This is the first column of a New Year and on principle I try to make it a cheerful ‘‘feel good’’ piece unless disaster strikes. But, this would have been an optimistic piece anyway because of a conversation with N.K. Singh of the Planning Commission. On a gloomy, foggy Delhi evening in the last week of the year I met him at a dinner party and as is usual when hacks meet netas or babus we pondered over the state of the nation. I have no idea why this invariably happens but it could be because we who lurk about the corridors of power feel the weight of running India constantly on our inadequate shoulders. So while NK and I reflected self-importantly on India’s political and economic future and I made the usual cynical, journalistic jibes he said the problem with the press was that it always saw the dismal side of life without paying attention to the incredible pace at which India is changing. ‘‘Did you know, for instance, that between 1995 and 2002 nearly 100 million Indians moved from middle-middle to upper-middle class? I am going to send you a speech I recently made. Read it.’’ The speech duly arrived in my mailbox and I read it with more than normal interest because 100 million more rich Indians in seven years is an astounding figure. The speech, made recently in Paris, contained other even more cheering figures. Listen to this. Talking about the certainty of the national savings rate increasing he says, ‘‘In addition, this will also result in a significant increase in overall consumption and even at a 6% compounded annual growth based on PPP, the size of the market would rise from USD 1500 billion today to USD 2700 billion by 2010 and USD 3400 billion by 2015 and of course, at the projected 8% growth, this would be significantly higher. ‘‘Looking at from (sic) another point of view, the level of affluence is steadily increasing in India and even between 1995 and 2002, nearly 100 million people became part of the consuming and rich classes, while over the next 5 years this growth is likely to be dramatic because more than 180 million people will be moving into the consuming and very rich classes.’’ Other than these statistics what pleased me about NK’s speech, and heightened my respect for him, was his admission that socialism was one of the reasons why we have remained poor for so long. We all know this but loud-voiced lefty politicos and hacks, and bureaucrats as a species prefer not to admit it ever. NK does not hesitate to say that in the first phase of our life as an independent, democratic republic, ‘‘Growth was slow due to the adoption of a semi-socialist development model with excessive economic control and inadequacy of physical and social infrastructure.’’ Bureaucrats use words carefully but as I have journalistic license let me spell it out in less politically correct words. In terms of ‘‘physical and social infrastructure’’ socialism was destructive and evil. Everything we built had a makeshift, shoddy quality as if we were building a temporary country. Whether it was our roads, railway stations, airports or cities socialism’s motto appears to have been: make do at minimum cost. To this day contracts for major public works and buildings are handed out not to the best but to the cheapest. Evidence of this insane approach can be seen reflected in the worst airports in the world and in a road system that mostly washes away with every monsoon. But, having just driven the length of supposedly prosperous Punjab from Wagah to Delhi may I say that the worst reflection of the socialist approach to building the future is to be seen in our cities. It happens that accidentally on this journey I drove off the highway and found myself in the main bazaar of the rich, industrial city of Ludhiana. We moved at the pace of a cycle rickshaw, on account of slow moving traffic, through squalid, filthy streets lined with stinking drains and rotting garbage. Amid the garbage and the drains, oblivious to the squalor, sat pavement shopkeepers selling export reject woollen clothes from the city’s multitudinous and immensely rich garment factories. Of municipal governance, civic standards there was not the faintest sign. Between Wagah and Delhi I saw not one public building that was even remotely pleasing nor a single town that did not look like a featureless, filthy shanty. As for hygiene it simply does not exist. Restaurants flourish on the edge of garbage dumps and expensive new shops and houses have vistas of open drains and stagnant pools of dirty water. If this is what Punjab looks like you need little imagination to conjure up visions of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Add this to the fact that education and healthcare were built in such makeshift fashion by our socialist rulers that even poor Indians prefer to use private schools and medical facilities and you realise that NK’s use of the word ‘‘inadequate’’ to describe our physical and social infrastructure is seriously inadequate. It is wonderful that so many Indians are getting rich so quickly and wonderful that by 2020 we will have the largest number of young people in the world. But, our riches and our youth will mean nothing if we do not urgently rectify the wrong socialism did in terms of physical and social infrastructure. No more makeshift, no more making do. Meanwhile, a very happy new year from a columnist who remains cynical despite NK’s cheering figures. — Write to tavleensingh@expressindia.com
