BJP’s pragmatism

The statement by BJP’s shadow prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee on the party seriously considering the entry of global majors into the domestic insurance sector, provided they also took up social schemes like crop insurance, is entirely consistent with the moderate position he has taken on several political issues. This is quite pragmatic since the party’s past swadeshi image can easily be mistaken for a want of commitment to deepening the process of liberalisation. It is, however, for the record that the nation’s single largest party in the 11th Lok Sabha has been somewhat unfairly judged as its backing to the Narasimha Rao government on reform measures had proved critical with the Leftists firmly opposed to opening up and the Congress itself being sharply divided on the economic agenda in the early part of its innings. At least on one occasion, BJP’s moderation then had saved the day for Rao and Manmohan Singh with the Left parties determined to vote the reformist regime out. Anyway, in a world ofshort memories, the BJP is only identified with the swadeshi approach and it was right of Vajpayee last week to clarify that it is no longer so.

Specifically on insurance, in view of the need to extend to the rural community the facility of insurance, the condition of crop insurance has to be welcomed and MNCs should not be deterred by this. In fact, the reform of this sector has to include giving a sharp rural focus. The BJP itself is unlikely to be playing the rural card to keep out the multinationals and in retrospect the RN Malhotra Committee had erred by not addressing itself to giving insurance business a rural character also. Vajpayee, as was only to be expected, used his exhaustive interview last week to cover various aspects of MNC involvement and particularly to declare himself against hostile takeovers of local firms by the transnational giants and use of India by them as a "favourite hunting ground". This, no doubt, runs counter to a view expressed by P Chidambaram earlier at the meeting of the World Economic Forum that foreign capital should choose its own destination, but can hardly be faulted on this ground. For, there has to be discrimination in respect of foreign investment and it is for the Centre to decide where foreign capital should flow. MNCs cannot surely set the agenda and making this explicit does not become a swadeshi dialectic and it would be quite unfair to Vajpayee for anyone to twist the concern voiced over the nation’s development priorities.