Acche din still a mirage

Rama Krishna is a retired school teacher; he is in his seventies. Like most teachers in this country, his asset is his students who keep visiting him even today at Jangareddygudem, his karmabhoomi, a small town in West Godavari district but close to the Andhra-Telangana border.

On the eve of Christmas, he found himself at sea. What happened was that for the past five years or so he had been depositing some Rs 5000 every month in his recurring deposit in the branch post office near his house. Now that it has matured, he presented his passbook with an application for his money. Shockingly, the entries in the ledger maintained at the local head post office were not up-to-date and this raised a question mark.

The post master appeared helpful and helpless in equal measure. It brought no solace to Rama Krishna with the prospect of hard-earned savings out of pension set to end up as a mirage. Yet, he agreed to wait till the post master managed the ledger-talk.

“One of my cousins lives in Delhi and he has occasions to meet netas like Modi and Venkaiah Naidu at Parliament,” he said casually, and remarked: “Don’t you think all this brings a bad name to your post office if Modi hears about no regular entries in the ledger.” As he started leaving for home, the post master asked him to wait, dashed on his motorcycle to the head post office and materialised soon with the “master’s” cheque.

When I heard this story, I took it as yet another saffron invention to sell the Modi brand wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma to rephrase what Winston Churchill had said about Russia some 75 years ago. I have since cross-checked with the lead player, who happens to be my cousin. Though the story was not as cut and dry as I have just narrated, it doesn’t belong to a Ripley’s world of bizarre stories, and lends strength to the finding of a latest media survey across five metros that officers are more responsive in Modi-raj.

Perceptions matter in democracy and perception-wise, Narendra Modi scores high at the end of his first eight months in the South Block on the imposing Raisina Hill in the heart of Delhi, which may soon become the good old Hastinapura if the Hindutva zealots in his company have their way. The foreign educated Mani Shankar Ayyars in the Sonia Congress may not like the name change just as they have not liked the curtains coming down on Yojana Bhavan, which, for the free-market champions, is no more than a Soviet inspired Nehruvian relic that deserved to be consigned to the dustbin of history the day PV had unleashed Manmohonomics two decades ago.

Changing the name or the charter of an institution is never a big deal, the bench mark being success. By this yardstick, Planning Commission (PC) has not much to rejoice; over the years particularly from the Rajiv era, it became the dumping ground of unwanted IAS officers though they were given the high sounding designation of advisors; its research teams and the plan evaluation wing did good work but there were few takers for their output. Chief Ministers like Chandrababu Naidu used to secure a gag-order for PC officials invoking their clout if hardnosed journalists like yours truly managed to get a negative story.

Frankly, PC had lost its raison d’être under UPA with another PC- Palaniappan Chidambaram – who as finance minister virtually ignored it in the matters of fund allocation and budget preparation. Manmohan Singh could have saved the day for Yojana Bhavan. But he did, not to the dismay of Montek Singh Ahluwalia whom he had brought to Yojana Bhavan from the World Bank. Well, this was yet another instance of the accidental prime minister not asserting his authority when it was expected of him.

As the Wall St Journal says Prime Minister Narendra Modi still has much to prove. People like Rama Krishna who have seen “acche din” in the Modi-raj are still few in number. Every day as I travel by an e-rickshaw to the Delhi Metro rail station some three kilometres from my house, I hear people wonder what one Modi can do.

“Election changed the Prime Minister but babulog (bureaucrats) are the same; they have not changed” – is the general refrain in despair. Of course, people are happy that the Modi government has made the employees reach office in time. Mere attendance in strength is not enough. The bureaucracy must become productive.

The Modi sarkar has not yet paid attention to this need with all its energies focused on delivering reforms through ordinances. In a manner of speaking, even ordinance centric decisiveness for action is welcome, and it is, indeed, no small mercy for a country which had remained a hostage to political and economic indecision under UPA-II. There is an inherent problem with this approach though, and it is that it will make running Parliament that much difficult.

Reforms offer a good talking point if you are visiting Davos to rub shoulders with the who is who of the capitalist world and to make a power point presentation at the World Economic Forum (WEF) meetings. Green backs don’t come here unless there is room for good margins and hassle- free repatriation is assured. This was the lesson India had learnt the hard way after reciting reform mantra for five years from 1991. This was also the reason why NTPC and BHEL became respectable behemoths in the power sector by the end of PV era.

The Modi experience is not going to be any different. The slowdown in economy continues. The corporate sector is showing no hurry to invest and is instead, asking for cheap loans from banks to the dismay of Raghuram Rajan, the RBI governor, who is inflation centric in his monetary policy.

All this puts a big question mark on ‘acche din’. Turn around can come only if the Modi sarkar gives up its faith in market forces, and begins to spend more.

By: Malladi Rama Rao