There has been several criticisms, most of them being quite
harsh, of India's Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, in Indian and international
media. Almost all the criticisms are focused on the policy paralysis in the
Indian government and how Singh is an ineffective leader.
On the other hand, backed with Comptroller Audit General
(CAG) reports on the scam in coal block allocations when Singh was the Coal
Minister, civil society members in India are attacking Singh for being corrupt
and not for policy paralysis.
In my understanding, the latter group is more accurate in
their assesment.
The former, comprising mainly of editors and senior
journalists in Indian and international media, have, as they usually do,
distorted the truth. Manmohan Singh has not paralysed the Indian economy. He
has doled out several un-deserving benefits to Indian industrialists and
foreign ones as well including the foreign investors in the last 7-8 years. And
he has done this at an unprecedented fast pace (people who think he is slow are
actually wrong, he moves very fast in such matters with the help of his team
members such as Chidambaram and Montek Singh Ahluwalia).
While he personally would not received any bribe (similar to
the scenario where Narendra Modi does not keep bribes for himself) but the
benefits would have got transferred in the form of donations to the Congress
party (similar to Modi passing on bribe money to the coffers of RSS-Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh in Nagpur and BJP-Bharatiya Janata Party in Delhi) as well as
to personal accounts of senior-most Congress politicians.
Since the Nira Radia tapes came out followed by 2G spectrum
scam (in which too Singh had given the green signal to a process not involving
auction) a couple of years back, some more skeletons came out of the cupboard.
The policy paralysis, therefore, is not due to a lack of
belief in continuing with the doling out of freebies to industrialists and
investors, but due to the coming out in the open of corrupt practices of Singh
and his team. They are wary of continuing with their old corrupt ways for fear of being caught in a scenario where they are being watched by CAG and civil society closely and also due to the upcoming national elections in 2014. This is precisely what many financial media editors (Indian or
international) like to side-step.
In the same breath as they attack corruption (for who can
openly say that corruption is ok) they also give examples of major projects
hanging fire due to Singh government's policy paralysis. One of the editors
recently gave the examples of Posco and Arcelor Mittal. Now, both projects have
faced opposition from people on the ground (locals living in the project areas)
due to forcible land acquisition and blatant dis-regard for environmental
norms. These projects can not move without large amounts of bribes being
offered to state and central government politicians. But the brain-washed media
editors turn a blind eye to the contradiction of being anti-corruption and pro-such-projects-involving-very-high-corruption.
Manmohan Singh does not have a problem in receiving these
sums for his party and other senior-most politicians. If he personally does not
benefit financially, why does he do all this? In my view, he is an ideological
fanatic. He believes in a form of economics where every bit of land and every
bit of activity is dominated by large companies. He does not believe in small,
local-level, self-sustaining ventures by the people and local entreprenuers. He
is brainwashed into thinking that only large companies can make India develop.
And, last but not the least, he cares two hoots for the ecology and environment
which according to him must be obstacles in the path of high rate of growth.
His and financial media editors' obsession with high rate of
growth is what has hurt India the most.
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