Congress, reforming

The Congress8217;s relationship with economic reforms resembles that of a parent who doesn8217;t want to acknowledge an illegitimate, if otherwise accomplished, child. Released this week, the party8217;s 8216;Vision Document8217; reflects this ambivalence, at once promising 8212; NDA-style 8212; high growth rates and calibrated socialist-era interventions.

The Congress8217;s economics actually flows from its internal politics. Despite efforts by the party8217;s in-house economic historians to link the liberalisation process to Indira Gandhi8217;s second coming in 1980, reforms really owe their origin to the precarious situation at the onset of P.V. Narasimha Rao8217;s prime ministry in 1991. Rao adopted reforms in his trademark half-conviction, half-exigency fashion. A small group helped him implement policy changes. There were few attempts to convince the party, let alone expand the popular appeal of reforms. In the NDA years, with Rao a non-person and his loyalists having either faded away or sought re-employment as 10 Janpath8217;s speech-writers, the Congress was almost churlish in acknowledging the success of liberalisation. It shied away from taking ownership of a phenomenon it had fathered. There was a demographic reason for the wariness. Electoral data is clear the party8217;s natural vote bank is the poor. The tortured debate for much of the past five years was whether the Congress should 8216;8216;re-invent8217;8217; itself as a party of the poor or sell itself as a vehicle for middle class aspiration. The first approch meant a rejection of reforms, the second a gushing advocacy.

Somewhere between the two stools lay the Indian National Congress. In election season 2004, the Congress has finally endorsed reforms 8212; realising to do otherwise is to seek membership of Jurassic Park. Yet it has made the familiar 8216;8216;social justice8217;8217; noises, promised to eradicate hunger, illiteracy, unemployment, you name it. It has not delineated, however, where market measures end and where the state8217;s role begins. In the end it has clarified old confusions with new mysteries.