Kitchen-table reform

There’s more than one reformist heart beating in 7 Race Course Road. Manmohan Singh’s government has spent much of its tenure so far battling the status-quoist, protectionist demands of the Left parties — and indeed of many Congress leaders sworn to wornout pre-1991 socialism. Now, it appears, they have a fellow traveller in their midst, someone who could humanise the numbers embedded in their economic jargon, someone who could convert the confused to liberalisations and reform. Forget World Bank-speak and tune to Gursharan Kaur, the prime ministerial spouse, for a primer on price management.

On Saturday, she dished out the strongest counter to critics of the government’s decision to hike the prices of petroleum products, including liquefied petroleum gas. And she couched her defence in such simple home truths that we eagerly await a response from such eminences as Jyoti Basu and K. Karunanidhi, who demand nothing less than a full-fledged rollback. Much as the raised cost of LPG cylinders is steep, said the good lady — who had just this May instructed her husband to guard the price of an LPG cylinder at Rs 241 — but look at the subsidies that are piling up. Of course, she’d have liked the price to remain low, instead of this latest Rs 20-hike, but nothing can stay static. Yes, Mr Basu, still intent on a nationwide stir? And Mr Karunanidhi, still determined to politicise economics in a $50-a-barrel world?

Perhaps Gursharan Kaur could do more than simply disarm political heavyweights with her gentle, grandmotherly wisdom. She may actually be setting new rules of economic discourse. It’s for good reason that economics is called such a dismal science — except to the initiated — it often appears so very daunting and incomprehensible. Gursharan Singh’s singular contribution to the reform process her husband kickstarted 13 years ago could well be to render its economic logic intelligible to confused millions. Then we could, at long last, all be delivered from this battleground of conflicting ideologies.