A short note on Gandhi - the self-scripted Myth.

John Samuel 

Gandhi was one of the few leaders who wrote the script of his own myth making. It is also interesting to see how Gandhi evolved as a metaphor of change and myth at the same time by combining non-conformism and conformism, political ethics as well as political tactics and innovative modes of communicative action and advocacy. Gandhi on the one hand was a social conservative and on the other hand an ardent critic of colonial imperialism and cultural hegemony of the west. His relevance is that he was less a man of political theory and more a practitioner of counter discourse to the hegemonic European models of political theories. His relevance was also due to the fact that he combined local modes of expressions with an international perspective ( he is the only one leader who spent time of his socialisation in an Indian village, London and South Africa where he developed an intimate understanding of how power and discrimination operate in an experiential form) and his own political perspective was influenced by eclectic sources ( vedic, Buddhist,Christian and also the works of Tolstoy and CS Lewis etc) and he developed a counter discourse to the western secular liberal modes of democracy with actually a politics ethics derived from plural religious discourse ( non-secular) within the larger framework of popular Hinduism. Hence, he used popular Hindu expressions ( Rama Rajya, raj dharma, etc etc) to communicate to the masses. All his locations, dress code, language,the modes of struggles, Charkah etc helped to make him a self-scripted myth from 1917 to 48. While he communicated to the common masses in their language , he made it a point to write, speak and publish in English for the international audience. He proposed a socio-political ethical framework ( rather than a coherent political theory of the state or change)drawing from Indian as well as non Indian sources . All these international aura, combined with that of a social reformer, political activist and ability to build pragmatic consensus made his referential power. Gandhi was deliberately walking in to history with self conscious mode of myth making , confident action and pragmatic politics. This is what made him different from all his contemporaries in the freedom struggle in India and internationally. Gandhi not only became a historical myth but also became the most known figure and face of the brand India. When people in Latin America or Africa or elsewhere think of India it is the 'shirt-less' Gandhi and the white Tajmahal that they remember. Gandhi was more concerned about 'followers' and the irony is that none ' followed' the person called Gandhi and everyone pretended to follow the myth called Gandhi. And Myths don't actually need followers as they take the escalator to the pantheons necessary to the construction of the megamyth of the nationstate. The spaces for Ho Chimin, Mao, Lincoln and Mandela or for that matter Che or Lenin is on the walls of the establishment of the state and not necessarily in the hearts of ordinary people. Gandhi too transcended people and now the officially institutionalised myth of the nation-state called India and more relevant to the Indian currency as well.

Budget as an art of Delusion and Political Subversion

                                                                                                      John Samuel

The first-budget of the new government is an exercise in the art of delusions. On the one hand, the budget tends to give  policy signals to the core  political constituencies of the  BJP and on the other hand  thee budget is more of  recycling of the very same policy paradigm of the UPA II and this budget looks more like that of UPAIII mode with a saffron wrapper. “This is a budget which could have well been presented by the UPA itself and I am happy the Finance Minister is keeping to the fiscal deficit target, and hope he achieves it,'' the former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told NDTV in his response to the first budget unveiled by the Narendra Modi government.

 However, if one reads the budget in the context of the series of policy pronouncements and  tactical policy ‘leaks’ including the IB Report on NGOs etc, one can see the emergence of a  new brand of subversive politics.  In the last two months governments already gave indications of the policy priorities such as allowing FDI in defence and insures sector, environmental clearances for big corporate ventures, allowing hike in prices of non-subsidized LPG cylinders, raising train fares by 14.2 percent and freight rates by 6.5 percent,  privatisation of services in the railways and declaring potato and onion as essential commodities by bringing them under the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA).  While the budget gives the semblance of ‘continuity with change’ and high  on pro-poor and pro-people  rhetoric,  this budget in a way is also  a curtain-raiser to the forthcoming budget and policy shifts in 2015 and the consequent shift in the policy paradigm of the Modi- government.

