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Journalism of Courage
The prime minister has been talking to us once every two days — 529 speeches in the 1095 days (three years) he has been in office. Was his 529th speech, delivered at the CII annual general meeting yesterday, something different? Did we hear a different Manmohan Singh? We did.
A keyword search for “inclusive growth” in the “PM’s speeches” section of the PM’s website (pmindia.nic.in) produces 302 results. So, the headline phrase the CII heard on Thursday is an old prime ministerial favourite, having found mention in over 57 per cent of Singh’s speeches. Search for “poor, SCs, STs, backward sections,” and you get 378 hits. Utterly unsurprisingly, nothing new in that either.
A search for “conspicuous consumption” produces 32 results. But most hits are accounted for by the word “consumption.” Narrow the field and search for “conspicuous.” Only two hits and in both speeches “conspicuous” is paired with “consumption.” One speech is, of course, Thursday’s. The other was delivered two years back, on May 20, 2005, at the Collectors’ Conference. “Be sensitive…be modest…lead simple lifestyles eschewing conspicuous consumption,” the PM told District Collectors, while, interestingly, complimenting them for “operating on the frontiers of knowledge.”
So to the best of all our knowledge, before this week’s CII speech Manmohan Singh used the loaded term “conspicuous consumption” only once and in a context that — no offence meant to District Collectors — wasn’t likely to grab national headlines.
That’s one firm indicator of a rhetorical break at the CII speech. As an economist, Singh knows exactly the political-economic significance of the term “conspicuous consumption.” An expression like “inclusive growth” does not necessarily offer value judgments on any class. It exhorts. But “conspicuous consumption” has censoriousness at its core. Singh, with the exception of that advice to Collectors, has never been censorious in this fashion before.
Search the PM’s speeches next for occasions where “vulgar” has been used in the context of “wealth”; he said at the CII speech that the “media often displays…vulgar display of wealth (by the rich).” Try a variety of combinations, read through the speeches, the PM has never used the qualifier “vulgar” for “wealth” in the 528 speeches he gave before Thursday.
What about “ostentatious expenditure,” which the PM said in his CII speech is a “great area of concern”? A search for “ostentatious” and “expenditure” returns 37 hits. But in 36 of them only “expenditure” appears, in unremarkable contexts like planning commission dos and don’ts. “Ostentatious” is paired with “expenditure” only once — in the Thursday speech. So again, never before his 529th speech did the PM find reason to question individual decisions on how to spend disposable income.
“Our polity may become anarchic,” the PM said on Thursday, arguing wealth disparities can cause serious social tension. Singh did tell the Harvard Alumni on March 25, 2006 there was something “anarchic” about this country. But that was a reference to education; “anarchic growth in quantitative terms and moribund stagnation in qualitative terms.” Anarchy as consequence of economic growth — you heard it first from the PM on Thursday.
What was he saying before the CII speech? Very different things. Let’s, to be fair, take prime ministerial addresses in contexts similar to that of the CII meeting this week. That is, speeches given to audiences comprising the wealthy and the socially well-connected, prime candidates for indulging in “conspicuous consumption.”
It’s a different Manmohan Singh in these speeches. Always emphasising that growth has to be broad-based, but optimistic, sometimes celebratory and commending industry’s role in increasing opportunities:
• On March 13 this year, speaking at the Economist roundtable conference: “The Indian economy is doing better and Indians are doing better…I do sincerely believe that the best is yet to come. Our economy is probably on a growth path which if sustained for a decade or so, will enable us to eradicate the ancient scourges of mass poverty, ignorance and disease to a very substantial extent.”
• Three months before that, in January, at the FICCI annual general meeting: “We meet at a very opportune moment in our recent history. There is an air of optimism about our economic prospects.”
• December 16, 2005, CII conference on Bharat Nirman: What is evident is a “makeover of Indian business in bridging the so-called divide between India and Bharat. Many firms have tried to capture rural opportunities and in the process they have opened up unprecedented possibilities for rural India to get more integrated with the national and global economy.”
• A year before that, addressing Assocham’s JRD Tata birth centenary celebrations: “We must unleash the full potential of individual initiative and enterprise. We must provide a new stimulus to the animal spirits of our entrepreneurs. We must create a social, political and economic environment in which budding entrepreneurs can realize their dreams. When enterprising and creative individuals create wealth, they create new employment opportunities and new hope for our collective future.”
This is not an exhaustive list. But it more than makes the point. And it makes his 530th public address, whenever it comes, crucial: will we get back the old Doctor in that speech?
