When gestures masquerade as governance

Policymakers assure the nation that once the rains are normal and harvests bountiful, inflation will come down. Barely a few days ago a senior official of the Reserve Bank told the media that prices would come down if, among other things, food shortages eased.

He spoke too soon, for now we know that the nation's warehouses are once again bursting at the seams with fresh food stocks even as food inflation inches towards double digits.

The knowledge that food prices are high despite last year's wasting buffer stocks, now being augmented by fresh supplies and thus adding to the possibility of stocks rotting, no longer seems to embarrass policymakers. By insisting that the government use overflowing stocks to feed the poor, the Supreme Court has offered evidence of their callousness.

What the presence of surplus grains alongside empty stomachs and rising prices indicates is the abdication of political or moral responsibility by a government that came to power for the second time on the promise of inclusive growth.

Food security?

The tragic possibility that foodgrains from both old and fresh stocks will rot even as food consumption declines on account of high prices is not rooted in speculation, but in experience.

So when the policymaker assures the nation that bursting bins with their stocks of 65 million tonnes of wheat and rise spell food security, or that prices would ease sooner than later, one cannot help feeling somewhat like Alice in Wonderland.

Imagine for a moment that the government did not have to spend its energy in defending itself against the barrage of corruption charges, that it was a squeaky clean administration. How would one draw up its record since it came to power for the second time?

At first glance it might appear to have fared well; it has introduced various pioneering legislation: the right to education, food security, a Bill to protect journalists.

What the record of this government shows is its tendency to reach for the drafting pen and paper and enact yet another law when confronted with a crisis. Do not be surprised if it enacts a law to banish inflation.

But laws do not automatically ensure governance like throwing a switch offers instant light. There is an old law to prevent commuters from crossing railway tracks just as laws exist to prevent or at least deter us from killing those who would expose our illegal activities. But laws need institutions to implement them.

Legislation not enough

The National Food Security Bill envisages a gigantic distribution of food stocks through a PDS system where more than half the foodgrain distributed finds its way into the open market or into godowns, thus feeding inflation, not the poor. So an apparently radical piece of legislation is made meaningless because it depends on the same creaky system to realise its laudable objectives.

What lies beneath the law-making gesture (and that is all the various legislations are at this moment — gestures) is the absence of a commitment to institution- and capacity-building. Governance in a democracy means the slow and often protracted introduction and operation of institutions that can mediate on society's problems and find solutions.

One would be hard put to find either in the first or second terms ‘reforms' (outside the financial or capital markets) that proceeded beyond legislation-as-gesture.

Consider the SEZ Act of 2005 that sounded like the panacea for a slothful economy, the shortest route to prosperity.

Legislated in haste, executed with benign indifference to the massive problems confronting its practicality, the SEZ has become synonymous with acquisition of real estate, the most profitable and expanding industry to date.

Blind to mistakes

Blinded by the successes of the economy under its first watch, the UPA's self-congratulatory mood has not yet fizzled out despite the growing evidence that the neon lights of 8-9 per cent growth do not wash over large tracts of the Indian republic.

Its continued insistence that GDP can reach 8 per cent and its tendency to view that statistic as evidence of national prosperity are no more than grand but empty gestures. This manner has spread like a contagion among an increasing number of policymakers.

The UPA, more so now than in the early years of its first term, refuses to accept the possibility that assertions of governance cannot stand in for performance. Its creeping hubris, now having become second nature (aided by a frittering opposition), blinds it to lessons from its own mistakes or omissions. For the UPA, the grand statement masquerades as good governance.

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