India That is Bharat

THANK God, Satiricus doesn't understand economics. Otherwise he would not have felt so disinterested in this disinvestment business. He is told that disinvestment in profit-making PSUs is good for the Indian economy, and of course what is good for the Indian economy must be good for an Indian like Satiricus. Unfortunately, it seems, this dimwit cannot distinguish between good and bad. For him, the goodness or badness of the economy is determined only at the gross level of the grocer. So when he sees his grocer charging him a higher price for the same old everyday article almost every other week, he tends to think that his economy is in a bad shape. And if an Indian's economy is getting worse, can the Indian economy be getting better? Surprisingly for stupid Satiricus, the answer seems to be yes. Look, for instance, at the learned disdain with which economic journalist Sunil Jain has trashed the RSS Sarsanghchalak's statement that casting the Indian economy in the foreign mould does not bode well for our country. Not only has he declared that a free flow of foreign funds means growth, but he has quoted figures to prove it. Well, now, can figures lie? Never. They always tell your version of the truth. And Jain's truth is that the Sarsanghchalak's opposition would actually mean so many million jobs less. Good God, does that mean Sunil Jain stands for growth, while the Sarsanghchalak stands for growth in unemployment? Satiricus does not know what to think, but to make the confusion in his bird-brain worse confounded, he finds that there are other economists who think otherwise. For example, participating in a symposium on “Foreign Investment in India” well-known economic expert Dr Abraham Varghese said: “We need to come out of the illusion that only foreign capital can lead to our development. It is incorrect to say that foreign direct investment brings in newer technologies and more investment. On the contrary, it has worked against consumer interests, as, since 1991, prices of products made from foreign capital have gone up. Instead of strengthening the infrastructure sector, foreign investments have come mostly in the consumer sector, impacting the Indian industries. This has led to unemployment.” In plain words, simple enough to be understandable for simpletons like Satiricus, the more foreign funds, the more Indian unemployment. But of course that must be so much tommyrot. For the very fact that Dr Varghese was editor of the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch magazine Disha is enough to condemn him as a worshipper of false (read Hindu) gods. However, to the utter amazement of this ignoramus, he finds that during his illucid intervals, Sunil Jain has said the same things as Varghese. For instance, Satiricus recalls that Jain had once written about how foreign cement cartels were out to gobble up the Indian cement industry. He had actually written a piece titled “Addressing Mr Sudarshan's fears” in which he had conceded that the Sarsanghchalak's fears about globalisation and the MNC stranglehold really needed to be allayed. On yet another occasion Jain had written on foreign control of Indian insurance, and said, “Whatever be the future profitability of the scores of insurance firms lined-up to enter the Indian market, the great insurance rip off is already under way. Batteries of lawyers... are busy working out arrangements to circumvent the law for several of their foreign insurance clients.... to ensure full management control for the foreign partners.” What does all this mean? It can only mean that even eminent economists who are generally global can be at times Indian. Funnily enough, there is an Englishman who is more Indian than most Indians—Mark Tully. Cautioning against un-Indian globalisation he once said, “Only Indian thought could lead the world to a globalisation that would allow us all to be proud of the word without threatening other cultures and traditions. Economic growth on its own is an un-Indian concept, because it does not put economics as part of the whole. If liberalisation had made the poor poorer, that did not amount to economic progress. There is now in India a bewildering array of cars to choose from, but have market reforms done anything for the cycle rickshaws? The focus should not be on the top end but on the bottom end of the market, and business and industry should turn towards a more holistic view of economics.” That does it. Tully sahib must be at least a surreptitious sponsor of the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch, if not a secret swayamsevak of the RSS. For almost every statement he has made here smacks of the horrid Hindu economics upheld by this lunatic fringe of our society. Take the very first sentence in which he lumps globalisation with Indian thought and culture. Who except RSS lunatics would have thought that globalisation should have anything Indian about it? As for culture, even a (global) village idiot like Satiricus knows that globalisation is in essence Americanisation, and the premier American daily Wall Street Journal had once described Coca Cola as a symbol of American culture. So it is this fizzy, drinkable culture that goes with globalisation. Tully goes on to say that economic growth on its own is an un-Indian concept, because it does not put economics as a part of the whole. Here the sahib has gone from bad to worse, because he is espousing the outdated Indian concept of economics (Artha) being only one of the four Purusharthas that should guide human life. In modern times, when only money makes the mare go, this is reprehensibly regressive. But the sahib does not stop there. From being reprehensible he proceeds to being ridiculous, and says if liberalisation had made the poor poorer, that did not amount to economic progress. Good God, who told Tully liberalisation did not and should not amount to making the poor poorer? What are the IMF and the World Bank and now the WTO there for, if not for achieving this noble aim? And finally Tully sahib calls for a more holistic view of economics. This is the limit. Satiricus must sternly tell him to desist from vending such vain Vedic values of economics summed up by the words—Ma gridhah kasyaswid dhanam—do not rob others of what rightly belongs to them. How can there be economics without exploitation?