Two decades of Economic Reforms has resulted in Profit going to the Private Entrepreneur while the Loss to be borne by the poor Public (All you have to do is look at how Kingfisher owner made money, and then when it ended up in a loss, begged the public sector banks and government to bail it out)
The Indian Economic Reforms were introduced in haste, without forethought and under duress from vested Western Interests. That it was thrust upon the Indians due to the poor economic situation the Country found itself in due to decades of wrong policies is another matter. But the cure is becoming worse than the disease with every passing year.
No. I am not against Reforms. What I am against is not ensuring checks and balances are in place prior to embarking on a major reform process, and not have set objectives and goals.
No Corporate worth its salt would have a Strategic initiative approved without KPI's and periodic review of attainment of KPI's. But, do we have a nation, our KPI's?
It looks like our Government has only one KPI - GDP growth rate. Everything is aimed at attaining 7-8% GDP Growth Rate. GDP is only an indicator.
We don't have KPI's for Unemployment, Employment Generation, Poverty Reduction, Inflation, Fiscal Deficit, Agricultural Growth, Industrial Growth, Services Growth, Illetaracy, Population, revival of sick units (or closing them), Subsidy Reduction, Transmission loss, Improvement of Roads, Infrastructure development............... the list is endless. The Government do have targets for all these, but they are given scant importance. If they are not achieved, and they are not achieved in any case, then nothing happens. No heads roll. And Government blunders on.
If we had a specific KPI for poverty reduction, we still will not be in a situation where more people are slipping below the poverty line, and the level of lack of sanitation in rural areas is appalling. Why can't we ensure clean drinking water and proper sanitation in every household is beyond my imagination. A portion of the money that is looted would suffice for the above purpose. Likewise primary education. The amount required to ensure proper schools and teachers is ridiculously low, compared to the subsidy given to industrialists. By doing so we are creating intellectual assets, that will be carried down from generation to generation. But for the Government, this is not a priority at all.
We pumped in billions into Airport upgradation. Did we ever do a cost-benefit analysis? Did we do an opportunity cost analysis? Would that money have been better spent on providing connectivity to the rural areas?
We pumped in billions to set up huge malls in the metros and other cities? But we hardly spent any money on developing rural markets that would have fetched better returns for the rural agriculturalists, that would have reduced poverty significantly.
We are committed to increase power generation capacity manifold by investing heavily in nuclear power plants. The amount involved is mind boggling. A hundreds and thousands of crores. But we are silent on cutting down our transmission loss, which is outrageous at 40%, half of which is theft. Why don't we spend on efficiency improvement than on creating more power that will again lead to more stealing?
I can go on and on...................
What we need is a national debate on the issues that need to be prioratised and taken up on a war footing, resources required to be identified and allotted.
But the very government that needs to do this is more worried about banning Salman Rushdie, burying corruption cases, throwing mud at people opposed to them, and in short not taking any decision.