1. A Sandwich policy approach to  ‘development’

 This government has been trying to juggle around three layers of policy and political approaches. On the foreground, the government gives an impression of a pro-growth neo-liberal ‘developmentalism’ along with a high dose of rhetoric on ‘good governance’ (or with less government and more governance). In a sense this neo-liberal ‘good governance’ development is nothing but a rehash of the same old pro-rich, pro-growth, pro-FDI mode that Manmohan Singh- Alhuwalia and Chidambaram advocated for the last twenty years. However, beneath this foreground of the ‘continuity’ of neo-liberal economic policies, there is another layer of pro-crony capitalist accommodative Hindu nationalism that seeks to enrich few corporate houses and few sections of the society. And the base structure of this three-tier sandwich approach is the hard-core hindutva politics of ‘exclusion’.  One has to situate the budget in the context of the larger political economy of the majority political party that controls the government and also see how multiple modes of  subversions is  used to create a sense of ‘good-governance- development’ delusion

The three tier sandwich  approach of the policy and governance of the government seeks to address  four different set of constituencies a) the neo-middle class( or emerging middle class) in the urban-transitions in India; b)the big rich corporate houses with crony capitalist tendencies that in many ways supported the election machine  of major political parties with money and media; c)  the  soft-Hindu nationalist neo-liberal constituency that hope to get more jobs from the possible economic growth and d) the hard-hindutva constituency that advocates an assertive  Sangh Parviar politics of exclusion. The government seeks to use different language register and different modes of policy rhetoric to satisfy different set of constituencies woven together during the last election.  On the one hand these policy rhetoric and policy priorities give hints to different constituencies and on the other hand the government generally project a ‘liberal’ positioning in the broader constituencies at the national level. This mock-liberal posturing often tend create a delusions about ‘development’, ‘democracy’ and ‘governance’. Because of this ‘mock-liberal’ veneer above the hard-hindutva political core and because of the continuity with the neo-liberal policy modes of UPA II, even the main opposition party tends to be more benign as well as confused in their response to the Union Budget as well as the macro-political posturing of the government.  In that sense, this Budget is also an indication of this politics of subversion and politics of ‘mock-liberal’ delusions.

This government has come to power making high promises of reducing prices, reducing inflation, increasing economic growth, ensuring transparency and accountability and effective means to address corruption. However, if we take a closer look at the policy priorities there is so far no clear sense that government is making concerted effort to fulfill any of these promises.  This budget too does not give any indication any broad policy framework to address any of these issues. While it is true that this budget may not have the space to move drastically from the vote-on accounts budget presented by Chidambaram in March 2014, there is hardly any significant shift beyond an effort to  ‘pay’ back those big business corporate that lend a ‘helping-hand’ to the election campaign. There is also an effort to send signals and messages to the core constituencies and the ‘new’ constituencies of the emerging Modi brand of politics.

If we further deconstruct the budget signals, it is clear how the budget speech sent clear signal to each of the four ‘special’ constituencies. The neo-middle class (or those who have at an average monthly income of Rs 20000) got a tax exemption by increasing the taxable annual personal income from 2 lakhs to 2.5 lakhs and corresponding tax exemption  to the senior citizens. The ‘housing for all’ by 2022 is also policy rhetoric to send signals to the neo-middle class constituency.  The big business corporations and the rich and powerful also get tax-exemption (largely excise and custom duties) in the tune Rs 5.2 lakhs.  The signalling of the big-ticket investment in smart urban centres (Rs 7060 crore for hundred smart cities), increasing the FDI cap from 26 per cent to 49 percent in the defense manufacturing and insurance sector, and the intentions to increase the number elite institutions such as IITs, IIMs, and AIMS send signals to the upward mobile middle class that seeks to have more ‘professional jobs’ and a greater pie from the urban-centre economic growth model of the neo-liberal variety. The soft- Hindu nationalism of this class gets addressed through liberal allocation for the ‘unity’ (though the term is ironic) of Saradar Vallabhai Patel and also for more war memorials. The co-option of Vallabhai Patel from the history of Congress Party and the signifier of ‘war memorials’ as a sign of patriotism send signals to the pro-neo liberal ‘ Shining India’ class that BJP always sought to pamper.  At the same time the government also send positive signals to the core Sangh Parivar constituency by appointing those with such ideological position to key posts such as the Chair Person of the ICHR- and also by saffron wrapping to few new programmes in the name Shayma Prasad Mookerjee, Deendayal Upadhaya, Madan Mohan Malavya gave signals to the core Sangh –parivar Hindutva constituencies.

