The road to Tigerhood — Indonesia and India

The impact on Government revenues was even more dramatic. Where, before the oil price boom, about a quarter of Government revenues came from the oil sector, in 1974 the percentage zoomed to 48 per cent and in 1981 peaked at 62 per cent. This fuelled a doubling of Government expenditure, in real terms, between 1971 and 1975 and a further doubling over the next five years. Taking the period as a whole, 1966 to the present day, real Government expenditure has increased by nearly 25 times!

In comparison and contrast, the DMK-TMC track record in the oil sector in India (T. R. Baalu of the DMK is Petroleum Minister and, of course, Chidambaram of the TMC is Finance Minister) has been to reduce domestic crude oil output by 6 million tonnes over the last 12 months and increase the deficit in the Oil Pool account by Rs 20,000 crore. And this is the duo that claims it will make an Indonesia of India by the turn of the century! If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

The other slight problem is politics. Even Chidambaram might have some difficulty in emulating the Indoensian example in the political system in India. I happen to have arrived here in the middle of an election campaign. A good thing too because political parties are banned from undertaking any organisational activities except at election time. There are three political parties the ruling Golkar and the “minority (not “opposition” the word is frowned upon) PPP and PDI. The PPP and PDI were founded, by Government order, 25 years ago; neither they, nor any one else, expects them to come to power; Golkar sources have already announced — some three weeks before polling day that the ruling party will secure 70.2 per cent of the vote (please note the delicacy of the decimal point!) In any case, the Constitution authorises the President to nominate half the Members of Parliament, and one-fifth of the MPs are, by law, military appointees. Also, all political parties indeed, all Indonesian citizens are required to subscribe to a single political philosophy (azas tunggal) set out in a programme called P4 (Pedoman Penghavatan dan Pengamalan Pancsila) expressly designed to ensure what is described as “ideological conformity”.

Political demonstrations are banned, on the streets as much as on campuses; newspapers are strictly censored; criticism of the president is punishable by imprisonment (Sribuntang Pamungkas, MP, has recently been sentenced to 34 months in jail for having made an ambivalent remark about authoritarianism in Indonesia, a charge hotly denied); the doctrine of the separation of powers is explicitly rejected and the judiciary is looked on, and regards itself as, an extension of the executive.

For those who step out of line, there are three instruments of correction: the pamong praja, that is, the bureaucracy which comprises committed officials of the ruling party; the dreaded security agency, earlier known as Kopakamtib, now as Barkorstanas armed forces. Their actions are totally inured from public scrutiny, media investigation, parliamentary accountability or judicial review. They are responsible only to the President. It takes one’s breath away that our CBI Director should revel in the nickname of `Tiger’. In Indonesia, he would not qualify even as a pussy-cat.

This fearsome politico-administrative apparatus was brought into operation in the immediate aftermath of Malari, the acronym by which the Disaster of January 16, 1974 is known. In the wake of a controversial visit by the Japanese Prime Minister (remember, Indonesia was brutally occupied by Japan in the Second World War), there was a volcanic eruption of street demonstrations targeted primarily at the economic reforms then being introduced which were bringing in vast Japanese and other foreign investment in collaboration with Indonesian businessmen of Chinese origin. The massive crackdown broke the back of all opposition to liberalisation and globalisation. (Chidambaram, please note: you might do a Malari on the swadeshiwallahs of the BJP!) In consequence, today’s boom Indonesian economy is controlled by some 40 conglomerates, almost all of them joint ventures with Indonesian Chinese who constitute four per cent of the country’s population. The rest are joint ventures with members of the President’s immediate family. (Chidambaram, fortunately, does not have a large family!)

I do not know what Chidambaram’s plans are for establishing an Indian equivalent of Kopkamtib. I note, however, that he is a former Minister of Internal Security. I also note that his treatment of Jayalalitha is not dissimilar to the treatment meted out to Sukarno. Is this Chidambaram’s preferred pattern for making an “Asian” country of India?