Marketing the coalition

First Manmohan Singh was supposed to keep the finance portfolio till the budget to convey the right message to the markets. Political exigencies demanded otherwise. P. Chidambaram was the inevitable choice for finance. He is seen as someone who swears by reforms. I did not check whether the markets rose or fell within the period Manmohan Singh gave up finance and Chidambaram got it. It all happened so suddenly 8212; and after the markets had closed 8212; that the usual drama of up and down did not take place.

Economic reforms are a mantra today just as the socialistic pattern was yesterday. At that time, every policy or every individual was measured on the scales of socialism, or whatever it meant. Public sector undertakings were holy cows. Even when some of them did not perform and were a drain on the exchequer, very few dared to speak out. They were supposed to be the commanding heights of the economy. Mouthing cliches like egalitarianism was in fashion. People in high places 8212; and the Left 8212; pounced upon anybody who lacked 8216;8216;commitment8217;8217; to the socialistic pattern of society. Outsiders called us a 8216;8216;soft state8217;8217; but we did not want to listen to the 8216;8216;capitalist countries8217;8217; which had 8216;8216;imperialist designs8217;8217;.

Then comes a prime minister by the name of Lal Bahadur Shastri who has different ideas. He declares a 8216;8216;Plan holiday8217;8217; to consolidate what has been achieved till 1964, when he assumes power. He tells all the ministries to translate the outlays into jobs. He says every proposal should have one column next to the estimated cost to specify the number of jobs the project would create. The bureaucracy has the better of him, as may happen to this government, notwithstanding its declared commitment to the people8217;s dream for India.

Now that the elections are over I want to go back to a couple of things which I could not discuss earlier because of the heat of the campaign and government formation. For example, I have not been able to figure out why Army Chief General N.C. Vij made the statement that there would be 8216;8216;no problem8217;8217; if Congress President Sonia Gandhi became 8216;8216;the next prime minister of India8217;8217;.

What was he hinting at when he said that there would be 8216;8216;no problems8217;8217;? He went on to say, 8216;8216;Sonia Gandhi is not an Italian. She is a citizen of India.8217;8217; That the army chief made the statement when the country was in the midst of an ugly debate on her foreign origin made it all the more intriguing. The army chief had no business to talk about such matters. They were of no concern to him. He was treading on the thin ice of politics.

Another development that has worried me is the lack of concern shown by pollsters and TV pundits. They played havoc with the markets and voters8217; opinion during the Lok Sabha polls. I thought that they would explain why they went wrong, or would offer an apology. But they have behaved as if the nation was supposed to digest their projections. The print media can be hauled up before the Press Council of India but there is no court of appeal against the electronic media. I have been advocating that the Press Council should be converted into the Media Council. Unfortunately, the BJP8217;s 8216;8216;dynamic leadership8217;8217; was so much in love with its own image that it never occurred to it that some of the observations it made or what the opposition said in response could spoil the atmosphere.

My main complaint against pollsters is that they made a mountain out of a molehill. Their samples for surveys were very small but they built on them the entire edifice of the election8217;s outcome. I am not for imposing a ban, either on a film, book or baseless TV projection. But something has to be done 8212; maybe by a body of mediapersons 8212; to curb unfair means of influencing the electorate. American and British examples are not relevant to India because those countries have one-day polls. There is only a span of a few hours between exit polls and actual results. Here it was a three-week affair from April 20 to May 10. The scope for mischief was immense.

It is heartening to know that the sale and purchase of shares after the exit polls and at the time of government formation are going to be scrutinised. I want a specific inquiry into the second exit poll held on April 26. The share market crashed and the Sensex came tumbling down by 213 points. The estimated loss was around Rs 50,000 crore. The fall had never been so steep since the 9/11 attacks. SEBI has all the records of who sold their shares and who bought them. I wish this information would be made public. My hunch is that some pattern will be discernible 8212; a pattern which will expose the machinations behind the crash, whether it was stage-managed or whether the electronic media was party to it, wittingly or unwittingly.