Opinion Fifth Column: Urgent parivartan needed

What saddens me is that his advisers have made him forget his promise of change and development. I had a lot of time last week to think about these things because I was forced to spend two long days at Sringar’s decrepit, dysfunctional airport waiting for a flight back to Delhi. All flights were grounded because an Air India aeroplane burst a tyre on landing and damaged the single runway. In a vital border airport surely there should have been more than one runway by now? Surely there should have been a modern airport?

This is not the only thing that needs to change in the Kashmir valley. The last time I was here was before Modi became Prime Minister so it was interesting to see on this visit that people here want change and development as much as people do in the rest of India. Nobody talked to me about azadi. All they talked about was how much they looked forward to seeing real parivartan and real vikas.

And you only need to land in Srinagar to understand why. If the airport is a decrepit hellhole, so is the city, and it is not just because of last year’s floods. Rubble, broken roads, filthy drains and decay is the overwhelming first impression of a city that could be among the most beautiful in the world. On top of this comes the sad reality that flood relief has been handled just as it used to be before. Carelessly. Not only have people who lost everything not been compensated adequately but children who failed to turn up for exams because of being marooned have lost a year.

This is not just carelessness, it is cruelty. If the Prime Minister succeeds in bringing real change and development in Kashmir, our oldest political problem could slowly disappear.

Why is the NITI Aayog not already working on a new policy for Kashmir that would use tourism as a vehicle to improve an economy that is virtually defunct? Why is the NITI Aayog not working more visibly on new economic and political policies in general?
Modi was right to rid us of the Planning Commission. It was the biggest symbol of economic ideas that we borrowed from the Soviet Union. If India

did not break up under the weight of these bad economic ideas like the Soviet Union did, it was only because private enterprise comes naturally to most Indians from the poorest to the most privileged.

Instead of registering in employment exchanges, the poorest Indians find some way of setting up a small business of their own. They do this without any help from banks or government and they need to be honoured for their efforts instead of being hounded by officialdom. Small businessmen are the biggest victims of tax terrorism, that usually follows when finding black money becomes the focus of economic policy instead of the creation of wealth. That was the old way and it needs parivartan badly.

The NITI Aayog has so far functioned in slow motion and this is most unfortunate because there is no institution more capable of giving the Prime Minister ideas on what needs to change. But, for it to be reborn, it needs to be purged of old officials and old fixed ideas about five-year plans. There is no indication that this has happened. Perhaps what needs to happen even more urgently is for the NITI Aayog to be given a mandate that includes political policy-making, because at the root of nearly every serious political problem in India is economic deprivation. So come on Prime Minister get on with it.

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