Opinion Hysteria over FDI

There will be benefits in urban India as well. Consumers will get more choices at better prices and those shopkeepers who closed shop last week in protest against FDI will be forced to improve their services. It has been the experience of other countries that small shops do not go out of business because of the likes of Walmart. They evolve into the sort of specialised shops that people like me prefer infinitely to supermarkets. In American cities where there is a Walmart around every corner,there usually exist small shops that rarely lose their customers.

So the hysterical response we saw last week is misplaced and absurd especially from what is supposedly our only ‘rightist’ political party. If proof were needed that the Bharatiya Janata Party has truly lost the plot,it has come in the reactions of its senior leaders to the FDI decision. It was reminiscent of that equally illogical reaction to the nuclear deal with the United States and once more this supposedly ‘rightist’ party found itself on the same side as the extreme Left. The position of the Marxist parties on most issues is too bizarre to merit analysis but it would make me very happy if somebody asked our very vocal Marxist MPs what they make of China’s princelings. It appears that nearly every senior official of the Chinese Communist Party has a son or daughter who is a very rich capitalist. How?

The Left in India is already in history’s garbage bin but for the BJP there may still be hope if its leaders spend time mulling over some important questions. Here is a short list. Does the BJP believe that it was the economic reforms of the early nineties that brought India the economic boom of the past twenty years? Does it believe that it is the absence of reforms that has caused the slowdown of the past two years? Does it believe that the Congress Party’s biggest failure has been its criminal lack of investment in the social sector? Does the BJP stand for investment in schools,hospitals and rural roads as opposed to unwieldy,leaky welfare schemes like NREGA?

Instead of trying to formulate its own political and economic agenda,we have seen our main Opposition party oppose everything the government does for the sake of opposition. When you consider that the BJP has a much longer experience of Opposition than government,its inability to be an effective Opposition party is truly puzzling. Perhaps,it is stuck in a time warp in which aged leaders with ancient ideas continue to think they are charioteers from mythical times. When is Shri L K Advani going to realise that what worked in the late eighties does not work any more? When is he going to realise that younger voters are more interested in real issues like better governance than in temples and mosques? When is he going to fade into genteel retirement and allow younger leaders to come forward with new ideas?

Meanwhile,it is time to remember that we will never end poverty in India without going ahead with economic reforms at full speed. The decision on FDI in retail is the first economic reform in nearly a decade and should be welcomed. If the Prime Minister does not stand by what he knows is the right decision,we can look forward by next year to an economic slowdown so serious that there could be unemployment and unrest in our cities. Already GDP growth has fallen below 7 per cent in the last quarter and this is just the beginning of bad times. So please Prime Minister,stand firm.

Follow Tavleen Singh on Twitter @ tavleen_singh