Opinion Aal is not well
There is an exercise I conduct every year in Davos. I try to attend all sessions addressed by Indian political leaders....
There is an exercise I conduct every year in Davos. I try to attend all sessions addressed by Indian political leaders. I go in the hope that one day I will hear someone speak coherently about Indias big issues. Everyone else at the World Economic Forums annual meeting does. Important economists,academics and businessmen,many of them Indian,repeat ad nauseum that India must find solutions to its problems of infrastructure,poverty,urban squalor,illiteracy and healthcare. But,our political leaders continue to assert confidently that aal is well. They end up looking goofy and doing India a disservice.
In the fifteen years I have been coming to Davos I have seen many changes for the good. Indian businessmen who fifteen years ago were few and far between now come in huge numbers and represent huge companies. Indian media is now a prominent presence. This year NDTV organised the first Davos debate by an Indian television company. Indian officials now speak reasonably well when they are appointed on panels but our ministers and chief ministers let the side down. They come to Davos and make exactly the same speeches that they make in front of semi-literate Indian audiences. In the days when the world had not become a global village and it was not well known that living conditions in some Indian states are worse than sub-Saharan Africa it was possible to get away with nonsense.
Our political leaders would turn up in the capital cities of the West,begging bowl in hand because we were so very poor,and make long dreary speeches about Indias ancient civilisation. These speeches would be laced with many quotations. Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore were hot favorites and the officials who wrote the speeches always chose the same banal quotations. These speeches may have worked in those days. They no longer do.
It is expected of politicians that they understand problems of governance because that is their job. In Davos I have heard political leaders from the smallest,poorest countries make excellent speeches. But,from our own politicians (with the occasional exception) what the world gets to hear are speeches that make little sense.
When asked about the slow speed at which infrastructure gets built in India the response is usually that things are much better now. On our shameful inability to provide our people with decent standards of education and healthcare the response is vague mutterings. When poverty is mentioned it usually results in a long list of anti-poverty schemes and a lot of jargon about inclusive growth and the vision of our leaders.
This is especially embarrassing in a gathering of the kind that takes place in Davos where the levels of debate and discourse are higher than almost anywhere else in the world. Nobody wants to hear about the wonders of NREGA or the Jawaharlal Nehru plan to clean up our appalling cities. They want to know why India still has the largest number of poor and illiterate people in the world.
What is more important is that Indians want answers too. We know that the main reason why the best policies fail is because every government scheme is tied up in layers and layers of red tape. We know that this red tape lays the ground for many corrupt practices and that corruption eats up crores of taxpayer rupees every year so why does our beloved Prime Minister do nothing about his?
Allow me a small example. This column has been writing for many years that it makes no sense for Indians going abroad to need to get their passports stamped at the airport. This is a needless procedure that most countries have eliminated in these days of computerised scanning. When I first raised the issue with a Minister of External Affairs he said it was because we did not have computerised scanning at our airports.
This time at Mumbai airport I noticed that the immigration officer scanned my passport before proceeding to stamp it as usual. Why? Computers instead of speeding up the work of the Government of Indias army of diligent clerks have slowed it down. They are being used to duplicate work in every government department across India. Until we make drastic changes in our absurd administrative methods we will remain unable to build roads,schools,hospitals and power stations at the speed we need them. So the very least we can expect from our political leaders is that they desist from wandering about the forums of the world saying aal is well.
The astounding success of 3 Idiots whose theme is educational reform should be a warning to those politicians who have not yet understood that even the least sophisticated Indian voters these days understand that all is not well.
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