMAGES of baton wielding policemen swooping down on journalists, or on political workers, lawyers and even college students for that matter, may be nothing new, given this country’s political history. But recent images of the police beating up journalists in Islamabad and Lahore seem totally out of sync with the conscious effort of the government in recent years to encourage a freer media environment and promote the country’s press freedom image, especially by the unprecedented granting of licenses to a plethora of new television channels and radio stations.

The federal information minister stated last week that media freedom in the country was evident in the fact that an additional 37 private television channels would soon join the existing 17 channels, while 55 FM radio stations had already been awarded in the private sector.

A day before that, however, the police had unashamedly beaten up journalists in Islamabad and Lahore who were participating at rallies marking the 15th World Press Freedom Day on May 3.

At least two other incidents of police violence against journalists had taken place recently: first during Asif Zardari’s arrival at the Lahore Airport and then at the official ceremony to welcome the national cricket team in Islamabad.

Over the past year, while the government had liberally granted licences to new television channels and radio stations, there were at the same time individual cases of physical attacks on journalists and newspaper, television, and radio offices, forced closure of newspaper/radio station, as well as the arrest and jail of individual journalists.

Meanwhile, the government had also stopped advertisements for a particular group of newspapers in 2004, and in 2002 passed a controversial defamation law which was amended in August 2004 to further increase the penalties for publishing material deemed defamatory.

These various acts against the press culminating in the recent incidents of police violence against journalists — for which government officials have denied responsibility — have overshadowed the government’s painstaking efforts to promote press freedom. Thus, instead of expected improvement in its press freedom standing, Pakistan’s position with regard to press freedom has deteriorated, according to the Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontiers (reporters without borders) (RSF).

The Worldwide Press Freedom (WPF) Index, which measures the state of media in the world, has been published annually by RSF since 2002. The first index released in October 2002 listed Pakistan as 119th out of 139 countries in the world in terms of press freedom (India ranked 80th, Bangladesh 118th and Nepal 127th).

In the second index in October 2003, Pakistan fared better by sharing the 128th position with India amongst 166 countries listed (Bangladesh was 143rd and Nepal 150th).

But in the third index published in October 2004, Pakistan’s position dropped to 150th out of 167 countries (India was 120th, Bangladesh and Nepal were 151st and 160th respectively).

Given the recent incidents of violence against journalists perpetrated by the police, it would not be surprising if Pakistan is listed even further down bottom in this year’s WPF index, scheduled to be published in October 2005.

The deterioration in Pakistan’s free press standing is also evident in RSF’s other list, ‘Predators of Press Freedom’, published annually since 2001 on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day.

In the two lists in 2002 and 2003, “Islamic militants in Asia (Pakistan, Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Kashmir, Philippines, etc.)” were consecutively named as one of the over 30 state leaders and groups in the world identified as press freedom predators. In the 2004 and 2005 lists, however, the president of Pakistan was named as one of the predators of press freedom.

Granted that all governments need to undertake measures to ensure that the country’s national interests are not jeopardized by any kind of irresponsible and mala fide reporting by either local or foreign journalists.

But surely setting the police on the journalists at every opportunity available, and refusing to address their concerns and grievances (by e.g., not bothering to accept petitions from rallying journalists in Islamabad on the World Press Freedom Day this year and then later on withdrawing the decision to establish a special committee in the National Assembly to look into the police action against journalists) do not amount to any healthy exercise in preserving the national interests.

If journalists here are accused of numerous shortcomings, those in government are guilty of no less shortcomings. It is the duty of any responsible government to iron out differences and establish a workable relationship with the media, including the owners and workers, and together help improve the country’s image in press freedom.

Certainly this can only be done through understanding, dialogue and cooperation, rather than by beating the daylights out of journalists.