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On disappointment, elections, and fat ladies singing

No, I am not planning to talk about, heaven forbid, Jayalalitha Jayaram singing. Not even about Shubha Mudgal bellowing out Ab ke sawan with infectious joie de vivre. Instead, as the Americans put it, pithily: "It ain't over till the fat lady sings." I am worried about complacency -- for, the Kargil triumph notwithstanding, the deeply disappointing performance of the Indian enterprise in 52 years remains; and optimistic nationalists are writing off Madame Gandhi the Younger far too easily.

I am fond of comparing Pakistan to India negatively; however, despite being a shaky rogue state and all that, it does appear that the Pakistani economy has done more for the citizen than India has managed to in the past half-century. Here are the figures comparing India, China and Pakistan, with Sri Lanka, Singapore and Bangladesh as well:

* China foreign exchange reserves including Hong Kong's. China's alone is $150 billion.
** Not clear if this is a typo in the Asiaweek chart -- this number is suspiciously low.

Not a pretty picture for India. It basically means that we have failed, abjectly, and collectively, as a nation, in looking after the economic well-being of all Indians. The despised Pakistanis seem to have done just about as well (in fact their GDP per capita in nominal terms is higher at $ 490 compared to India's $ 390. It is only in Purchasing Power Parity that India catches up, as in the table above.) Of course, there is the small matter of the foreign exchange reserves, but still.

It is also suggested by neutral observers who go to both countries that Pakistanis appear to be less poor (at least in the urban areas, and the violence notwithstanding) than Indians in our major cities. This is second hand, because the chances of my ever going to Pakistan are practically nil (and in any case, all I'd want to see will be the Indus-Sarasvati Valley cities of Mohenjodaro and Harappa there, not having memories of some resplendent Lahori culture of yore.)

White folks who have gone to Pakistan tell me the streets are cleaner, the traffic considerably less unruly, and the income disparity lower than in India. The Economist supports that contention, claiming that their measure of income disparity is greater at 5.0 in India than 4.7 in Pakistan (the measure is the ratio of the incomes of the top 20 per cent to the lowest 20 per cent). Of course, these Americans had to be driven around with an army escort, and the army even offered to taste their food in case of poisoning, they told me, but these are details, details.

As India goes to the polls again, these damning numbers worry me -- we have done so badly, even compared to Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, not to mention Singapore! Even though a 'progressive' friend, an editor for a well-known national magazine, chided me for abusing Stalinist Nehruvian policies -- and so did a rather sensible reader Arun from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- I don't know where else to pin the blame for the Nehruvian Rate of Growth India has suffered for fifty years.

At the end of the day, India has done depressingly badly by doing two things -- one, by state interference in areas where the state had no business being (such as hotels, transportation, banking) and two, by the state not doing enough in areas where only it could ever do enough (such as education, health care, infrastructure). Blame the obsession with the Soviet Model.

Of course, crony capitalism played an important part in this as well -- an article by Kannan Srinivasan in The Times of India on August 15 suggests that there has been capital flight of somewhere between $ 41 billion and $ 71 billion from India in 1998 alone! These numbers are absolutely staggering. The author suggests this is done through under-invoicing of exports from India and over-invoicing of imports into India.

For instance, apparently, based on US Department of Commerce figures, India exports industrial diamonds to the US at one percent of the world price; it exports silk handkerchiefs at three percent. On the other hand, India imports tetracycline at 10,000 per cent of the world price, and truck tyres at 1,000 per cent. Thus are the captains of India's protected industries serving the nation through trade, in addition to offering inferior goods and services at inflated prices domestically.

The sad truth of the matter is that regardless of who comes to power after the election, I doubt if there will be any immediate improvement in these depressing numbers. As P Sainath points out in his devastating study of poverty in India, Everyone Loves A Good Drought, (Penguin India), the lot of the poorest of the poor has hardly improved in fifty-two years. So much for all the sloganeering by the socialists and Marxists about their compassion for the downtrodden.

Lest I sound like one of those professional whiners of the 'progressive' persuasion, let me hasten to add that I do have a point in reciting this litany of bad news. It is that the Congress, with its vaunted 'stability' and 'experience in running government' are the ones fully responsible for this state of affairs. There is no reason, in my humble opinion, to give them another chance to ruin the country, Madame Gandhi the Younger's alleged charisma notwithstanding.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I have never been a member of any political party, with the solitary exception of California's ecology-minded Green Party, so I have nothing personal to gain from a BJP victory. I am, however, sympathetic to them based on my theory that the Congress has become a baleful influence on India; it has long outlived its utility, and it is now an albatross.

