India needs a new direction : Vanam Jwala Narasimha Rao

India needs a new direction
and

In want of a new direction
and
Script a new narrative in polity

Vanam Jwala Narasimha Rao

The Hans India (14-08-2018)

Millennium Post, New Delhi (15-08-2018)
Telangana Today (18-08-2018)

            The India envisaged by our great leaders of yester years is in stark contrast with how the nation stands in present times.

The National Pledge which is commonly recited by Indians at public events and during the Independence Day and Republic Day was composed by a little known Telanganite-born in Anneparti, Nalgonda District-Pydimarri Venkata Subba Rao, a noted author in Telugu and a bureaucrat.  While serving as the District Treasury Officer of Vishakhapatnam District in 1962 in the then Andhra Pradesh he composed this and later presented to Late Tenneti Viswanadham a former Minister and Member of Parliament who forwarded it to the then Education Minister PVG Raju.

The Pledge goes like: “India is my country. All Indians are my brothers and sisters. I love my country and I am proud of its rich and varied heritage. I shall always strive to be worthy of it. I shall give my parents, teachers and all elders respect and treat everyone with courtesy. To my country and my people, I pledge my devotion. In their well-being and prosperity alone, lies my happiness”.

The question is, while remembering the struggle for independence spearheaded by our great leaders who are no more now, to what extent the words in the pledge, or to that matter to what extent the fruits envisioned during the freedom moment are relevant today? Is there a brotherhood and sisterhood among us? Are we really proud of our rich and varied heritage still? Are we worthy of our country? Are we politically in a position to steer the country towards progress? Do we have a perfect National Agenda to take the people forward looking? Are we in a position to compete globally with other nations? Where do we stand and where do we place ourselves in many areas?

Yes…the country needs a new direction as seventy one years have passed since independence. Still the country and its people are struggling for basic minimum needs with significant chunk of our people suffering from poverty and are either unemployed or underemployed. There are countries that were poorer than us when they became independent but as the days passed, they achieved remarkable growth by leveraging their economies to a larger extent.

Quite a number examples should suffice the poor performance of India when compared to other countries. The best example is that of China which is our neighbouring country on the other side of Himalayas. China has been consistently maintaining a high growth rate since 1979. From 1992 onwards, for more than 25 years, it has been continuously registering very rapid growth. The GDP of China was less than that of India till 1971. Now it is four times of India. India’s GDP in 1968 was 180 Billion Dollars and that of China then was just 134 Billion Dollars. By 2016 China reached 9504 Billion Dollars where as India could reach to a mere 2465 Billion Dollars. In other words China increased by more than 70% and India by little over 13%. What a drastic difference! Similarly, the percapita income of China which was just 172.91 dollars in 1968 increased nearly by 40% in 2016 whereas that of India which stood more than China at 340.36 dollars in 1968 could grow only by 5.47% and register just 1861 dollars by 2016. This is a serious concern and should be addressed sensibly.

In power supply front as on today if we have just 3.45 Lakhs Mega Watts installed capacity with 1122 units per head, China has 17.77 Lakhs Mega watts Capacity with 4475 units per head! The land useful for cultivation in India was 41 Crores of Acres in 1979 and by 2015 it got reduced to 39 Crores acres. In China However in the same period it increased from 24 Crores to 29.75 Crores.

East Asian Tigers like South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan and ASEAN countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines etc achieved miraculous growth. Japan rose from ashes to become a country with one of the highest percapita income in the world.

What is required is what suits our country. Can’t we leverage the wealth and inner strength of our country and its economy? What is stopping us? It is not an insurmountable problem and of course it is just a mindset issue. If we have to develop India, it requires out-of-the box thinking and not just the routine way as has been done during the past 71 years. The customary talk of “Best Practices” should be dropped and let us think of “Next Practices”. A growth centric tactic for issues aiming at reinventing and reorienting India moving away from stereotyped practices is the need of the hour. We have to first get rid of poverty of thought and plan in a big way instead of incremental thinking.

Then who are responsible for all the ills? The Nehru-Gandhi leadership Congress Party era followed by Morarji-VP Singh leadership Janata-National Front era and then the Vajpayee-Modi BJP era with in between PV-Manmohan Congress era are squarely responsible for all that happened in the past 71 years. But basically it was either the Congress party or the BJP that were at the helm of affairs.

To what extent Nehru’s policy of agrarian reform, industrialization as import substitution and mixed economy where there was to be the government controlled public sector coexisting with the private sector, helped this country to develop needs to be studied and analysed now. He initially believed that the establishment of basic and heavy industry was fundamental to the development and modernization of the Indian Economy. Did it help or not?

Indira Gandhi at one stroke nationalized 14 major private sector banks, industries like coal and services like insurance. Whether the move helped India to march fast or it was a counter productive one also requires to be studied in-depth. As was seen then, did the banks nationalization free the economic growth of the country from the clutches of a few vested interests and thrown open the banking facilities to the common people or not? It is said often then that the corrupt misuse of Banks for political gains was one of the negative fall outs.

The technological advancements of Rajiv Gandhi era which are supposed to be a turning point in that front have not been consolidated even during his regime. He was although allegedly involved in Bofors scandal and could hardly escape from it. This certainly resulted in hindering the development of the country at that point of time.

In a way PV Narasimha Rao though tried his level best through Economic Reforms, dismantling of License Raj, globalisation and rescuing India from near bankruptcy to what extent they were consolidated in the later regimes of BJP is a question to be answered. If at all there was a development of India it was certainly during his tenure but unfortunately could not be sustained long.

Manmohan’s Rural Health Mission, Aadhar experiment and the RTI Act, though were his achievements had no direct impact on the country’s growth. Atal Bihari Vajpayee the first non-congress PM to complete a full five year term probably had nothing great to his credit barring Pokhran nuclear tests, Sarva Siksha Abhiyan and National Highways Development Project and the biggest failure was his India Shining campaign.  

With Demonetization and GST experiment Modi the present PM had gained a big negative name and how do they contribute to country’s growth is yet to be seen. There was nothing significant during the rest of the period and it was mainly alternate governments assuming charge one after another.

India needs a momentous change and maybe it is possible if the political system is changed as the national political parties and the present political system failed the nation.