What if? – Part 2

“Did you notice that no politician takes moral responsibility for any wrong these days!”

In the past two months, many readers have asked about my expectations of the outcome of the ongoing general elections and the likely impact of it on the Indian economy and financial markets. I am glad to offer my opinion, with the rider that I am an independent observer of Indian politics and have no affiliation or inclination towards any particular political party or group thereof.

Economic impact

I believe that in India economic policies, and therefore financial markets, are politics agnostic. I do not see the outcome of general elections impacting the Indian economy in any significant manner.

A study of the history of Indian politics would suggest that, unlike the Western democracies, only an abysmal minority of Indian voters are strongly committed to a political or socio-economic ideology. Contemporary issues, personalities, and election promises usually dominate the political discourse in India. Economic issues raised during elections are mostly confined to the slogan of poverty alleviation and handouts to the voters. Unfortunately, no political party has taken the issue of poverty alleviation seriously. Therefore, no one has bothered even to outline a conceptual or ideological framework for solving this problem.

Ideologically, in the early days, the Congress Party abandoned the most acceptable and perhaps most suitable Gandhian Socialism in favor of Nehruvian Socialism - a poorly mixed concoction of Leninist central planning (central ownership and management of resources and businesses) and British colonial legacy (discretionary patronage to the faithful and loyal). The model was certainly at cross-purpose with the constitutional federal structure. Poverty, poor governance, and corruption were natural off-springs of this system.

BJP started with Deen Dayal Updhaya's Integral Humanism. However, in the 1990s it briefly adopted Gandhian Socialism (which is not too far moved from Integral Humanism) as the principal doctrine. The present leadership has, however, mostly followed a poorly mixed concoction of Leninist socialism and the Laissez-faire model used by some developed economies principally the USA.

Politically leadership preaches "Human Being" as the fulcrum of policy making. Whereas the executive is more focused on "Business" and "Macroeconomics" as the central theme. The conflict is for everyone to see. The consequence is slower and inequitable growth.

Until the mid-1980s, the people at the left end of the spectrum exercised significant sway at the bottom of the pyramid in Indian society since independence. They controlled most of the labor unions. Though divided between Marx, Lenin, and Mao they still were the preferred choice of landless, oppressed, and intelligentsia. There was a time when being poor, intelligent (economist, thinker, poet), or rebellious meant being communist.

Things however began to change in the late 1980s, after dismantling of the USSR and the German wall. The Lenin and Marx were relegated to the history lessons. The economic reforms initiated by Deng Xiaoping in China further pushed back the traditional Marxists.

Insofar as the socialist parties occupying the left of the center space in Indian politics are concerned, they deserted both Lohia and his ideologue Gandhi as soon as they came into power. Degenerated into motley feudal, they show little commitment or preference to any specific economic idea.

As I have been reiterating rather frequently, that the governments in the past 40 years have mostly adopted similar socio-economic policies consistently irrespective of their form or constitution.

The Ctrl C + Ctrl V has been the most preferred practice in the formulation of most government policies and programs, with some semantic changes to give it a different hue.

For example, consider the following:

1.    The process of meaningful tax reforms was started by the then finance minister V. P. Singh (Congress 1984-89) by rationalizing the tax slabs, lowering maximum marginal tax rates substantially, rationalizing wealth tax and introducing CENVAT. The recommendations of Raja J. Chelliah Committee (1991-93) on tax reforms constituted by the government (Congress 1991-96) have since formed the basis of tax reforms in India. All successive governments have implemented these recommendations. No government has sought to reverse or alter the process started by the Congress government (1984-89). These recommendations formed the core of the much awaited Direct Tax Code. The origin of the tax proposal like lower tax rate with lesser exemptions and no wealth tax could also be traced to that.

Committees formed under the chairmanship of other members of the Raja Chelliah Committee like Govinda Rao, Partha Shome and Vijay Kelkar, etc. subsequently updated the recommendations to provide further impetus to the entire process of tax reforms in the country.

It was the Finance Minister of H. D. Devegoda led United Front government who presented the most talked about "dream budget".

2.    The recommendations of the Narsimhan Committee (1991-92) appointed by Dr. Manmohan Singh, the then finance minister in the Congress government, have largely formed the basis of financial and banking sector reforms in the country. Most successive governments have implemented the recommendations consistently. P. Chidambram, the then finance minister in the United Front government (1998) had re-appointed the Narsimham Committee to make recommendations about the second-generation banking sector reforms. The report was submitted in 1999 to the NDA government which accepted the recommendations. However, almost all governments have failed to build a wider consensus on these recommendations and have only partially implemented them. But acceptance and rejection have been very consistent irrespective of the form and constitution of govt.

