We reiterate our stand on Ram Mandir. We will explore all possibilities within the framework of the Constitution and all necessary efforts to facilitate the expeditious construction of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya.
The BJP-led government at the Centre enjoys a majority that is as large as 55 per cent of the total seat strength of the Lok Sabha. Only time will tell how and in what manner such a government would ensure that its political agenda is fulfilled. But as and when the Ram Mandir is constructed, the event would mark yet another disruption in the Indian polity and society, whose consequences for the nation’s future would be huge and damaging to the diversity of the Indian society. Of that there is little doubt.
One Country, One Language
This is yet another dangerous disruption that one can think of. It is an extension of a majoritarian mindset that seems to have gripped India’s politics, whose consequences can be catastrophic for the country. There are no guesses which language is being promoted as the language that is supposed to be unifying the entire country. It is Hindi. Political memory in India, like public memory, appears to have become very short. A similar attempt was made in the 1960s, when the Indira Gandhi government unsuccessfully tried to impose the use of Hindi on south Indian states. Languages can be emotive issues. They can inflame passion.
Countries are born on the basis of a language movement. The birth of Bangladesh is an outcome of a language movement, a desire to assert one’s right to speak and write in one’s own language. Far worse consequences can follow if there is an attempt to impose another language on people for whom that is not their mother tongue. In the early years after India’s Independence, a sensible policy was adopted. English was allowed to be used for official correspondence, particularly among states. That made English the link language among states that spoke different languages across the country.
Meanwhile, a remarkable cultural change has taken place in the country in the last few decades. The rise of the Mumbai film industry has also meant the increasing popularity of the films it produces in Hindi. The market for Hindi films produced in Mumbai is now virtually the whole country. It is not through an official diktat, but through films made in Mumbai that Hindi has become more popular in many states, where it was hardly being spoken earlier. However, Hindi zealots in north Indian parties, in particular the BJP, have shown tendencies to propagate the use of Hindi as a language for communication among states. Already, some central ministries have begun using sending letters to different departments and even to other state governments in Hindi. It is true that there are many states in the country that have the capacity to communicate in Hindi. But there are quite a few south Indian states like Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, and eastern and north-eastern states that would face difficulties if Hindi were to be imposed on them.
The idea of imposing one language on the whole country and strengthen its unity is defeating the very idea of India, which is a celebration of diversity in every respect. Yet, a disruption caused by the imposition of Hindi on the whole country cannot be ruled out, given the current nature of political discourse. The danger is that spreading the use of one language is being managed in phases and almost quietly. But when the implications of the move become clear to the non-Hindi speaking states, the country’s integrity as a nation would be put to test. The draft National Education Policy, prepared by the Modi government under the chairmanship of former ISRO chairman, K. Kasturirangan, had initially sought to impose Hindi as one of the three languages to be compulsorily taught in schools across the country. After protests from southern states, the draft was amended to allow schools and states the option of choosing the languages that they wished to include within the three-language formula. Two of the members of the Kasturirangan committee objected to the modification in the draft, leaving nobody in doubt that the long-term project of having Hindi across the country is not likely to be given up.
Delimitation of Electoral Constituencies
Until around 1976, the constituencies—or seats of the Lok Sabha—the Rajya Sabha and Vidhan Sabha (Assembly) were reset after every Census. Thus, the redrawing of the constituencies and the number of seats each state would have for the various forums took place in 1951, 1961 and 1971. This process, however, was stopped in 1976 in the wake of the Emergency that Indira Gandhi had imposed on the whole country a year earlier. This is the brief history of delimitation of constituencies in India after Independence. It was, however, decided in 2001 that the number of seats in the Assemblies, the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha would remain unchanged till 2026. The freeze was decided so that states that had imposed population control methods on their people—like Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Punjab—should not lose many parliamentary seats, compared to states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan, which had not kept a similar check on their fertility rate.
It is clear, therefore, that such a delimitation exercise, if held after 2026, would be hugely disruptive. Past delimitations have resulted in a relative strengthening of the representation of mostly north Indian states in Parliament. The outcry after relative marginalization of states that had controlled their population growth and thereby lost the number of representatives in Parliament was somewhat muted then. But when the 2026 delimitation takes place, protests are likely to be louder. Already the decision of the Fifteenth Finance Commission to use the 2011 Census, instead of the 1971 Census, for determining the devolution of resources among states has provoked many south Indian states, led in particular by Kerala, to question why their relative prosperity should be held against them. They may not have much of a case as the use of the 2011 Census may deprive the state of some resources, but the per capita allocation of resources would not become inequitable.
But the delimitation exercise will raise other issues. Already, states like Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Bihar exercise greater influence on national politics because of the relatively larger number of seats they have in both the houses of Parliament. After the delimitation exercise of 2026, these states would start wielding even greater power in terms of the number of representatives they would send to the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha.
