The Hindu Business Line : A tale of three visions

The President, the Prime Minister, and the HRD Minister have visions that offer three key lessons: One, long-term vision is difficult to sell, particularly to harassed politicians concerned about the next election. Two, logical vision has little chance of holding against ideology. Three, though powerful, ideology can defeat itself if it lacks logical foundation. P. V. INDIRESAN focuses on the visions.

This is the 200th article in this Vision 2020 series. Vision 2020 can have two meanings — vision for the year 2020, or, in American usage, perfect vision, the ideal. For nearly eight years, I have attempted to write about the latter. It is my duty to thank the readers and the editors for their encouragement. It is also a good time to retrospect.

I started this series by making a distinction between prediction and vision. Whatever astrologers may say, prediction is an extrapolation of past trends, extrapolation of innumerable cycles in past experience. Prediction is passive; it postulates what can happen. Vision is active; it explains what can be made to happen.

One way to appreciate the idea of vision is to look at what three different visionaries of India have achieved, and are likely to achieve — the President, Mr A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, and the Human Resource Development Minister, Mr Arjun Singh.

Mr Kalam constantly visualises a developed India where people will live in harmony and enjoy benefits of modern technology. Dr Manmohan Singh dreams of 10 per cent GDP growth rate. Mr Arjun Singh wants social justice for backward classes. These might appear to be three different visions; yet, they are interrelated.

Inclusive Approach

There is no doubt that Mr Kalam has sensitised people in all parts of the country, in all walks of life and of all ages, to the value of technology and knowledge-based development.

"Inclusive" is the fashionable words these days. His vision is truly inclusive; it includes the entire country, all groups of people. It includes technology, planning and management all together to build a new Vision for India.

PURA (Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas) is one concept that is integral to his vision. It aims to raise the level of our benighted villages to relatively higher levels of prosperity that our cities have.

Multiple types of connectivity of small clusters of villages are the means he has advocated to achieve this goal of prosperity, without erosion of spiritual values. His ideas have caught the imagination of many in the country but, unfortunately, the present government has committed itself to a different kind of vision for rural development based on what it calls Bharat Nirman.

The goal of Bharat Nirman is poverty alleviation, not prosperity. Not being poor is not the same as being prosperous. Although Bharat Nirman is a distinct improvement on earlier schemes of rural development, it remains almost entirely dependent on government grants.

Although it calls for people's opinion in the choice of projects, it does not delegate direction, implementation or ownership. The Eleventh Plan Approach Paper calls for a Public Private Partnership where private investment is twice that of the public one. Bharat Nirman falls far short of that norm.

Private Initiative

PURA is different. In all the experiments that have been attempted on the PURA model, private initiative has been paramount, government participation virtually non-existent. Ideally, PURA will be a Public-Private Partnership that will more than satisfy the Eleventh Plan norm of private investment being double the contribution made by the state.

The Government is not yet ready to share the task of rural development with the people, certainly not with private investors. The Government's vision is constrained by the fear of losing control. The President's Vision is centred on individual initiative.

The Government plans to minimise poverty; the President seeks to maximise prosperity. The Government has a short focus, interested in immediate results. The President is ahead of his time; he thinks of long-term benefits.

The Prime Minister dream of ten per cent growth rate is eminently achievable. However, there are serious impediments against sustaining it. Some of them are outside the control of his government, but many are inherent to what is called "coalition mantra".

The state of the global economy is an external threat. A large country like India has to operate globally; it cannot prosper in isolation. A slow down in the global economy will have serious repercussions on India's growth.

Coalition mantra hampers coordination among different ministries; it leaves far too much scope for inefficiency, even indiscipline. For instance, in the case of national highways, construction has come down to one km per day; China manages 40 times more. The power situation is equally sad. Education is beset with its own problems:

According to the Planning Commission, 55 per cent of students cannot divide a three digit number by a single digit even after four years of schooling. Industrialists openly complain that most university graduates are unemployable. Further, unlike the President, the Prime Minister has not been able to invoke the prestige of his position to impress on the general public the importance of private initiative for rapid growth. Several coalition partners are violently questioning his Vision.

A key Conflict

Here is a case of conflict between ideology and logic. To the extent the expression `ideological' differs from the meaning of `logical', what is ideological is not logical. A visionary will constantly question his or her ideas; will constantly strive to improve upon them to reach the desired goal faster and at less cost. The committed ideologist will rather see people suffer rather than give up an outdated idea.

While Mr Kalam Vision is intellectual and Dr Manmohan Singh's is economic, Mr Arjun Singh's is sociological. Though the three appear to be independent initiatives, yet they may blend into a more unified vision. Currently, each vision faces difficulties of its own: For example, constrained by ideology, the Minister is targeting higher education without laying a proper foundation at the school level. That has put him in a Catch-22 situation. If the courts obstruct his plans, the OBCs dear to his heart will not gain admission to the IITs and the IIMs in the manner, and in the numbers, he wants.

If he succeeds, in course of time, competent faculty will abandon these institutions. (After all, for the salaries they get, the only charm the faculty have is the opportunity to teach brilliant students.).

The final result will be the same: IITs and IIMs will collapse the way Mr Arjun Singh's own university, Allahabad University, collapsed under political pressure. Either way, OBC students will not get quality education.

A synthesis

Sir Isaac Newton said if he succeeded more than others, it was because he stood on the shoulders of giants. In our President and Prime Minister, we are lucky to have two giants. If our political parties had stood on their shoulders, they would have made India the greatest in the world. Unfortunately, they are not that much wise; they are thinking otherwise.

A synthesis of these visions may still emerge. As Keynes said, politicians will ultimately do the right thing but only after they try everything else. Therefore, ultimately, our politicians will appreciate the ideas of our President and Prime Minister. The country will grow rapidly the way the PM hopes. It will realise the Kalam Vision, but it is Mr Arjun Singh's Vision, having the greatest emotional appeal, that will become a reality quickest.

What can we learn from these three visions? One, long-term vision is difficult to sell, particularly to harassed politicians concerned about the next bye-election. Two, logical vision has little chance of holding against ideology. Three, though powerful, ideology can defeat itself if it lacks logical foundation.

In history, a few countries have on occasions made decisions wisely for the long term, logically for maximum progress without being limited by ideology. Whenever they met all three conditions, they entered a Golden Age. Let us hope India of tomorrow will choose wisely and logically without ideological inhibitions.

(The author is a former Director of IIT-Madras. Response may be sent to: indiresan@gmail.com)

(This is 200th in the Vision 2020 series. The previous article was published on April 30.)