The Hindu Business Line : Not ready for greatness

The inability to shed outmoded thoughts is the reason behind the country having taken more than two decades to marginally raise its average economic growth rate from 5.5 per cent to 6.5 per cent despite the potential to sustain double-digit growth rates. It is a combination of nationalism deficit and confidence deficit... The country's interests receive little attention and, worse, are even compromised. The billions are so engrossed with their own million mutinies that the mutinies that are being hatched from the outside escape their attention.

IT WAS on the very Sunday that news began to trickle in of the damage and destruction caused by the giant killer waves that I began my short, end-of-the-year vacation. It brought about a sombre closure to the year.The rage of nature has extracted too high a price, particularly those of the vulnerable living in poor neighbourhoods. However, what gives cause for hope is the response of the public all over the world. The response of British citizens stands out. In less than a week, they alone have come up with more than £30 million. That is nothing short of remarkable.

It should give one a sense of optimism — in this hour of reflection, prayer and sadness — that the essential goodness of human beings is largely intact and it is the smouldering ashes of materialism, greed and consumerism that keeps the fire of idealism from being otherwise visible. When appropriately fanned, it shines through. That thought alone ought to be reason to drive away the gloom and look ahead to future with hope.

Lack of coherence and confidence

Shifting attention away from this global thought to the local, it has to be mentioned that the warning of a `possible' Tsunami in India somehow poignantly captures all our inadequacies.

Successive governments since Independence have allowed the poor to fend for themselves in the most hostile of conditions on a daily basis, exposing them fully to the fury of nature.

Even after the nature had destroyed the past, a new future is not built for them. Only the past is reconstructed. To add insult to injury, the Government came out with a possible Tsunami warning (retracted later) which merely ended up hampering relief efforts and exposing the lack of co-ordination between Central ministries.

International media highlighted this man-made suffering in India. To outsiders, it appeared to be a case of trying to cover up the failure to warn the public the first time around.

It revealed a mindset that is risk-averse and one that was unwilling to own up the risks and costs of a false warning. Leadership was not visible but bureaucracy was. Somehow, it betrayed a bumbling nation that is unsure of itself and one that has no strategic thinking about its place in the world and as to the path to get there.

The systematic efforts of China

On the surface, China betrays no such confusion. Recently, it signed an agreement with Venezuela to invest in the latter's oil industry to secure its own supplies. The Russian President, Mr Vladimir Putin, has hinted at a role for China in the development of oil production assets of Russian firm Yukos. He had also confirmed that state gas firm Gazprom would co-operate with China's China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) on various energy projects.

A Wall Street Journal article (`A rising power', December 14) mentions the Sino-Persian $100-billion trade agreement as a classic example of China using America's predicament to entrench its own position in the Persian Gulf. The deal was perfectly complementary:

Manufactures and military goods in exchange for oil and Islamic endorsement. China has systematically gone about cultivating resource-rich nations to feed its billion plus population in this century. India's current account has slipped into deficit this fiscal year, due to rising oil prices.

There is no recollection of systematic government efforts to ensure oil supplies. Public memory is only full of bickering over the stop-and-go efforts to recover economic prices for hydrocarbon fuels from the consuming public.

Japan's latest once-in-a-decade military review cites China as a threat. In a mockery of their commitment to free trade, the European Union and America had to request China to `slow' its textile exports from this year, as they fear a complete China domination of the textile export market now that the Multi-Fibre Arrangement is history.

China has responded by slapping export duty on textile exports. It wins them international goodwill. In sum, China is either too big a market to ignore or too big a threat to ignore. India does not figure. Currently, our country has neither moral nor economic power for the world to take notice.

We may have aspirations to become a permanent member of the Security Council but our foreign minister on foreign soil deplores the nuclear status that makes foreign nations not dismiss our membership claims. Aspiration to greatness is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition to achieving it.

Twin deficits

Economic journalist T. N. Ninan cites the inability (or unwillingness) to shed outmoded thoughts as the reason behind the country having taken more than two decades to marginally raise its average economic growth rate from 5.5 per cent to 6.5 per cent despite the potential that exists to sustain double-digit growth rates. He has hit the nail on the head.

It is a combination of nationalism deficit and confidence deficit. Too often, politicians have expended all their energies, resources and acumen on settling local scores and in winning the next election.

Self-styled intellectuals and the media willingly partake in the games of politicians for short-term and narrow gains. Country's interests receive little attention and, worse, are even compromised.

The billions are so engrossed with their own million mutinies that the mutinies that are being hatched from the outside escape their attention. Arguably, nowhere more than in India are the objectives of the political class so divorced from the national objectives.

The avowed pursuit of public interest through selfless service precludes legitimate compensation for one's contribution and consequently, illegitimate compensation is sought after and accepted as the leitmotif for public office.

The engrossed self-absorption is partly a reflection of diffidence in engaging with competing interests from the outside. It has taken ten years for the corporate sector to grow out of the `Bombay Club' mindset but pothole politics in Bangalore threatens to cage the unleashed tiger. Some of the policies either espoused or adopted are so antithetical to public interest that the only rational explanation for their articulation is that their sponsors bat for other nations.

Citizens, fed mostly a diet of negative stories by the media, lack the confidence to project themselves appropriately on the global stage.

The average Indian is mostly apologetic about his identity and identification with all that is Indian. It is this confidence deficit that helps to perpetuate all other ills described above. Only a confident Indian could hold the government accountable.

Our attitude towards the powerful is one of servility although the elected officials and bureaucrats are public servants in a democracy.

If citizens do not hold the government accountable at all times rather than only during election timings, politicians would be settling local scores instead of global scores. That is the Indian challenge for this year and for many more years to come.

(The author is founder-director of Libran Asset Management (Pte) Ltd., Singapore. The views are personal. Address feedback to van@libranfund.com)

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