It is very unlikely that the 2026 deadline can be postponed. What can be done is to devise a new formula for deciding on electoral representation in Parliament. The criterion of population may have to be expanded to include some other associated parameters. Otherwise, prospects of smaller and relatively well-off states resenting a delimitation exercise that reduces their representation in Parliament look real.
Constituency delimitation would become a difficult disruption to handle, unless the Centre and the states come together and negotiate how to deal with the challenges. There is need for institutions like the Inter-State Council to be entrusted with the task of developing more advanced and evolved criteria for the next round of delimitation if its adverse impact on the country has to be limited. One possible way to minimize the impact of the constituency delimitation exercise, based on population growth, would be to opt for another round of state reorganization. This would give birth to more states. The relative gains in political power from constituency delimitation would be far less if large states like Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra or even West Bengal were reorganized. Either way, constituency delimitation would be a hugely disruptive exercise.
Bank Privatization
Many governments in the past have tried out this disruption—privatizing banks—but simply failed. Ironically, the challenge of privatizing banks has arisen because of an earlier disruption caused by Indira Gandhi in 1969 when in her bid to exercise greater social control over banks, she nationalized in one stroke fourteen banks in the country. In the late 1990s, the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government had mooted the idea of reducing the government stake in public-sector banks to 33 per cent but allowing them to function as public-sector banks as far as parliamentary supervision over them was concerned. It was a novel idea, primarily aimed at tackling a political problem. So, Vajpayee’s finance minister, Yashwant Sin
ha came up with a scheme where the government stake would be reduced to below 51 per cent, but the government would continue to treat the banks as public-sector banks as far as their employees and other obligations like subjecting the management of banks to parliamentary supervision were concerned. The proposal had to be dropped as too many problems cropped up and many more questions were raised.
The recent crisis in the banking sector, largely because of the growing NPAs of public-sector banks, is now raising the question on whether the time is ripe for considering the extreme option of privatizing them. There are now over a score of these public-sector banks, which account for almost three-fourths of the banking industry in the country. However, the government is in no mood to privatize the banks. One, selling off banks at this stage would be politically controversial for the government. Indeed, any government that undertakes privatization of banks will have a tough political challenge to face. The government has instead promised to pump about Rs 2.11 lakh crore of extra resources into the banks so that their capital base could expand, they could start lending again and, hopefully, be revived. A far bigger question, even if the government were to decide on privatizing banks, would be: Who would buy these banks? With scarce resources available with Indian companies and stringent regulatory norms exercised over bank ownership, any attempt at bank privatization is unlikely to succeed.
It would thus appear that bank privatization is not a disruption whose time has come in India. Instead, what one can expect is a merger of more public-sector banks (already the number of public-sector banks has been brought down from twenty-six to nineteen through mergers between 2017 and 2019), more stringent regulatory norms for public-sector banks and better monitoring of their performance by the government, their majority shareholder.
Corporatization of Indian Agriculture
Can Indian companies do farming in India? Close to seventy-five years after India’s Independence, the thought of companies engaged in farming seems to be unacceptable to the country’s political class. This is the legacy of India’s economic model of the 1950s that left Indian agriculture alone. In the process, Indian agriculture became dependent on state incentives like minimum support prices, procurement policies and subsidies. Even the idea of taxing rich farmers was considered anathema and a political hot potato. It is not that Indian agriculture has remained completely untouched by the corporate sector. Limited experiments with contract farming have yielded rich dividends for both the farmers and the companies that were engaged in contract farming. There were political risks and a few farmers’ protests, but those instances were few and contract farming in India has made some headway.
Manmohan Singh, as finance minister, had mooted the idea of agri-business consortiums, with state support in 1991. The idea had many takers as this had the potential of establishing market linkages with the agricultural produce. Indian farming was likely to have the beneficial impact of a corporate culture and even access to bank finance could increase through the agri-business consortium route. However, the idea of agri-business consortiums has made limited progress and only a few hilly and north-eastern states have encouraged them.
Is the time ripe for allowing Indian companies, to start with, to acquire land and take up farming? The move will require land laws to be changed, which will face huge political opposition. But are the fears over such political opposition exaggerated? More than 85 per cent of India’s operational landholdings are of a size less than two hectares or about five acres. Use of technology and better farming techniques can yield results only if landholdings are consolidated. The role of large organized entities in making this happen can hardly be overemphasized. There is need for large organized bodies, if not Indian corporates, to take up farming. And that would be a positive disruption for agriculture, ushering in perhaps the next Green Revolution.
Private Sector in Indian Railways
The operation of the railways in India has always been reserved for the public sector. The industrial policy of 1948, the Industrial Policy Resolution of 1956 and even the New Industrial Policy of 1991 had kept the railways under the exclusive domain of the state. The importance the government attached to the railways could be gauged from the fact that it was retained in the public sector along with just two other sectors—atomic energy and mining. While the operation of railway services continued to remain under state control, a gradual easing of policy has taken place from 1991 onwards to allow the private sector to operate in specified areas within the railways. For instance, the private sector has been involved in redeveloping railway stations. Foreign investment has been allowed in the building of railway locomotives. But there has been no private-sector involvement or investment in either the building and maintaining of core railway infrastructure like tracks or in the operation of railway services for freight and passengers.
