Economic
Highlights
New Delhi, 31 December 2018
Nation Eye’s 2019
WISH FOR POLITICO-ECO
VISION
By Shivaji Sarkar
The year 2019 comes with hopes but the path
is murky. Economy needs a new path, resuscitation and people-oriented policies.
It’s time to rethink. Manmohanomics has failed
the governments and the people. The BJP, which followed in the same footsteps, is
now wondering whether it has lost the way. The Congress does not know what the
economic outlook should be. No political party has been able to spell out a new
vision. Neither has any got a plan yet for resuscitating the economy. The
regional parties are fighting a battle of existence be it TMC, TDP, BSP, SP, or
the Left. None apparently has an ideology.
Worse, nobody has a plan for the farmers, for
the people, for boosting production, increasing purchasing capacity, strengthen
the rupee and reducing petrol prices when international prices come down.
People of India are in a quandary. They do not know who would have a plan for
the farmers or how to reduce the influence of corporate that has ruined the
banking system and caused rise in prices.
Education is becoming expensive every day. It
is causing severe uncertainty and negativity among the youth. Jobs are eluding
them. There is no plan to cleanse the education system. High tuition fee, high
coaching costs and fleecing of students by private universities have become the
norm. Some such universities or institutes levy indiscriminate financial
penalties, which in many cases are at least half of the tuition they are
supposed to pay.
The ensuing elections would bring a mere
‘interim’ Budget. People may know the figures but not its import. Indians are
wondering whether economy is liberated or under control of the Government as
the new RBI Governor Shaktikant Das says. They are failing to understand why
the NDA Government needs to have slices of the RBI assets, over which no
government has any claim.
The society is now discussing why banks
should give any dividend to the Government, which is a mere custodian of
people’s deposits. As per good banking practices, earnings should be reinvested
to incentivise the depositors and not be given to anyone.
Additionally, taxes despite reduction in GST
are at high levels. Tax on income is being paid by the lowest paid employees or
other small businesses. High taxes and tax terror are stymieing economic
activities.
It is also being asked how Corporate Social Responsibility
(CSR) covers funding for sculptures. While on the one hand, the petrol prices
are being increased and so are the taxes, profits of oil companies phenomenally
rise, on the other how come they are funding activities that are neither
related to business nor social good?
Overall quality of life is deteriorating. A Gallup survey in September, 2018, finds that Indians’ ratings of their current
lives nationwide are the worst in recent record, an average of 4.0 on a 0-to-10
scale in 2017 -- down from 4.4 back in 2014. The survey finds decline in the
percentage of Indians who rate their lives positively enough to rate it as thriving.
Only 3 per cent of Indians consider themselves thriving in 2017 compared to 14
per cent in 2014.The living family wage in India remains almost flat in the Rs 17300-17400
a month or years. Wages paid to low-skilled workers decreased to Rs 10300 a
month in 2018 from Rs 13300 in 2014.
Food has become expensive even in rural areas. “Beginning in 2015,
rural Indians began reporting increased difficulty paying for food,” says the
Gallup report. Over 28 per cent rural Indians reported not having enough
money to pay for food at some point that year. About 18 per cent urban people
reported similar hardship. It has increased every year. About 41 per cent of
rural people and 26 per cent in urban areas said they were not able to afford
food in 2017.
The Gallup survey supports the rural dismay. Suicides by farmers
continue. Debt level remains high despite loan waivers. No mechanism has
evolved for paying remunerative prices to the farmers. Even the difference
between MSP and the actual prices that they were getting called ‘bhavantar’ in Madhya Pradesh and
Chhattisgarh did not mitigate their woes.
Post demonetisation cash crunch has caused severe distress. But
officially there is growth. The IMF World Economic Outlook predicts Indian economy
will grow at 7.3 per cent in 2018 and 7.4 per cent in 2019, up from 6.7 per cent
in 2017. It is projected to be higher than China’s economic growth at 6.6 per cent
in 2018 and 6.2 per cent in 2019, down from 6.9 per cent in 2017. But the
volume of Chinese economy is many times larger than India’s.
The New Year does not seem to
make much of a change whatever the poll outcome. The nation is looking for a
solution. Would 2019, before or after the elections find out the cherished
path? It is not easy. The US withdrawal from Afghanistan and Syria would pose
new challenges.
The country needs a
politico-economic vision and not rhetoric. The new generation politicians
irrespective of their affiliations are clueless. The distrust in them is
reflected in the high number of votes polled as NOTA in the recent State Assembly
polls. Apparently, the voters don’t want anyone or feel everyone is equally
ineffective. It is a sad statement on the lack of vision across the political
spectrum. If people are drifting away to the Opposition conglomeration, it
indicates not a gain for any party but the lack of an alternative.
The visionary alternative which
could be the people’s choice is not there. That is the crucial issue. The
election is still over two months away. Could there be a change? But if the
manifestos of 2014 are any indicator, it seems manifestos are mere “jumlas” (rhetoric) and have lost most
of their meanings. The promises are not delivered. The reforms are for the
corporate and not the people.
More the reforms and more the
slogan of ‘Make in India’, the country is being flooded with foreign produced
goods, high profit repatriation, high trade deficit, job losses and a crisis of
confidence despite higher government expenditure. The erstwhile Planning
Commission was at least guiding us to a path. NITI Ayog seems to be still
looking for one. Today, nobody knows what would be the path to revival of
economy.
That is ironically the hope. Year
2019 may become a watershed in Indian politics and who knows a new leadership
and vision may emerge out of a hopeless situation.---INFA
(Copyright, India News & Feature Alliance)
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