NEW DELHI: Ghalib was probably writing of the happenings at the time of the Great Mutiny of 1857 when events took place at a galloping pace. But the beauty of Ghalib’s poetry is that it is often universal in time and place. Today, in India, the pace of history has speeded up. Events are taking place more rapidly and one wonders where all this will end. In the media, one sees scam after scam often involving politicians who swear by the poor and disadvantaged sections of society.
Charles Maurice Talleyrand said of the Bourbons (the French royal family): “The Bourbons saw nothing, remembered nothing, and forgot nothing.” Most Indian politicians today remind one of the Bourbons. They do not see the public anger rising and reaching a boiling point. They do not remember the fate of the Bourbons, the Hapsburgs and the Romanovs (if they have even heard of them). And they do not forget their power and pelf, thinking this will continue forever.
The decisive factor is the economy. The Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, said recently that deceleration in Indian GDP growth has meant that growth has bottomed out at 5.5 per cent. This rosy picture is in sharp contrast to Standard and Poor’s warning that the Indian economy’s sovereign credit rating could be downgraded to ‘junk status’ in 24 months.
What economists like Mr Ahluwalia do not see is that the problem in India is not how to increase production (that can easily be increased considering the large number of engineers and technicians and immense natural resources in India) but how to raise the purchasing power of the Indian masses. After all, what is produced has to be sold but how can it be sold when 75-80 per cent of our people are poor, earning about Rs25 a day?
Moreover, if the GDP growth benefits only a handful of rich people making them richer while the poor become poorer because of inflation, it follows that the goods manufactured cannot be sold because the masses will have no purchasing power. In recent months, there has been a manufacturing decline in India and export-oriented industries have been particularly hard hit because of the recession in Western countries.
India’s relative stability was based on its massive middle class of around 200-250 million people. This provided a ready market for goods and services. This middle class is fast losing its purchasing power due to skyrocketing prices and this, in turn, is fast eroding India’s stability, as can be seen from the popular agitations that have been taking place in the country of late. Massive poverty, rising unemployment, skyrocketing prices, absence of healthcare for poor people, farmer suicides, child malnutrition, etc. are all an explosive mixture. If the Bourbons do not wake up now (of which at present I see little likelihood), a prolonged period of chaos and anarchy seems inevitable in India in the near, not distant, future.
Justice Markandey Katju
Published in The Express Tribune, November 12th, 2012