While the Rs 7060 crore allocated for the  hundred smart city projects is an allocation of an average of only Rs 70 crore per city, it seems the government hopes to get to the tune Rs 60,000 crore per city as new investment or Foreign Direct investment.  Since the government will not have such resources to fund the development of full-fledged infrastructure of hundred smart cities, one is still not clear where will such a huge investment come from.  The government largely signalled investment in infrastructure development and also some new investments in  renewable  source of energy such as solar power.  A total allocation of Rs 37,880 Crore (including Rs 3000 for North-East) for fast-track highways and improving road infrastructure too is more or less in line with the policy frame work of UPAII.  In spite of the hope of getting new FDI in core sectors such as defence industries, insurance and the intention to  invest significantly in the new infrastructure projects, one is not yet sure the projected economic growth will be achieved in the next couple of years. The overall direction seems to be reducing the direct tax, increase the indirect taxes (expecting Rs 7,525 crore more  from this), more disinvestment and more non-tax revenue along with the reduction of expenditure in a cumulative manner. Though allocation for most of the flagship programmes( MGNREGS, food subsidy, NRLM, NRHM) are more or less maintained as in the interim budget,  given the track record there is a chance of significant reduction in revised estimates, particularly in the enthusiasm to cut expenditure and fiscal deficit. So, overall the first budget of the Modi government looks more like the old wine in a new bottle with a saffron wrapper, devoid of any new economic or political imagination.

 Does the Budget address the key social and economic Challenges of India?

The key question is to what extent the Union Budget seeks to address some of the major challenges in the political economy of India.  As per the latest Human Development Index (HDI) India ranked 136^th among the 186 countries reported in the UNDP- Human Development Report (2013). The health and education indicators of India are below than many countries in South Asia and also to many of the developing countries.  Every third illiterate person in the world is an Indian and more than 80 million children in the school-going age are out of school and it is reported that more 35 % of the students drop out before reaching class VIII.   India has one of the highest infant (and maternal mortality rate in the world; Infant mortality rate of 44 per 1000 live birth in 2011 and maternal mortality ratio at 178 in 2010-2012, far behind the global targets. The reported unemployment rate (as per the current daily status) is 5.6%, though the real figures may be much higher in most of the states of India. A major issue that has immense implication for the political economy of India is the growing inequality in India. As per the analysis of the National Sample Survey, the spending gap between the rich and the poor in India almost doubled in the last five years. The monthly per capita consumption expenditure of the top five percent of the rich   in urban areas is 14.7 % more than the bottom five per cent of the population. In rural area the top five percent of the rich consumes 9 times more than those at the bottom five per cent of the poor.  The economic inequality combined with social inequality also creates the conditions for the politics of exclusion. Most of those at the receiving end of socio-economic inequality and exclusion happened to be those from the marginalised communities such as Dalits, Adivasies and minorities in India. The challenges faced by economy are many. The high rate of inflation, particularly food-price inflation of 9.5 per cent, and the consequent increase in price of food and essential commodities will undermine the household economy of a large majority of poor and marginalised people.  The economic growth rate also has been suboptimal and the rate of GDP growth is at 4.5 percent in 2012-2013 and 4.7 percent in 2013-14 further took away jobs of many people, particularly in the manufacturing sector. The industrial growth is more or less stagnated (provisionally estimated at 0.5 percent). While the growth rate of agricultural sector is still around 4 percent, as per the latest economic survey, the growth of tertiary sector is 9 percent, though even there is a job-less growth.  While the Economic Survey identified some of these issues, and there is a liberal use of high rhetoric in the budget speech to identify some of these issues, the budget priorities in themselves do not give any adequate indication to address some of these challenges. While the budget has more or less retained or marginally increased the budget allocation for the MGNREG(34000 crore) and for food subsidy(1.15 lakh crore),  there is hardly any new initiative to address some of the debilitating challenges to the social and economic development of India.  Many of the farmers organisations and Dalits organisations have already pointed out the inadequate allocation for agricultural and allied services and also the much less than proportionate allocation for the Special component plans for SCs and STs. The budget does not do justice to the Agricultural and Allied Sectors, Rural Development and Social Services.  There is also a concern that the proposed reduction of petroleum subsidies by Rs 22,054 will lead to further increase in the cost of transports, irrigation and resultant increase in food price. Given the near-drought situation and given the over-optimistic revenue estimation, the chances are the economic growth will be below the projected level of above five percent and  the chances are that there will be further decrease in budget allocation for social sector in the revised estimates. So , despite the high rhetoric,  the budget does not give any sense of economic or political imagination to boost growth or to increase taxation or to ensure strategic redistributive framework to address the causes and consequences of poverty and marginalisation in India. 

Whose Budget is it any way?

