POLITICS: India Shining but Only for Some, Say Critics

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Mar 17 2004 (IPS) - There are few takers for the ‘Shining India’ election campaign of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and even some its close allies seem to have problems with what they consider a slick, empty theme.

”Who is shining? Only the brokers, agents and contractors who have benefited from the government and hope to benefit again,” Govindacharya (one name), one of the chief ideologues of the BJP and the party’s former general secretary, told IPS in an interview.

Even more embarrassing for the ruling party, a document released on Monday by the Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM) or Self-reliance Protection Forum, an arm of the BJP, accused the government of building ”mystique around the concept of development”. ”We want the government to explain clearly who are the beneficiaries of this so-called ‘shining India,” said Murlidhar Rao, convenor of the SJM that acts closely with the powerful Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), of which Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and his top Cabinet colleagues are members.

The RSS, known best for its military-style drills, has in the past expressed discomfort with the BJP’s economic reforms programme, one that includes inviting greater foreign participation and the privatisation of the country’s dominant public sector.

Understandably, more trenchant criticism of the ‘Shining India’ campaign has come from political parties such as the main opposition Congress party and the Marxist Communist Party of India (CPI-M), which are ranged against the BJP in the general elections staggered between Apr. 24 and May 10.

The elections were not due until later in the year but, buoyed by an exceptionally good monsoon that is beneficial for the country’s mainly agricultural economy and by foreign exchange reserves exceeding a hundred billion U.S. dollars, the BJP decided to cash in on a perceived ‘feel good factor’.

Critics have warned that the unprecedented rise in foreign exchange reserves was ephemeral and composed largely of investment flows hunting for arbitrage opportunities in the stock market.

Vajpayee’s advisers were also keen to go to polls before the euphoria created by foreign policy successes in January – through engaging Pakistan diplomatically – faded away.

Islamabad responded to Vajpayee’s overtures by agreeing to halt all support to militants fighting to liberate the disputed northern territory of Kashmir.

Sitaram Yechuri, politburo member of the CPI-M, challenged the notion of a ‘Shining India’ as little more than the creation of slick public relations agencies that have little contact with actual realities.

”The reality,” said Yechuri, ”is that the production of foodgrains has been steadily going down in this country and people are going hungry because they cannot access the vast surpluses that are spilling out of the granaries.”

According to Congress party leader and former finance minister, Pranab Mukerjee, the biggest failure of the BJP government has been its inability to stem the rising tide of unemployment. ”The fact is that the unemployment rate grew from 5.99 percent in 1994 to 7.32 percent in 2000.”

A balanced view came from another former finance minister R Chidambaram who, basing his comments on statistics from the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), said India was in fact shining for some 250 million people out of the total billion-plus population.

But according to Chidambaram, the plight of some 350 million more people, desperately in need of a helping hand, was being swept under the rug. For these people, India was ”depressing rather than shining”. ”The state is usually seen as hard and heartless and that perception is for the most part true. New and innovative systems have to be designed to deal with the problems and needs of the disadvantaged sections,” the Harvard-educated Chidambaram said.

Economists at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said the government did have reason to feel good but needed to take care of a yawning fiscal deficit. IMF chief economist Raghuram Rajan said the country would feel better if it could get more physical and social infrastructure. ”A lot of this is not happening due to high fiscal deficit,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Shining India campaign has fallen afoul of the Election Commission, which has ordered the removal of the giant hoardings and television advertisement because they violate the rules.

Even the Delhi High Court has demanded to know details of where the money for the multi-million dollar ‘Shining India’ campaign was coming from, in response to public interest litigation pleas that it was being funded out of taxpayers’ money.

Opinion polls favour an easy win for the BJP, which has been confident enough to put on the backburner its Hindu fundamentalist stance that has worked well for it in the past.

But opinion polls in a country of 675 million eligible voters are notorious for being wide off the mark simply because they depend on unrepresentative sampling and because the mood of the voters can be capricious.

One worry for the BJP is the outcome of the high-voltage test cricket series, the first being played out in Pakistan as part of confidence-building measures after nearly 14 years when armed militancy in Kashmir first surfaced.

After the Indian team was victorious in Saturday’s opening match in Karachi, the BJP shot off unsolicited text messages to cellphone users that said: ”We won the game, and we won hearts, well done India,” as if anxious to somehow associate itself with the victory.

In contrast, there was silence after Tuesday’s defeat at the hands of the Pakistan team on Tuesday in Rawalpindi. The series goes on until Apr. 17 , barely a week before the elections begin.

”A comprehensive defeat in the cricket series will certainly worry the BJP," said psephologist Yogendra Yadav. "This is an election being fought as much psychologically as on the ground.”