M A I N   N E W S

Musings from Kumarakom — II
‘Radical development reforms in offing’
By Atal Behari Vajpayee

IN my article yesterday, I had expressed some thoughts on the Kashmir question and the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute, the two problems that we have inherited from the past. Today I wish to share my vision of how we can leave a better legacy for our future generations.

I am one of those fortunate people in public life who have not only observed, but also participated in the evolution of independent India from 1947 till now. As a student I had taken part in the Freedom Movement. As a young man of 22, I had seen our first Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, unfurl the Tricolour at the Red Fort at that immortal midnight hour on August 15. Little did I know that just a decade later I would be sitting with him in Parliament discussing and debating affairs of the nation. It is a tribute to the power of India's democracy that an ordinary man like me, son of a village teacher, has since been called upon to serve the nation as its Prime Minister. The days of dynasties are over in India's vibrant democracy.

When I look back at Free India's journey through the past five decades. I am filled with pride and disappointment in equal measure. Pride because we have been successful in preserving two ideals that are most precious to all of us: one, the unity of India; and two, our democratic system.

This is not a mean achievement given the track record of many newly independent countries, including some in our own neighbourhood. Few countries in the world facing the kind of challenges of development and governance that India does, have so steadfastly continued on the democratic path. Similarly, few multi-religious, multi-lingual and multi-ethnic societies in the world have presented such an exemplary demonstration of unity in diversity as India has done.

On the developmental front, too, we have many proud achievements to our credit. All the governments of the past, belonging to different parties and coalitions, have contributed in their own way to India's self-reliant progress on several fronts. Many developing countries look up to India as an example for building indigenous policies and programmes for socio-economic development. We should never belittle India's achievements, as some people do. Such belittlement only serves to spread cynicism, apathy and inaction, qualities we must shun.

Nevertheless, I am as distressed as all my countrymen are at the wide gulf between India's indisputable potential and her actual performance. Nothing agonises me more as the Prime Minister than the realisation that millions of my countrymen, even after five decades of independence, still do not have enough to eat and proper roofs to sleep under. Many have to suffer even for the lack of drinking water and basic medical care. If children are deprived of good food, good education and good upbringing, the loss is not only theirs and their families; the nation too deprives itself of precious human resources for its all-round development.

We must change this reality, and we can. India does not lack the requisite natural resources to remove these basic developmental inadequacies. We also have a vast reservoir of talented and hard-working men and women. Many of those who have gone abroad to work have scripted amazing success stories, earning high reputation for themselves and their motherland in their host countries.

I often ask myself the question? If Indians can overcome all the odds and succeed spectacularly outside India, why can't we do so in India itself?

Yes, we can create prosperity for all. We can fully remove poverty, unemployment and all other traces of underdevelopment from India. What is needed is an inspiring national vision, a strong sense of purpose shared by all the citizens and communities of our diverse country, and a single-minded determination supported by concerted action to achieve what are identified as common national goals.

A nation attains greatness when it develops a strong national mind. It is true about the individual mind, and also true about the national mind. When India was unfree, attainment of freedom was our single-minded national objective. Sadly, after independence, we failed to mobilise our national energies for a similar single-minded pursuit of the goals of nation-building.

Our first task is to strengthen the awareness that we are one people — sisters and brothers who are children of the Great Mother India. Ours is a vast and varied country. Sometimes, however, we get so involved in our own narrow concerns and get so obsessed with our own specific identities that we tend to ignore the chief source of our national pride and strength — namely, India's diversity and her essential unity.

Some of our citizens focus too much on one or the other aspect of our diversity, ignoring the common national bonds that unite us. Others ignore our diversity and, instead, tend to overemphasise only certain aspects of our national unity. In my view, both approaches are wrong. Diversity does not permit divisiveness or exclusiveness. Similarly, unity cannot be achieved through uniformity.

In this context, I must confess that the growing trend of intolerance which I see in our society today worries me deeply. This trend must be checked.

India belongs equally to all her citizens and communities, not more to some and less to others. At the same time, all citizens and communities have an equal duty to strengthen our national unity and integrity, and to contribute to their nation's progress. In recent times, there has been a tendency to focus more on one's rights, and less on one's duties. This must change.

Throughout her long history, India's unity is nurtured by an ethos of secularism that teaches all her people not only to tolerate each other's customs, traditions and beliefs, but also to respect them. Mutual tolerance and understanding leads to goodwill and cooperation, which in turn strengthens the silken bond of our national unity. Secularism is not an alien concept that we imported out of compulsion after Independence. Rather, it is an integral and natural feature of our national culture and ethos.

This being India's social truth, I find it both strange and disconcerting that our polity is sought to be divided between "secular" and "communal" parties. Indian people do not give their mandate to any party or a coalition that does not follow a secular, inclusive and integrity agenda. To think otherwise is to disparage our people's democratic intelligence.

Leaving non-issues behind, politics and governance in India should be redirected towards achieving faster, more balanced and more equitable socio-economic development. Our people's hunger for development is growing. However, the governmental machinery is not working fast enough to meet this hunger. Most often our people's demands are very simple and basic: better road connectively, better drinking water and sanitation facilities, assured and adequate supply of power to farmers, etc.