No government so far has mooted privatization of the railways as an idea. There has been an implicit understanding shared by all governments—led by both the Congress and the BJP —that the railways deliver a social service by offering an affordable national transportation network connecting cities and towns across the country. Yes, the railways bear a social cost for these services, a part of which is recovered through cross-subsidization from freight revenues. There have also been demands from within the railways that the central exchequer must compensate them for running these services at a loss. The consequences of raising freight tariff to make good a part of the railway loss on account of uneconomic railway services are adverse for the Indian economy in general. But the policy response so far has been to let the railways bear the burden through freight tariffs, even though it has been losing business to the road sector, making transportation of goods by the railways costlier and often uneconomical for industry.
Privatizing the railways under such circumstances could well be the silver bullet for tackling a variety of problems afflicting the Indian economy. However, this is one proposal that has met with stiff resistance on account of the international experience of privatization of national railways in many other countries not yielding the desired benefits. In the current situation, privatizing railways is an attractive idea with many positive benefits for the entire economy, provided the exercise does not result in the creation of another private-sector monopoly, there is competition among the private operators of freight or passenger services and there is an independent, robust regulatory structure overseeing the sector. But there are not too many takers for such a move within the government system, at least. This is ironical because allowing the private sector in the operation of railways would be a positive disruption, helping it become one of the main engines of India’s economic growth.
Universal Basic Income
The idea of a UBI was mooted as an idea within the government by Arvind Subramanian in the Economic Survey he presented in 2017. Subramanian, who was then the chief economic adviser in the finance ministry, had then argued for a new system under which every person would enjoy a right to a basic income to cover his or her basic needs. The Survey cited four principal reasons for adopting the UBI scheme: to achieve the goals of social justice, reduce poverty, ensuring a more efficient system of delivering government benefits to the people and creating new possibilities for jobs by giving individuals the choice on the terms of engaging with the labour market.
A year prior to the presentation of the Economic Survey by Subramanian, Vijay Joshi, eminent economist and Emeritus Fellow at Oxford, had favoured a UBI scheme in India in his 2016 book India’s Long Road to Prosperity. His arguments were similar to what the government’s Economic Survey had made on UBI. Joshi was of the view that UBI would guarantee a minimum income floor for all Indians and also pave the way for replacing the age-old and inefficient system of providing subsidies under various schemes. Joshi conceded that the idea of a UBI was politically difficult, but should nevertheless be promoted as it was a far better system for improving the economic well-being of Indians. Economist Pranab Bardhan has also been pleading for a UBI sc
heme in India.
But Joshi had also correctly concluded that there was no political appetite for switching over to a UBI system. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said after presenting his fourth Budget in 2017 that the UBI scheme was an idea whose time in India had not yet come. He cited the lack of political maturity of the Indian system to accept the logic of such a fundamentally different scheme. The big question that bothered the political classes was that a UBI scheme would make the financial burden on the government unbearable if all other existing subsidies were not withdrawn or phased out. In an ideal situation, the launch of a UBI should be accompanied by the withdrawal of all other subsidies. Without that, the UBI would be a fiscal disaster for the government. Yet, no government is willing to bite the bullet by launching UBI and simultaneously withdrawing the various subsidies schemes.
The possibility of a UBI, however, has brightened after Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao made an electoral success of the income support scheme Rythu Bandhu for farmers in the state. Rao was returned to power in the Assembly elections of 2018 and one of the reasons cited in his favour was that he had earlier implemented Rythu Bandhu, even though it benefitted only landowners, not landless labourers, and promised to increase the benefit amount by 25 per cent as part of his election manifesto. It appears that other states, too, may explore a UBI scheme like Rythu Bandhu to be launched in the entire country. Indeed, Odisha came out with a basic income support scheme for all its small farmers, cultivators and landless farm labourers, committing an annual expenditure of over Rs 10,000 crore. The Central government, too, announced in its 2019–20 Interim Budget the PM Kisan Yojana that offered Rs 6000 per year to every farming family holding land of up to two hectares or about five acres. This scheme covered almost 85 per cent of all the operational landholdings in the country and imposed an annual additional expenditure burden of Rs 75,000 crore on the exchequer. In the run-up to the 2019 general elections, the Congress promised that if it was elected to power its government would provide a minimum income of Rs 12,000 per family for about 50 million poorest of poor households, which would cost the exchequer an estimated annual spending of Rs 3.6 lakh crore or 1.9 per cent of the 2018–19 GDP. The BJP manifesto in turn promised to expand the coverage of its PM Kisan Yojana to cover all farmers irrespective of the size of their landholdings, a promise that was fulfilled as soon as the BJP government was formed after the May 2019 elections.
The Rise of Goliath Page 43