Yesterday’s Failures are Today’s Successes

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//..Shiela...... India`s next prime minister...:-) ...//

Sure. Anybody other than the ``Gandhi`` clan would do.

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``If the numerous poll surveys are to be believed, Congress under Sheila Dikshit is all set to sweep Delhi owing to her excellent performance. ``(pankaj)

mashalla....... subhanalla.........Shiela...... India`s next prime minister...:-)

``If the numerous poll surveys are to be believed, Congress under Sheila Dikshit is all set to sweep Delhi owing to her excellent performance. ``(pankaj)

mashalla....... subhanalla.........Shiela...... India`s next prime minister...:-)

Ferozk

If the numerous poll surveys are to be believed, Congress under Sheila Dikshit is all set to sweep Delhi owing to her excellent performance. People seem to credit her with making Delhi less polluted by introducing CNG and with all the economic development of the state. BJP is all set to sweep Madhya Pradesh due to the same development factor. Uma Bharti seems to be riding ``We want power, roads`` slogan as the Congress performance on these basic necessities has been pathetic over there. The battle in Rajasthan and Chattisgarh is evenly poised. Congress performance has not been sterling in either state but it is not pathetic too, relatively speaking. However, the anti incumbency factor may upset calculations at the last moment. The good thing is that these elections are being fought on the developmental issues and the emotional issues have generally not been raised. the score could be 2-2 or 3-1 for either party.

re: post # 62

``The bottom line is: when Nehru took unfettered reins of govts - both centre and states and with virtually no opposition - India was at near the top of the Asian league, when he left, it was at near bottom not only in economic but in most social and infrastructure indicators.``
Dost-mittar sahib,
I do not think the above statement is accurate.
When the British came to trade with India, India was still a prosperous nation. When they left, India was down in the dumps, accounting for less than 1 % of world trade. India in 1947 did not even produce a needle. So, to say it was at the top of Asian league would be inaccurate.
Much of the years of Nehru era were spent in gaining self-confidence, establishing infrastructure and consolidating the idea of a ``nation state``, so vital for any nation. Nehru`s economic policies had its unintended consequences but i do not have time to dwell on that right now.
Sridhar

“shabdon kaa arth to bataiye:
bakheeli?
razzaqi?....”(Pankaj)


Janab Pankaj sahib: bahut hi mushkill sawall kiya aapnay...

Bakkheeli means: stinginess ....miserliness ...meanness ...niggardliness ...a general unwillingness to part with even a small amount of money...uncouth...unsharing

“Razzaki” comes from the Urdu word “rizq” means sustenance ....“roti khana kapra”... ...”bread and butter”... livelihood....subsistence...generosity..... bigheartedness, bounteousness, bounty, charitableness, kindness, sharing, unselfishness....

Isn`t AMAZING the great subcontinental peot Allama Iqbal had commented on the Reagnomics of nineties -- with such acumen -- 80 years ago -- summed up the whole charade of in just ONE couplets......what a genius .....bravo!

sumundar se milay peyaasay ko shubnum
bakheeli hai yeh razzaki naheeN hai

Now here is the 21st century translation of that marvellous couplet....

From the ocean of your opulence, oh God, you give us a few drops of ``trickle down`` DEW to quench our thirst?...

You are one stingy Reaganomist sob , oh God, you are indeed no good-for-nothin Philanthropist.........:-)

re: Indians

Any thoughts on the elections being held on Monday in India? Any prognosis?

Ciao

I would like to think that many of the successes in India were due to the presence of a rather unique ``system``, that of the ``autonomous`` organisation and / or the co-op sector and/or the wholly owned government subsidiaries.

If I were to take just some of the very visible success stories within the Indian Government / public sector, non education, then I would choose -

1) Amul/Anand Co-op/milk products and their spin-offs in other state, prime example being the current war between Amul and Mother, both co-ops, both ``government``, and both together managing to keep the foreign companies away from the milk business, be they Walls, Baskin Robbins or Nestle, and now moving into the chocolate/cocoa/cold beverages space.

2) Container Corporation of India and CRIS, the unitised cargo and infotech subsidiaries of the Indian Railways. The one thing that has changed in India since 1947 for the rural unlettered poor who are still in the Anrez Rani/thanedaar kotwal/road rangdari tax era is the railway ticket, now computerised at some of the smallest hamlets . . . and the option of moving small piece goods by an intermodal road/rail system over ConCor, domestic and export. Add Konkan Railway, after conquering the Western Ghats and seaboard, now building the Jammu to Srinagar line as well as various metro undergrounds, skybus projects and holistic land transport solutions.

3) Maruti Udyog Ltd., say what you will, gave us a very fine product and service. I could go on about automobiles, but choose to keep my peace here.

4) VSNL / MTNL / BSNL, and as most customers of the privatised telecom sector will agree, thank the Lord for these organisations. VSNL is now dis-invested to Tatas. Be it landline, GSM or WLL, the public sector beats the private players blindfolded.

