Hindu Vivek Kendra
A RESOURCE CENTER FOR THE PROMOTION OF HINDUTVA
   
 
 
«« Back
And whose fault is it, Dr Singh?

And whose fault is it, Dr Singh?

Author: Tavleen Singh
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: August 19, 2007
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/story/211276.html

The thing that annoyed me about the prime minister's very boring Independence Day speech was the way he made it sound as if it was our fault that India remains poor and illiterate. "India cannot become a nation with islands of high growth and vast areas untouched by development, where the benefits of growth accrue only to a few. This is good neither for our society nor for our polity," he said.

Whose fault is it? Should Indian businessmen start doing badly to slow down growth rates? Or should government improve governance so that the poorest Indians can benefit from an economy that is doing better than ever before?

The reason why there are only 'islands of high growth' is because governments have consistently failed to do their bit. High growth rates and the economic boom we are experiencing are entirely due to the enterprise of ordinary Indians. They have been achieved despite the government's failure to build modern infrastructure or make policies that would enable it to be built faster.

Why does it take 20 years to build a road in India? Why do we take forever to build power plants? The prime minister knows well that it is because our legendary bureaucratic delays are so entrenched that even the grease of corruption fails to speed things up.

If 30 per cent of Indians continue to live in absolute poverty and nearly half of our children are malnourished, the roots of the malaise can be found in our villages. As long as the Indian farmer remains on the verge of starvation and suicide, India will remain a poor country. It is not that our farmers cannot farm; it is that they lack access to markets.

Remember that nearly half of the fruit and vegetables that the Indian farmer produces rot because he cannot get them to market on time. If successive governments in the past 60 years had not failed to build those promised roads this situation would not exist. Whose fault is it that the roads have not been built?

Wherever possible, people find alternative ways of making up for the failures of government. It is hard to find a village these days where the cellphone has not reached, making decades of governmental failure in telecommunications irrelevant. And unforgivable failures in public health and education have been made up by private schools and clinics.

People living on the pavements of our metropolises often pay for bottled water because the municipality fails them. But there is only so much that can happen without government playing its role. If the prime minister analyses his own speech, he will find that all the flaws in India on her 60th birthday are to do with the failure of governance.

Showing a sad inability to paint the bigger picture of India's achievements at 60, he dwelt at dreary length on the "new deal" to rural India that his government has bequeathed us in the form of expensive, centrally planned schemes like Bharat Nirman and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.

As an economist he knows that the schemes are palliatives and not the solution. The real tools of empowerment are roads, electricity, clean water, schools, decent hospitals and sanitary living conditions. In rural India government has failed on all these fronts because in 60 years we have not produced a prime minister who has dared admit that the delivery systems are rotten and corrupt. The best planned schemes fail because implementation is in the hands of officials who know only to milk the system for personal aggrandisement.

The prime minister noticed that "the problem of malnutrition is a matter of national shame" and said his government was trying to address it by making the midday scheme universal. But again he blamed us: "We need the active involvement of the community and panchayats to see that what we spend reaches our children. I appeal to the nation to resolve and work hard to eradicate malnutrition within five years."

It is not the job of the nation, but the job of government to do this, but may I suggest, as I have done before in this column, that if he hands the implementation of the scheme to Akshay Patra of Bangalore, we could eradicate malnutrition before his next address from the Red Fort.

The problem is not money but a delivery system so sick that officials steal from the mouths of starving children and governments continue to devise schemes whose structure has corruption inbuilt at every stage. In the three years that he has ruled India, Dr Manmohan Singh has done no more than throw good money after bad. This, under the guidance of Marxist allies who in 30 years of ruling West Bengal have failed to win the war against poverty.


Back                          Top

«« Back
 
 
 
  Search Articles
 
  Special Annoucements