Hearing prominent swadeshi ideologue, and one-time BJP general secretary, K.N. Govindacharya a few days ago was pure delight. Here was a man obviously passionate about his country, hurting at each blow or insult heaped upon it by foreigners as well as its own children. He was offended, he told us, by World Bank President James Wolfensohn's condescending manner while saying that India needed to get its act together on the power sector. What was even more pitiful, a visibly sad Govindacharya said, was the manner in which top chief ministers fawned over Bill Gates during his last visit. For what? For the few million dollars of investment he threw them like bones to a dog?And who could argue with Govindji (as the believers fondly refer to him) on the fact that capitalist countries are now talking of the importance of `social capital', which is nothing but a euphemism for safety nets in the form of family and local communities like India has always had; that policies of organisations like the World Bank and IMF are increasingly being challenged as ineffective even in the West; that increasing GDP growth does not automatically mean more welfare for the people; and so on. And which Hindu wouldn't feel jubilant on hearing Govindji call capitalism an extension of `exclusive Judaic thinking' - broadly, that like Judaeo-Christianity which has one God, capitalism also prescribes one single path to progress.The problem, however, is that when you sit back to reflect on the sum total of what Govindacharya said, you land up with huge gaps and no answers. Govindacharya spoke of capitalism in trouble, and presumably what was uppermost on his mind was the Southeast Asian economic crisis. But as any economist will tell you (at least in hindsight), these economies collapsed primarily because they ignored basic safety checks prescribed by capitalist economists - you know, how countries like Korea kept funding growth through very high deficits and foreign borrowings, and so on.Govindji won many approving nods when he spoke of how Nehru aped dominant western thought at that time, and embraced socialism; of how his grandson, and now the BJP, aped the new western thought, and embraced capitalism. Both ideologies, he argued, provided gainful employment to only 10 to 20 per cent of India's population. Govindji then argued in favour of an `Indian' system of development. But what is this system? Would having a population engaged primarily in agriculture help improve the standard of living?Govindji had no real answers, just nice-sounding cliches. At one point, apparently oblivious of the inefficiencies of the system, he said forcing villagers to use only bullocks within a 20-mile radius of the village would probably make a world of difference to village economics. Never mind that inefficiencies and delays in transporting, frequent handling of goods as they move from one form of transportation to another, and the absence of cold-chains in rural India ensure that farmers lose as much as a fifth of the value of their fruits and vegetables as they rot before they are bought. Since that's a whopping Rs 50,000 crore a year, allowing big capital here may not be as retrograde as the swadeshi brigade makes it out to be.The swadeshi brigade, similarly, is critical of the decision to open up the textiles sector to foreign capital. Millions will become jobless, saysGovindacharya, again apparently mindless of the fact that it is because we didn't upgrade our textiles sector, and because our delivery schedules from mostly-manual enterprises are so poor, that we're in danger of rapidly losing market share in an industry which comprises a fourth of our exports.Sure, it isn't very nice to be read lectures by a (smug?) World Bank president, or a (definitely dismissive) Rebecca Mark. And fawning over a Bill Gates does make us look stupid, especially if you look at the strides our Premjis and Narayan Murthys are making in precisely this field.But as Govindacharya himself said during his speech, albeit without dwelling on it, if we are to regain our past glory, we need to fix our rivers, our land, our forests, our agriculture, and so on. He's right, no foreigner is going to do this for us. But isn't it a fact that for over 50 years now we haven't been able to do this on our own? That, when the World Bank/IMF tell us to reduce subsidies on fertilisers, they're probably contributing to a process to help us fix our soil which is getting degraded because we're using too much of virtually-free nitrogenous fertilisers; that when they force us to price irrigation correctly, they're helping us fix our land, an eighth or so of which is water-logged and saline because farmers over-use free water; that fixing the electricity sector will ensure that there's more power to set up more industry and more agriculture, and so on. Govindji, you're criticising Judaeo-Christianity for its exclusivist mindset (my way is the only way), as opposed to the Hindu inclusivist nature. Let's not become exclusivists ourselves and reject concepts just because they're foreign.Thumbing your nose at the world like the US does is great, but India's not as powerful yet
