Two months ago, in this column, I wrote about a man called Devraj Shetty whom I described as the most disadvantaged Indian I know. There is a sequel to his story and, strange though it may sound, it is linked directly to the economic reform process that the Vajpayee government has now ended altogether. Before I get into how the story of the poorest Indian I know is connected to reforms that supposedly benefit only the rich let me remind you of Devraj’s story. He is a severely handicapped young man from Bangalore who grew up on the streets from the age of seven when his parents abandoned him after a polio attack left him with flippers for legs and minimal use of his arms. Courage and an extraordinary will to better his lot made him find his way to Chennai where a charitable institution donated him a wheelchair and thus empowered he came to Mumbai. I met him some months ago on Marine Drive where he begged for a living and when I asked if I could help him in any way he sought assistance to get a public telephone booth allotted to him under a government scheme for the handicapped. I pulled strings, knocked on the doors of endless government offices but, despite the personal intervention of Pramod Mahajan, did not succeed in getting Devraj his phone booth. I thought the failure would crush him. But, Devraj is of such indomitable entrepreneurial spirit that he instantly came up with two new business plans. If I could help him raise the funds, he said, he could start a small video parlour in the slum in which he lived and he could also start a side business selling cigarettes and sweets from his wheelchair. Well, with the help of a Mumbai businessman I managed to get Devraj his loan and on the first day of the Ganesh festival he invited me to his small but pucca new home in a slum on the edge of a garbage covered beach for the inaugural puja of his video parlour. His plan was to show two films a day to slum residents but within days a policeman arrived to collect hafta for allowing Devraj to continue his ‘‘illicit’’ business. Devraj’s side business is also under permanent threat since street vending is illegal without a licence and licences are impossible to get. So, despite us being told that the licence raj has ended the poorest Indians are harassed on account of it every day of their lives. Devraj’s story has more to do with economic reforms even than that because if there had been real reform he would find it easier to afford to live in a halfway decent home. If the Vajpayee government understood the urgent need for change we should already have reforms that would enable private builders to build cheap, urban housing that government has failed abysmally to provide for people like Devraj. The government’s only role should be to ensure that there is planned development so that our cities do not look like slums. It is ostensibly to prevent unplanned development and provide affordable housing that private developers have been curbed. But, despite 50 years of controls under urban land ceiling laws our greatest cities look like slums when compared with the cities of the world. If the reform process had gone beyond the needs of big business the licence-quota-permit raj should have ended even for people like Devraj. Street vending is legal in every major city in the world but despite the best efforts of activists like Madhu Kishwar it remains illegal, de facto, in Indian cities because licences are impossible to get. The Prime Minister himself intervened to try and end licensing in Delhi but the local administration treated his intervention with such contempt that not only is street vending still barely allowed but you can get arrested now in Delhi for giving money to a beggar. If the Vajpayee government had one success on the economic reform front it was in the Disinvestment Ministry where Arun Shourie, arguably the only real reformer in the cabinet, made remarkable progress in selling off public sector companies that have long been a burden for taxpayers. He has now been squashed into the ground by that self-appointed champion of the poor, George Fernandes. Once Fernandes started his crusade to save the public sector other anti-reformers like the Congress Party and various economically illiterate ministers got into the act. So as of last week, when the cabinet also decided to prevent opening up more areas of the economy to foreign direct investment (FDI), there are no economic reforms happening at all. They have been stopped, ironically, in the name of the poor when anyone can see from Devraj’s story that the people most affected by the license raj are not big businessmen but the poorest of the poor. Could there be a deliberate conspiracy to keep the poor trapped in poverty? Could it be that those politicians who have turned poverty into a political constituency know that if people like Devraj become middle class they stop being part of the poverty vote bank? It is time politicians like Fernandes were made publicly accountable for the damage they have done in the name of the poor. Write to tavleensingh@expressindia.com