5) The Consumer`s Forum and the implementation of the Right to Information Act. Though not strictly organisations, and with levels of implementation varying widely from state to state, both these Government initiatives bring the meaning of the word ``freedom`` into a truer perspectives.

I could name more, but keep to these five on additional grounds of (a) non-monopoly and (b) in the face of open competition, including foreign in some cases.

ahmedmadani:
..couldn`t have said it better myself!
One can always count upon you to introduce a reality check into a discussion in your inimitable style.

PM:
``(And why is noone asking what critreon for poverty is being applied? Are we using the sustenance-level critereon?)

Answers from any takers would be much appreciated. ``

This is not an easy question to answer and perhaps deserves a separate board. Even in the developed countries, definition of poverty is always controversial (by one definition, one of relative poverty or a version of ``the poor will always be with us``, poverty can never be removed!). Different definitions produce different results.
For countries, the most common definition is one by the IMF, i.e., of countries with a per capita income of less than one dollar a day. Here again, is it nominal dollar or purchasing power parity? Now that dollar has declined precipitously during the last eight months, have some countries moved out of the poverty group?
It is meaningliess to compare poverty levels in different countries if they are not using the same definition. At one time, India used to measure poverty in terms of the percentage of income spent on food; i.e., any family spedning more than, say, 90% of its income was considered poor. I wonder if that definition stil holds?

Pankaj:
``You perhaps prefer the semi socialist Scandinavian welfare state to American one. If my reasoning is correct, in not so long term, the crypto-socialistic policies of Scandinavian countries will sap out the economic vitality of those countries as the vibrancy of American capitalism surpasses them``

No, I was thinking of my own Canada. I know we have fewer opportunities than the Americans to soar with the eagles but we also have less chance of falling into a bottomless pit, miserable ghettos and overflowing prisons.

sadna: (contd.)

``In short, Nehru did get some of his modern temples. ``
The bottom line is: when Nehru took unfettered reins of govts - both centre and states and with virtually no opposition - India was at near the top of the Asian league, when he left, it was at near bottom not only in economic but in most social and infrastructure indicators. Only a nation that believes in devis and devtas even after they fail to deliver would worship such a man.

sadna:
``I agree with jay who says crony capitalism results without proper checks and balances. Thats the case in many newly independent poor countries where a few rich people are more empowered and distort the system to guard their own commerical interests under guise of `national interest`.``
I am not in favour of crony capitalism and would support any measures to prevent it. And that is what a powerful state and a powerful Nehru should have done. But what was done was the opposite. During the Nehruvian period of mixed economy - and unmixed baneful effects! - it is precisely the crony capitalists who succeeded. Whoever could curry favours with the right bureaucrats and politicians got all the licenses and quotas of scarce raw materials and foreign exchange. Birlas were rumoured to have 100 MPs in their pockets. Did you notice that, during that era, the top ten industrial houses never changed. And now, after only a short opening up, some of the top tens of the 50s, 60s and 70s have disappeared; they were the ones who were most vociferous against opening up to new competition.

``Indian govt sector companies have built railways, roads, prospected for oil, been in shipping, built heavy machinery, bought and sold steel, and done it successfully all over the world for last many decades. India has a good heavy engineering base, which is not restricted to the private sector only``
Yes, there were some successes although whether these were achieved on a cost-effective and efficient basis is another story. I am neither dogmatic nor ideological (you might recall my positive tribute to Indian Railways some time ago) and am a greater believer in the ``what works!`` school of policy making (I would encourage socialists of all hues to study how the French have been moderately successful in their public sector industries).
As far as roads, are you suggesting that PWDs are a success story? ONGC was a success only because they were given rather free monopoly access to national assets and were selling a cheaply produced commodity and sold it, I believe, at international prices. Successes in the public sector are only the exceptions that prove the rule.
If I were to name the most successful public sector undertaking in India, it would be the postal service. I was therefore puzzled back in the sixties when everyone in India started repeating parrot-like Galbraith`s characterisation of India as post-office socialism. I understood that expression only when I came to the USA because the post office there was in the public sector and also most inefficient, not a patch over the Indian postal service.

``Banking/insurance have been mainly public sector too whose performance has been not bad.``
Are you kidding? Most public sector banks were on the verge of bankruptcy and have only recently been brought up to a sounder footing. They were forced to give uneconomic loans and write-off bad loans. The worse came during the VP Singh govt., when because of the pressure exerted from Devi Lal, all loans given to farmers were forgiven at one stroke.

``Indigenous developments in space, biotech, agriculture, pharmeceuticals were possible due to availability of domestic talent. ``
Pharmeceutical industry is one area where the govt. used protectionism in a sensible way and it worked. The domestic industry was protected from the powerful multinationals by not recognising the process copyright, providing industry the access to the extensive networks of laboratories, while at the same time permitting domestic players to compete against each other and grow without restrictions.

harimou:
``Just because IITs don`t admit people on quota basis doesn`t mean other universities don`t. That reservation as written into the Constitution was 25% for 25 years. ``
...it is my understanding that the 25% quota applies to IITs, too. I also understand that some of those admitted under reserved class do not make it into the second year.

macgupta:
``The failures lie in clinging to ideas that don`t work despite all the evidence to the contrary. It is way beyond human competence to pick the right ideas from day one. The best human characteristic is to be able to learn and to adapt, and squashing that freedom is wrong. ``
Well said!

