Let a hundred Surats grow

The first thing to decide is that a lot of it is do-able. Fifty million jobs in ten years sounds outrageous. But the city of Surat has had an employment growth of six to seven per cent every year for the last 30 years. Almost a million jobs were added. It was a district town when I visited it for the first time in 1968. Today, it’s a burgeoning metropolis. Diamond polishing, power looms and zari make it a global and national entity. Very wisely it stayed out of the post-Godhra riots, for small activity to explode on world markets in a big way, needs that trust and peace as part of daily life and the millions of transactions which are needed to keep the process going. But there are more than a hundred Surats waiting to happen. There is not a district in India which has grown agriculturally over three per cent every year for a decade and a labour shortage did not emerge. We must help those who help themselves and make this happen everywhere. We can disagree with the details but put our stand across. But widespread growth has to be the only real agenda for debate.

In fact, if the commission’s thinking succeeds, the country will do better. The growth perspective is based only on public savings improving by 4 per cent of GDP. But if agriculture and small industry have explosive growth, household savings will expand. Also if their FDI materialises, foreign inflow will be at least 2.5 per cent and not 1.6 per cent of GDP. Then our investment rates will be really driving the fastest growing economy in the world; even higher than 8 per cent. The Central Bank has to learn to push investment rather than only raise exchange reserves.

None of it will happen if our politics and administration does not redeem itself. The debate on the plan should be an honest effort to get to a minimum of agreement on essentials. This is inescapable because the parties which rule the states are different in many cases from those who are a part of the national coalition. It won’t do only to ask the states to cut subsidies in a sanctimonious manner. The flip side has also to be demonstrated, namely what is the help programme on the positive side. When you ask a region to cut its existing crop rotation, what is the deal for investment in technology, markets and infrastructure for diversification? What are your credit and trade policy initiatives that the Planning Commission has signalled as required. Disincentives for the ‘bads’ have to be accompanied with incentives for the ‘goods’. This is called strategic change — an art in which India excelled once but, alas, no more. But it is never too late. The national leadership, cutting across parties must define this common ground in the debate on the tenth plan.

Above all, our governments and administration have to give concrete signals that they mean business. A beginning can be made with essentials. The first thing the government at the Centre and the states can do is to show that the Civil Service will be managed well. This can start tomorrow. The methods have been reiterated from the Administrative Reform Commission onwards from the sixties. They have been reiterated among others by the committee I chaired on recruitment and training for the higher civil services. It is well-known that the youngsters who emerge from our merit-based exams are exceptional. It is the battering they get in promotions and transfers which make many of them to start compromising within a decade of service.

The remedy is simple. The political process surely has the right to transfer a civil servant in the public interest. But when it is done exceptionally, say within three years, let the minister put down the speaking orders on the file as to the nature of the public interest involved. The PM and the leader of opposition can decide this tomorrow and the Tenth Plan will take off.

Otherwise, the small businessman, the trader and the farmer who starts making money will never really be able to trust the thanedar, the mamlatdar and their bosses, if he knows that the vilest of pressures have been used to post them where they are. And if he cannot trust government where it matters to him — his investments — his life is not secure.