Doctor, heal thy government

Speaking to the CII (Confederation of Indian Industries) in Delhi last week, the Prime Minister said, “The time has come for the better off sections of our society to understand the need to make our growth process more inclusive; to eschew conspicuous consumption; to save more and waste less; to care for those who are less privileged and less well-off; to be role models of probity, moderation and charity.”

If I had been invited to the dinner party that celebrated the UPA government’s third anniversary last week and asked to explain the drubbing the Congress Party and its allies have taken in recent assembly elections I would have said the same thing in those very words.

What annoys the aam aadmi is not whether Ratan Tata or Mukesh Ambani fly around in private planes or whether Vijay Mallya likes buying fleets of yatchs. What annoys him is when he sees the man he elects to Parliament suddenly become a ‘vulgar’, conspicuous consumer with no known source of income. Barely does he enter the hallowed portals of the Lok Sabha that MP sahib begins to live like a tycoon.

Expensive cars appear, the ancestral home gets bigger, interior decorators descend, the wife starts sparkling with jewels and the children go off to foreign universities. This bothers the aam aadmi because he sees no change at all in his own life. He asks for very little. Regular supplies of electricity for which he would gladly pay, clean water, minimal public healthcare, a decent school for his children, reliable public transport and a road that does not disappear when the rains come.

It is when none of these things happen that the aam aadmi begins plotting to throw his MP and government out. As an economist does the Prime Minister not see this? Does he not see that because of his inability to effect administrative reforms his government’s wondrous schemes to provide jobs and homes to the poor continue to fail. We now here that the Public Distribution System (PDS) will include more items of food because the poor are being hit by rising prices.

What is the point if the Planning Commission itself admits that 60 per cent of the food is stolen and sold on the black market. Ila Patnaik analysed the Planning Commission study in this newspaper (May 24, 2007) and provided this scary statistic the day before the Prime Minister made his speech: “Of the estimated 45.41 million Below Poverty Line (BPL) households in India in 2001, just over half (57 per cent) are covered by the PDS.”

Why has the Prime Minister been able to do nothing to give us a less leaky PDS? What has stopped him from stepping up the pace at which roads are built? Why has it slowed down under his government? Why has he done nothing about reforms in the power sector? Why do we see no cuts in government spending on itself? Why do his ministers live in houses in Delhi that only the richest Indians can afford? Why has he done nothing to cut their fringe benefits like free travel and subsidised electricity and water?

Instead of worrying about how much CEOs are paid, something decided by the market, why does he not worry about how much the Indian taxpayer pays to keep ministers and MPs living in a style that does not match their ‘socialist’ ideals.

Among the Prime Minister’s ten commandments was advice on ending corruption and concern for the environment. Would he like to tell us where the Congress Party got its funds from for the recent elections in Uttar Pradesh? Whose private aeroplanes did party leaders fly around in? Who paid? As for the environment, can his government explain why it has failed so abysmally to protect the last of our tigers? Could he tell us why the Ganga and the Yamuna remain polluted despite hundreds of crore rupees having been spent on cleaning them?

Industry must do its bit for building Bharat but it will make little difference as long as government continues to fail us on every front time and time again. So spare us the moral science lectures please, Prime Minister, and concentrate on putting your own government in order.