India: The Doomsday Prophecy

It is striking to see how India has degraded so fast from a land of opportunities to a land of opportunist politicians (Is there another kind of politician?)

India grew in the real sense under the leadership of its then prime minister Shri Atal Bihar Vajapayee. On the other hand even his present day party mates seem to lack even a part of the vision that he carried. Point being that there seems to be no solace visible for development politics in India, this party or that.

The contradiction in the government outlook is clear. While the NDA built a strong base of infrastructure for entrepreneurial India to chart its own growth story, the UPA wants growth by doling out benefits (mostly unearned). While NDA provided employment to crores through its projects, UPA believes in providing unproductive employment thus wasting valuable human resource available.

Another addiction of the UPA is to provide everything free (or atleast subsidized). Subsidized fuel, subsidized fertilizers, subsidized food, free employment, free power. The country is like a wasted drunkard who earns little and spends all on his addiction. Rather than giving people opportunity to earn to buy the goods, UPA believes in either giving it free or doling out cash for the purchase.

India has done this before and it is doing it again. It will be of little surprise if India slips back to its Hindu growth rate in the coming years. What the government needs to do is clear. It needs to concentrate on infrastructure. It needs to build a capitalist economic model atleast to some extent. While India is grappling with power shortage, power generation should be encouraged and not held back due to subsidized rates. While Infrastructure is in no way acceptable, the reckless government spending should stop to reduce interest rates to make such investment lucrative for private players.

However, everyone knows that none of these changes are going to happen. The upcoming election will only see the rolling out and implementation of food security bill which will further empty government coffers. The probability of NDA, hopefully led by Narendra Modi, coming to power still seems low. It will be really painful to see the same things that have happened for the past decade repeat for the next five years. Opening up of more sectors for foreign investment is not going to suffice when the entire economic and business environment is stagnant.

Little wonder that the most probable/popular growth opportunity seen by youngsters today is a stint abroad, or better still a lifetime abroad.