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Ranabir Ray Choudhury

IN THE latest issue of The Economist, there is this sub-heading to a review of Joseph Stiglitz's latest book The Roaring Nineties: A New History of the World's Most Prosperous Decade, that goes "When economics meets politics, guess which one wins".

At one level, this appears to be a rather surprising idea because politics and economics are two entirely different subjects following separate operational guidelines. At another, however, the two are not mutually exclusive because, although they form separate sciences, they deal, broadly speaking, with the same target — improving the well-being of mankind.

Today, politics is essentially the art of acquiring political power in society and preserving it. As a practical illustration, one can cite the case of the National Democratic Alliance Government at the Centre — an alliance which has been formed with the sole purpose of notching up the right numbers in the Lok Sabha so as to give the BJP-led combine a majority in the House. \What this implies in present-day Indian conditions is that political ideology is not an important requirement of a political party to attain power in New Delhi and sustain it. To many, this trait is quite reprehensible.

Economics, at its simplest, is the science of the price level — that is, it seeks to understand why the price of everything that is available in the marketplace (in a very general sense of the term) is what it is.

On the face of it, therefore, the quest for political power per se and the analysis of the price level (which includes a study of demand and supply) and the urge to progress materially are two different kettles of fish, with hardly any scope to mistake one for the other.

While this is true, there is another point of view, however, which cannot but see a convergence in the objectives of both politics and economics in any given society, which implies the possibility of a "clash" between the two and thus the issue of victory and defeat.

The basic problem here is that economics is a science, which essentially means that the recipe for material development it projects tends to be apolitical in the specific sense that it is independent of the political quest for power. In other words, some of the measures which may be considered necessary and sufficient for economic development may be "unpopular", that is, they may lack popular support.

For politicians, or the practitioners of the art of politics, such measures may not be advisable at certain times because of the effect their adoption may have on their quest for political power and/or their attempts to sustain themselves in a position of power.

This particular scenario may be represented as a "meeting point" of economics and politics, a clash between the two if you will. Which wins is, of course, a totally different issue, the outcome being fully dependent on an array of factors, not the least of which is the capacity of politicians to weigh the power imperative and the development imperative. The issue probably boils down to one of trying to persuade the electorate to put up with "unpopular" measures in the interests of long-term economic development.

Till now, in India, politics has usually won in the contest. As Madhya Pradesh's Congress Chief Minister is reported to have said recently: "Good economics does not always make good politics". The question is: Is the nation as a whole losing out in the process?

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