Pits for the Economist PM

When you have a committed media on your side who refuses to be impartial, you can get away with half truths and myths.

One of the biggest myth in Indian politics is that Dr.Manmohan Singh is a economist and the right man to lead India to glory. While it is true that the Prime Minister requires a modicum of education, and a Ph D in Economics is really good, it is more important that he has a political acumen and knows the pulse of the common man. Dr.Singh lacks both.

While it is true that he initiated the reforms in 1991 (the credit should actually go to Narasimha Rao and the fact that India didnt have a choice at that time), it is also equally true that the treasury was in a bad shape (except for Foreign Exchange Reserve) by the time he quit as FM in 1997. His tenure was also marked by the the Fairfax scam and the Harshad Mehta scam. In fact Financial crimes became more rampant during his periods as FM and PM.

His second tenure as PM is more of a disaster. While he can claim that he was hampered to some extend in his liberalization policies by the Left, the fact remains that he did not invest sufficient political capital, as he did in the case of nuclear deal, to take the reforms to the logical conclusion. To be fair to NDA, they left a very healthy Treasury and economy when they quit in 2004. This despite the post-pokhran economic sanctions that stifled growth. The need of the hour was fiscal prudence. But instead of cutting down non-plan financial expenditure, this government has splurged. Freebies were given to all and sundry. The entire country was converted to a real estate portfolio to be looted by realtors. The fiscal deficit has spiralled. Dr.Singh, Ahluwalia and P Chidambaram, on orders from Sonia Gandhi, has committed thousands of crores to non productive schemes like NREG and Farm loan waiver, the allocation for most of which made for NOT IN 2008 but over the NEXT THREE YEARS. This was irresponsibility at its worst. The icing on the cake was the implementation of the 6th Pay Commission Report. The 5th pay commission had linked productivity of the government employees to their increase pay. Not that it was ever implemented. The 6th Pay commission didnt even bother to make a mention of it. The Government offices, which hardly functions for the common man, continues to grow at common mans expense. All the Government had to do was to hold the pay commission implementation, and over the next few years downsizing would have automatically happened. His tenure also saw India going back to the dark days of high interest rate regime, stiffling entrepreneurship. Black money rules the country and his Government has not even taken the basic steps to get back even a portion of the black money stashed in Swiss Banks. The lack of action from him will only embolden the crooked. The Ramalingam Raju case has been conveniently covered up, and the Government has not learned from it. It has not initiated any steps to ensure something like the Satyam saga is not repeated or to unearth similar practices in other companies. It pays to be a businessman and indulge in financial crimes in India under Dr.Singh.

The UPA government came with the slogan of being one for the common man. But at the end of Dr.Singhs tenure, the aam aadmi is bad off. Jobs have been waylaid, growth rate has stunted, coffers are empty - and all these are not due to the Global Financial Crisis alone. The economy has been mismanaged. The Government was slow to react to the GFC and hardly did anything to kickstart the economy. Though the WPI is at almost 0%, the ground reality on Consumer Price Index is more like 8-9%. So inflation has not been contained as far as common man is concerned.

But the rich businessmen are laughing all the way to the bank, while the poor sit on their haunches and wait for the next dole to come their way.

A damning indictment of Dr.Singhs economic policies is in his own parties election manifesto. The economic section of Congress Manifesto hardly talks of reforms or for any of the policies that Dr.Singh stands for as an Economist, FM and PM. It talks only about more freebies like expanding NREG, Rs 3 per kg rice and so on. What a fall!

And he has lost all sense of proportion when he claims that if the Congress is given another 5 years in power , he will , hold your breath, ERADICATE POVERTY in India.

It is the pits for the Economist PM