``The first two five-year plans were fairly successful. When thereafter growth slowed down, there should have been a policy shift.``

The first five-year plan was a success, but it was not much of a plan; rather these were schemes (such as Bhakra Dam) which were already under preparation during the British rule and were simply put together and presented as a plan.
The real planning started with the second five-year plan. A perspective 25-year plan was prepared by one Pitambar Pant which was going to bring India to the level of European countries at the end of five plans (I`m not kidding! You have to give it to the Nehruvians, they set high standards even though their performance found others catching up with us and leaving us in the dust rather than us catching up with those ahead of us).
The second five year plan was the brain-child primarily of two non-economists. One was, of course, Nehru who had been mesmerised by Fabian Socialism, fashionable among the europeans of the times, much like many people today are blindly influenced by some silly notions such as supply side economics and Laffer curve. The other person was a brilliant scientist turned statistician, Mahalnobis, of the Indian Statistical Institute, who was also smitten by both socialism and macro-econometric models fashionable at that time. The model was elegant and wonderful, only the assumptions were faulty. The crux of the model was a two-sector appoach. Very simply, the public sector was to control heavy and large industries while the consumer goods industry was to be reserved to the small private sector. (there was also a mixed sector, like steel, where existing firms like the Tatas were allowed to continue but not to expand or diversify)
The second five year plan was a failure. There was a big foreign exchange crisis, inflation screwed up the assumptions made and shortages began to appear endemic. It was declared a success because most of the financial targets were met; which means that the government spent as much money as it said it would even though the physical targets, ie the outputs, were far from met.

Dear Dost-mittarji:

I like the way you have focussed on three aspects of ``unintended consequences``. Pardon me if mine is not a knowledgeable response.

[The use of English as the lingua franca has created a pan Indian class, which is not quite the McCauley’s children. It reads and writes in English, speaks to each other in English but is 100 percent Indian in its thinking. These are the people one thinks of when one hears people talk about this almost mythical notion of ‘India’. They have developed common tastes in food and entertainment, a common love of consumerism and seem to revel in their love for their country, sometimes even approaching the level of jingoism.]

They, which include people like us, are merely the face of India that wants to market itself. Is India only about such ``mythical notions`` as food, entertainment and even jingoism? I have seen the kind of traumas faced by those who want to anglicise themselves after going through a `different` education. They live with the fear of always being recognised as `vernies`. Recently, there has been a report that Dell computers have stopped their India call centre operations due to the `heavy accent` of Indians. Surely, these are the newly-initiated who have come from regional backgrounds; anyone with an Indian cosmopolitan accent can easily fake the American accent that is required. Where then is the pan-Indian identity?

And can the urban concept of upward mobility be deemed 100 per cent Indian? Is this not what they show in candy floss films, where there is the flag, the anthem and the salutary bhajan to reassure us that the DJs can mix and match pop patriotism with a popcorn sensibility?

You have spoken about the products of higher learning not being fruitfully employed in India. How many of those who have that education want to stay back? They want to go for `higher studies` overseas and find work there. The ones who return are mostly those who have family businesses waiting for them. Or strive to join multinationals. How many would be interested in the public sector? Would you not consider the Amul co-operative movement a success story? This was an authentic Indian movement with no reference to pan-Indianism.

About shoddy Indian goods...on my travels I have often ended up picking up clothes, artifacts that I realise later have a `Made in India` label. And these superior goods are fighting for space along with cheap Chinese items.

I would say there are several Indias and instead of trying to force them to mesh, there should be an attempt to accept the differences. Incidentally, I find more `unity` at the ground level among the non-English speaking classes. I, as a Mumbaiite, find little in common with a person from Delhi or Chennai with the same level of education, upbringing and even jingoism!

Regards,
Farzana

PS: Re. Nehru, let me quote an excerpt (the rest of it is about his parochialism, so we shall avoid it here!) from one of my columns...

``Discovery of Nehru - II
Farzana Versey
Date: November 13, 1996

On Nehru`s birth anniversary tomorrow, the idea is not to take away from the majesty of the individual, but to bring into focus the dilemmas that face human beings who are forced to be what they are not.

As he could not give them the loin cloth ethnicity that would give them something to talk about, 1 suspect he used the buzz word `industrialisation` to make the British feel that they had done a good job of tutoring the natives. He had no agenda for industrialisation (except socialism!) and he was mighty afraid of the spectre he had created and also envious of those who could do so.
Therefore, while Gandhi, who had no interest in the subject, happily partook of the hospitality of the Birlas, the angel of industrialisation stayed away. It couldn`t have been probity. It was contempt for the Marwari community who had the money and the business acumen to take India towards the unholy grail.`` (http://www.hvk.org/articles/1196/0016.html)