Opinion Is there a future for India?

The question we ought to be asking is not who was who back then,but why is it still the case that any Indian who wants to rise by dint of merit will prefer to go abroad than be at home. Politics,of course,is completely out of bounds for anyone who has only merit. He (and rarely she) needs a family already in the business to get an entry.

There is no debate in this election about what sort of future the parties promise for the majority of Indians who are under 35. Will India have a proper democracy with political parties open to entry by merit and selection of candidates by primary contests? Is any party willing to lay open their finances and declare how they finance election campaigns? Indeed,how many parties are willing to subject themselves to an RTI inquiry? Why do politicians think that there is one law for everyone else and no law for them?

Will the next generation have a fiscally responsible government or will it have to live under a populist bazaar where each party promises to outspend the other on the flimsy grounds of helping the poor — while knowing that half the money will end up in their own pockets? There is no discussion in Parliament about the state of public finances. Why does India spend ten times as much on paying interest on national debt than it does on health? Will any party promise to reduce debt or the interest rate? Why do targets of disinvestment repeatedly fail to be reached? Do they even think about such things?

There has been no debate on how inflation will be brought down and kept down. The inflation issue concerns the Agriculture Ministry and astonishingly a wholly separate Food Ministry. The two ministers cannot agree even on the prospect of the price of onions two weeks hence. Will there be better coordination in the future? Will India get a full-time agriculture minister,which it has not had for the past nine years? Indeed there is hardly any discussion on the dire economic condition the country is in. You have to be abroad to see how low India’s star has shrunk.

Does the Railway Ministry have to be sacrificed to narrow regional interests? Why has India not got a decent high-speed rail service but just plenty of workshops and factories in the constituencies of railway ministers and Congress grandees? What would it take to get a safe,decent,comfortable railway system which passengers can ride without fear of accidents and injuries? And will we get an efficient freight service ever? Why not privatise the freight service?

The Chinese are having a major plenum of the Party to debate reforms. These reforms are urgent even though China is growing at 7.5 per cent and has kept its head high in international league tables. If the Chinese feel the urgency of drastic reforms,why are Indian politicians indulging in rhetoric about secularism or engaged in a competition to show their ignorance of history? Will any party promise reform of the labour markets without which there will be no manufacturing future for India? How will millions of jobs be created for the young men and women maturing for the labour market? Are they to go to India’s hopeless higher education system,none of which makes the grade in the top 200,and end up capable of only repeating by rote what they have been told?

Is any political party willing to debate the future of India rather than its past ?