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Journalism of Courage
Britain8217;s Financial Times was first off the block. It promptly commended 8216;8216;India8217;s fine balance8217;8217;. Its editorial gave P Chidambaram8217;s budget an appreciative 8216;8216;two cheers8217;8217; for a 8216;8216;fiscally prudent programme, which embraces incremental structural reform 8212; the only practical way forward 8212; as well as redirecting resources towards the poor and the countryside8217;8217;.
The FT argued that the Finance Minister has charted the right course, given India8217;s federal polity where the Centre has limited powers and capacities and where States must take up the initiative to bring ground-level change. The budget does well to concentrate on fiscal discipline 8212; the area where New Delhi can be the most effective, it said.
A report in the same paper pointed to the gap between Chidambaram8217;s rhetoric and his spending commitments. It is certain to reassure those who had feared an inflationary budget, it said. It highlighted reactions that saw the budget as a continuation of economic reform by another language. And as a strategy that borrows from the 8216;8216;new Left8217;8217; economics practiced by Gordon Brown in Britain or the Clinton administration in the US.
The New York Times maintained a more measured tone. The report highlighted the Chidambaram mix of soothing the foreign investor while simultaneously turning the focus on the rural and the poor. But it signed off on a sceptical note. The NYT challenged the new government8217;s trumpeted commitment to fiscal rectitude: 8216;8216;But that process could be slowed as Left-leaning members of the governing coalition strongly oppose selling off state companies8230;8217;8217;
End of history?
In 1989, an article in an intellectual political quarterly made a mighty splash. Francis Fukuyama8217;s 8216;8216;The end of History?8217;8217; appeared in the Summer 1989 issue of The National Interest and immediately raised a vast and passionate debate. Its title 8212; without the question mark 8212; soon became a slogan to be bandied about among Washington think-tanks, the press and the academy. Fukuyama was writing at a moment when Communism was in retreat, but his was not merely another proclamation of the end of the Cold War. Wrote Fukuyama: 8216;8216;What we are witnessing is not just the end of Cold War8230; but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind8217;s ideological evolution and the universalisation of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.8217;8217;
Over the years, many have served up warnings against Fukuyama8217;s panoramic world-explaining doctrine. But Fukuyama held his ground. Even after 9/11, when Samuel Huntington8217;s thesis acquired new currency and many insisted that the world remained mired in a 8216;8216;clash of civilisations8217;8217;, Fukuyama was firm: 8216;8216;I believe that in the end I remain right: modernity is a very powerful freight train that will not be derailed by recent events, however painful. Democracy and free markets will continue to expand as the dominant organising principles for much of the world8217;8217; The Guardian, October 11, 2001. The ongoing 8216;8216;clash8217;8217;, he said, 8216;8216;consists of a series of rearguard actions from societies whose traditional existence is indeed threatened by modernisation8230; But time is on the side of modernity8230;8217;8217;
Well, Fukuyama is not so sure anymore. He no longer seems as certain of the power and ability of the market to take over the role of mighty nations. Now, he makes the case for stronger government. Writing in the Guardian on the eve of the publication of his new book, he says: 8216;8216;8230;there are signs that the Reagan-Thatcher era is ending and that the pendulum will swing the other way. Many recent problems have tended to come from the lack of sufficient state oversight, as with Enron, WorldCom and other auditing scandals, or the privatisations of railways in Britain or electricity in California. The easy gains from privatisation and deregulation have long since been achieved8217;8217;.
In his revised narrative, September 11 is the date when the Reagan-Thatcher era ended. Because that day 8216;8216;underscored a key feature of the post-Cold War world. While the great problems of world order in the 20th century were caused by too-powerful nation states such as Germany, Japan and the former Soviet Union, many of the problems of our current age, from poverty to refugees to human rights to HIV and Aids to terrorism, are caused by states in the developing world that are too weak.8217;8217; Bring back the state, writes the famous professor, circa 2004.