I was one of the few columnists in the English media who did not succumb to the theory of the 'Sonia wave' sweeping all before it during the 1998 assembly election, when the Congress did win in Rajastan, Madhya Pradesh, etc. I pointed out at the time that it had much more to do with the price of onions than any mythical strategic brilliance on the part of Madame Gandhi.

Similarly, I shall now go against prevailing wisdom and suggest that it is a bit premature to write Madame Gandhi the Younger's political obituary. Even though both India Today's and The Times of India's August forecasts show the BJP and its allies amassing some 322-326 seats in Parliament, and the Congress making an extremely poor show by falling to 132-146 seats. The Outlook poll shows the BJP alliance winning 284, and the Congress 157.

Much can happen between now and September. At the moment, there is the halo effect of the somewhat serendipitously successful Indian tactics vis-à-vis Pakistan in Kargil. But that honeymoon will end; in my book, the likeliest outcome is yet another highly fragmented and unstable Parliament.

I am also not a subscriber to the theory of the extreme sagacity of the Indian voter. I think average voters are neither very smart nor very dumb. But a lot of them, being economically rational, can be purchased by the highest bidder. I remember reading somewhere about a successful Bangalore politician who goes by the singular name 'Slum Ramesh,' a tribute to his proven ability to round up hundreds of the usual suspects for any political affair.

I think a lot of money will be coming into India to influence the elections -- from China, for example. Or the Americans. Or the Pakistanis. All of this money will be intended to hurt the BJP. This entire election may be purchased by vested interests -- mighty convenient for the Congress.

Furthermore, it would be a mistake to underestimate the cupidity and crassness of the average Congress politician (and indeed, of any politician of any stripe in India). The Congressmen are not sticking with Madame Gandhi out of any particular loyalty to the Nehru dynasty; they are doing it only because they believe she can deliver the goods and the votes. It will only be after the election that this belief will be put to the acid test.

And it is indeed true, giving credit where it is due, that the Congress was in terminal decline before Madame Gandhi appeared on the scene. Whether it was a brief Indian summer, and whether it will go back to its moribund state after the 'Sonia phenomenon' extinguishes itself, remains to be seen.

I hope, of course, that Madame Gandhi will indeed fail, along with her politically-ambitious son Rahul John Paul Gandhi (with Columbian girlfriend in tow) and even more politically ambitious daughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadhera (her main claim to electoral fame being her alleged resemblance to Madame Gandhi the Elder, and her ability to stand on a podium and wave her arms about -- in the words of her aunt Maneka Gandhi, "like a windshield wiper").

Of course, if I am wrong, then my formidable friend Varsha Bhosle is in for a longish stint as a guest of the government at the Tihar penitentiary. Just as Madame Gandhi the Elder turned out be rather more than the establishment could handle, I am sure the imperious Sonia Gandhi could turn out to be a pretty good tyrant. Her politically-ambitious mother can supply her with all the information she needs about Benito Mussolini.

I am informed by my well-read friend Krishna in Toronto who cites a New Yorker article from 1994, that Maino Senior (Madame Gandhi's father) was an unreconstructed Fascist, whose only gripe with Mussolini was that the later did not win! Poetic justice, indeed -- after all the carping by the Nehruvian Stalinists about the BJP being fascist, they would have anointed their own, bona-fide, Italian fascist leader in Madame Gandhi the Younger!

Postscript: I received some interesting e-mail in response to my column on Dan Burton. Reader Harish reminded me that Burton has one redeeming feature -- he has been hounding the Clinton administration over the China connection and illegal campaign contributions. Nevertheless, I think Burton deserves to be terrorised and, I hope, chastened. Incidentally, I have a request to the readers who write either positive or negative letters to me -- please clarify exactly why you like or dislike what I said.

Incidentally, what I suggested about Burton is exactly what American Jews have done so successfully over the last century. Many Indians, who see Jews dominating the media, medicine, law, and finance, are not aware that they were seriously discriminated against -- in the early 1900s, many hotels for instance had signs that said, "No Negroes or Jews allowed." Now they are powerful, and the Israeli lobby is one that nobody dares stand against. Indian-Americans should use this as a role model; indeed Jews and Indians have very similar cultural patterns in general.

Rajeev Srinivasan