3.    The BJP led NDA government enacted the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act (FRBMA) in 2003. The arch-rival Congress led UPA-I government implemented the same in 2004 in letter and spirit. This still forms the basis of fiscal discipline at central and state levels, though implementation was suspended in 2009 in the wake of the global crisis and again in 2020 due to COVID-19 stimulus. The incumbent govt. has committed to achieving the targets in the next two years.

4.    The minority government of Chandrashekhar introduced a disinvestment policy in 1991. Every successive government since then has accepted the policy in principle. They have tried to incorporate disinvestment policy into the evolving economic model. However, they have consistently failed to implement the policy in the right spirit. None has achieved the disinvestment targets set in the respective budgets.

Prime Minister A. B. Vajpayee took it further by divesting many government monopolies like coal, power, roads, ports, airports, telecommunication, insurance, etc. Subsequent governments added to it by allowing private players in sectors like pension, defense production, etc. No government has sought to reverse the decisions of the earlier governments.

5.    A single national market (GST), as a desirable idea, was conceived long ago. Many governments deliberated and developed the idea. The incumbent government finally implemented it in 2017, when the infrastructure and logistics considered necessary for rolling out GST reached a reasonable stage.

6.    Programs such as cleaning the holy rivers of Ganga & Yamuna and provision of toilets in every home have been accorded priority by all successive governments.

7.    One of the key areas of corruption in public life has been the executive's right to allocate natural resources for commercial exploitation. The Supreme Court effectively curbed that right in its judgment in the allotment of 2G spectrum case.

An auction-based transparent regime is the outcome of the court-directed process, which is mostly irreversible and therefore party agnostic.

8.    The UPA government created enabling infrastructure for the digitalization of the economy through UIDAI, NPCI, etc. The subsequent NDA governments used this enabling infrastructure for the massive development of the digital transaction ecosystem.

9.    The NDA-1 government started the ambitious National High Development Program (NHDP) in 1998. The UPA government removed the obstacles in the implementation of this program through a remunerative and widely acceptable compensation and execution policy. The NDA-2 used it for accelerated construction of roads and highways, without seeking to change anything in UPA policy.

10.  The UPA government started a new practice of lateral appointment of professionals by appointing Nandan Nilekani to head UIDAI. The later governments continued with this practice and appointed many professionals to head the NITI Aayog.

From the above-cited example, it is evident that the direction of policy-making has been mostly the same on most accounts during the past three decades. The difference lies in the execution.

It is pertinent to note that the governments led by P. V. Narasimha Rao’s and Atal Bihari Vajpayee made many historic departures from the past and took many new policy initiatives.

The end of the Nehru era's license, quota & permit raj, abolition of capital controls and introduction of LERMS, entry of private players in civil aviation, opening of the financial sector, etc. were some major path-breaking reforms introduced by P. V. Narasimha Rao government.

Divestment of major government monopolies like power, roads, wireless communication, ports, airports, insurance & hydrocarbons, focus on rural connectivity, deregulation of fuel pricing, and liberal FDI regime, etc., were the key new policy initiatives during the Vajpayee led NDA regime.

The 10 years of the UPA regime introduced a new paradigm in the Indian socio-economic milieu, viz., the Right-based Socio-Economic regime. Right to Work, Right to Food, Right to Education, Right to Information, Right to Health, etc. some of the ideas propagated in their regime.

Implementation of right-based entitlement has been patchy and questionable, but no one has so far challenged the approach. The incumbent government has sought to partly implement the Right to Health that was promised by UPA in the last few weeks of its regime, through a universal health insurance scheme in the union budget for FY19. The current government has also enhanced the Right to Food program.

The UPA government signed a civil nuclear deal with the US. This started a new era of India’s strategic partnerships with developed countries like the US, France, Germany, Japan, and Australia, etc. The incumbent NDA government has taken this further through multiple bilateral agreements for Free Trade and movement of capital and labor with many of these countries.

The change that we have seen in the past ten years of the incumbent government's regime is the dominance of market economists (against development & social economists before) in the consultative bodies of the incumbent government. This change in my view is the outcome of the change in the global positioning of the Indian economy and markets. There is nothing to suggest that a change in the government at the center would materially change this position in the near-term, unless international developments completely change the global balance of power and global market paradigm.

In short, the economic policy of India is still a work in progress. all governments in India in the past 40 years have made incremental improvements in the policy framework to make it congruent with the scale of economic development and changes in India's position in the global economic and strategic order.

…to continue tomorrow

Also read

What if? Part 1