Friday the 14th has been a momentous day in
more ways than one. Not only were several huge policy decisions on foreign
direct investment in aviation, broadcast and multi-brand
retail made, it is also quite clear that the Monmohan Singh government has
taken this decision without support from its allies. Essentially what Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh has conveyed to everyone is that you have pushed me to
a corner and made me take this decision and I don't care whether you like it or
not. If these decisions are palatable to you then accept them if not then I dare you to take me down.
Now one can go on arguing about whether
these policies are going to benefit us in the long run or not but what is quite
clear is that they have been undertaken in desperation, perhaps to ward off the immediate troubles that UPA has
been facing. One economic decision after another taken
by the government has taken us from one scam to another. The nuclear deal with
the US,
and the decision to build large number of nuclear power plants with foreign
investment has faced immense opposition from people. The government tried its best to
dilute the national nuclear liability bill but could not do so to the extent it
wanted. The telecom scam highlighted the crony capitalism that prevails in our
country. Common wealth games scam left us with a huge bill to the exchequer with no real economic benefit.
The coal allocation scam has finally pushed
Manmohan Singh lead UPA government to the brink. Sitting on one failed policy
after another, the coal scam has finally pushed the government to a desperate
situation. It first decided to bring in the caste reservation in promotions bill
and now has brought about these economic policies on foreign investment. That the prime minister is
ultimately responsible for the failings of his government can not be denied. It
has emerged that when it is convenient for the present government, then they
would sight lack of political consensus as a reason for not taking a decision,
as in the coal allocation and mineral mining acts. But in the case of FDI in
retail they have gone ahead with the decision fully aware that people are
opposing it, their allies are opposing it, and state governments are opposing
it. There was no need for broad based consensus now.
I personally do not see the merit in the
arguments how FDI in multi-brand retail will necessarily benefit us. There is
no denying that our public distribution system is in shambles, but then which
government department is functioning efficiently and not mired with corruption.
What the political leaders of our country need to understand is that the
problems we face are of our own creation and no amount of foreign investment
will root out the real problems we face. These are the problems that are fully
in our control and are squarely our responsibility. How much of the exchequer
is being negatively affected by these scams and by wrongly conceived, poorly implemented welfare policies? How much of the public funds, are being eaten up
by unsustainable PSU's like Indian Airlines? Is FDI the only source of foreign
exchange and capital, what about increasing exports, and reducing reliance on
imported fossil fuels for our energy requirements?
These are some of the issues that the
central government should be occupying itself with, but unfortunately they have
found themselves cornered with scams, specifically the coal scam and have chosen to
fight back with a potential political hara-kiri, rather than address the problem
of political corruption and a series of scams that citizens have witnessed in recent years. We will come to know in the coming weeks if the
congress government survives. Either way my prediction is that we will be
witness to several turmoil in our national politics in the days to come and
next general elections will be fought on all the issues covered in this article
including and most importantly political corruption.
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