Both the Central and state governments have drawn up many policies and programmes to deliver these needs, for which significant resources are budgeted. The system of implementation, however, routinely lets us down. Those who suffer the most because of delayed and defective implementation of policies, programmes and projects are invariably the poor and the underprivileged — especially Dalits, Advises and OBCs. This has been the experience both at the Centre and in States. And all parties that have been in power have experienced this major shortcoming in India's developmental strategy.

Therefore, the time has come to introduce radical developmental reforms, which should encompass, besides economic reforms, administrative and judicial reforms. The most important component of those reforms is to fix transparent accountability at all levels and increase people's involvement in monitoring the functioning of all agencies that have an impact on development. This is necessary to check corruption, which drains away so much of the budgetary resources of the Centre and the states.

Development is too important a matter to be left to bureaucrats alone. People must be empowered not only to demand results, but also to actively participate in the attainment of results. This calls for a new partnership between the government and the people in consonance with the true spirit of democracy.

I need hardly add here that this places a far bigger responsibility on our citizens than has been realised by them so far. The habit of looking to the government for a solution to every problem must give way to a new democratic attitude of fully participating in the government's efforts and of maximising the scope of non-governmental efforts. This calls for a better work culture, a superior civic culture, strong discipline and a radical shift in the attitude of the citizenry from rights to duties. This also increases the responsibility of our elected representatives in Parliament, State Legislatures and Panchayati Raj institutions. They must act as good law-makers and effective overseers of the executive.

I have another thought to share with my countrymen. Some people, while talking about economic reforms, often raise voices of alarm and impending national crisis. Recalling how India became a colony of a foreign trading company in the past, they prophesise that India will again be "sold out" to foreigners if economic reforms are allowed to be continued. This is a ludicrous prophecy. It is also an incomparably stronger nation today than when the British colonised us. Who can dare sell out today's India? And who can dare buy out today's India?

We have a vibrant and self-reliant economy. The true purpose of economic reforms is to further strengthen our economy, while removing its self-evident weaknesses, so that poverty and unemployment can be removed at a faster pace. As is well known, these reforms have been pursued by all the governments at the Centre, and most state governments, since 1991. Nearly all political parties in the country have been a part of these governments. Thus, a strong basis for a national consensus on the agenda of reforms already exists. We must further strengthen this agenda by depoliticising it.

We need to broaden and further accelerate the economic reforms so that our economy becomes sufficiently productive to meet the growing demands of our growing population. But there is also an added urgency to this task. We are living in a world of globalisation, created by the information and communication revolution, global trade and greater inter-dependence among nations. Today there is far greater open competition among the economics of nations around the world than was conceivable even a few decades ago. For example, when I heard the grievances of coconut and areca nut growers in Kerala in the past few days —and these are genuine grievances — I could clearly see the forces of globalisation at work behind these seemingly local problems.

Neither Indian industry nor Indian agriculture can ignore the new competitive global environment in which they are called upon to operate. Our industry has to improve its manufacturing and management practices; our agriculture should be freed from many infrastructural, investment and other constraints that have prevented it from growing to its full potential; we have to minimise the costs and maximise the quality of our products and we have to be better at marketing internationally.

We have to urgently improve our urban and rural infrastrucutre. The National Highway Project and the Rural Roads Project are two of the several important initiatives our government has taken in this direction. We have to create a better partnership between the government and the private sector. The private sector, whose scope in the nation's development is steadily increasing, must learn to work for public good rather than for narrow private gain.

We must make all sectors of our economy more knowledge-intensive, beginning with a rapid introduction of Information Technology. We should bring greater efficiencies in our financial sector, so that the cost of capital in India comes down, especially for small-scale industries and businesses. We need to reduce the size of the government so that more resources can be channelled for people's welfare and development. We must also reform our labour laws, and make them more conducive to faster economic growth and greater employment generation. Some of these are difficult measures, but we cannot shirk away from any of these imperatives.

Our government will, of course, take necessary measures to protect the national interests against unfair trade and investment practices from outside. But it is high time all sections of our industry, agriculture and services sector realised that, increasingly, these issues are being governed by a multilateral framework, to which India is a signatory. This global framework has created challenges, opportunities and also obligations. This new reality cannot be wished away by any party or government. It is our collective responsibility to devise a national strategy that effectively counters the challenges and seizes the opportunities of globalisation. This is too important an issue for India's future economic development to be politicised for narrow, short-term gains.

Dear countrymen, I see immense opportunities for India's all-round progress in the New Century. I am also full of hope that our people will seize these opportunities. My hopes are especially pinned on our youth, who today constitute nearly two-thirds of our population. Indeed, India has the highest number of young people in the world today. We are inheritors of an ancient civilisation which is also forever young. Guided by the light of the eternal and universal values of our civilisation, inspired by a modernising vision of national development, and powered by the youthful energy of one billion children of Bharat Mata, we can certainly make the 21st century India's Century.

This is the hope and this is the New Year resolve that I wish to convey to all of you from Kumarakom.