The total size of the Union Budget  ( 2014-15)  is Rs 17.94 lakh crore, slightly higher than the figure of interim budget of Rs 17. 63 lakhs crore. Of this increase  between the interim budget and the main budget, of Rs. 31000 crore, two-third is in the Plan Expenditure domain (going up from Rs. 5.55 lakh crore to Rs. 5.75 lakh crore) while the remaining one third has gone up in the Non-Plan Expenditure part (from Rs. 12.07 lakh crore to Rs. 12.19 lakh crore. While the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley  gave a road map of fiscal consolidation over a period of next three years , there is no indication of the comparable increase in the revenue.  He on the one hand follows the Chidambaram-line of cutting fiscal deficit to 4.1 per cent of GDP  in 2014-15 an on the other hand  he proposes to reduce from  the  proposed 4.6% this year  to 3 percent in 2016-17; and reduction of revenue deficit from 3.3 percent to 1.6 percent in three years.  During the next three years, the gross tax revenue is expected raise from 10.2 percent in 2013-14 to only 11.2 percent in 2016-17. This means, there will be sharp decrease in expenditure in the years. And the indication is that the sharp decrease in expenditure would further erode the budget allocation for social sector, human development and eradication of poverty.  There is already a constructed ‘consensus’ built through the pro-neoliberal media discourse against ‘subsidies’. Though this budget has not drastically reduced subsidies, however the ‘targeted’ subsidies and also ‘freeing’ up the diesel price etc are indication of reduction of subsidies that will have implication for the rural poor and farmers in India.

When it comes to revenue there are clear indications of who is being favoured.  While the neo-middle class got a bit of tax concession raising the tax-bar from Rs 2 laks to 2.5 lakhs, the major beneficiary of the tax concessions are the rich and powerful corporate houses of India.  While there is  a tax concession of around 40,000 crore to middle class, there is a tax concession of a whopping Rs 5.32 lakhs to the rich business corporations of India. This tax-write off is from the direct corporate income tax, customs and excise duties.  This include writing off 76,116 crore of the corporate income tax and forgoing Rs 1, 95, 679 crore excise duty and giving away Rs 2,60, 714 crores of custom duty. In 2012-13, the total revenue foregone in favour of the rich was Rs 566, 235 crore and the total revenue foregone in  2013-14 was Rs  572, 924 crore( 5% of the GDP). In an incise analysis of the pro-rich tax regime, P Sainath has pointed out that  from 2005-06 onwards , over a period of nine years, the government of India written off tax worth Rs 36.5 lakh crore and sixth of that is just corporate income tax.  If one considers the present allocation Rs 1.15 lakh core for Public Distribution System, the cumulative tax concession of Rs 36.5 Lakh crore would have been  good enough to run the PDS for the next 31 years or for that matter MNREGS( current allocation of around Rs 34,000 crore)  could have been run for 105 years. As Sainath has rightly pointed out the real continuity between UPA  and the present government is that both favoured the rich and powerful corporate business houses.  While the governments gave huge tax concessions to the rich and powerful corporate business there was no dearth in the pro-poor rhetoric along with reduction of expenditure for social sector. It has been pointed out that the amount written off in favour of the rich corporations in 2013-14 is 132 percent more than the tax concessions to them in 2005-06.  This trend clearly shows the politics of budget. There is high rhetoric in  the budget speech favour of poor and ‘marginalised’ and there is high tax concession to the rich and powerful and there is marginal concession to the neo-middle class. While in the budget estimates, there is allocation for the social sector, often in the revised estimates these allocation decreases.

India has one of the lowest Taxes –GDP ratio among the emerging economies.  The central tax-GDP ratio fell from 10.2 percent in 2012-13 to 10 per cent in 2013-14.  This is largely due to the fall in excise and customs duty collection and forgoing corporate income tax. The relatively less Tax-GDP ratio adversely affect the fiscal policy space available to the government for ensuring adequate resources for social protection and public provisioning of basic right to education, health and shelter, particularly to the poor and marginalised sections of people.

 While the intentions to increase investment in the road network, hundred new smart cities and exploring the options for renewable energy give the intentions to work towards the economic growth, the tendency of more tax exemption for the rich and possible reduction of the effective allocation for social protection point out to the political bias towards the rich and urban middle class sections of the people. This class forms hardly less than fifteen percent of the population. Unless there is new investment to regenerate rural economy, sustainable agriculture,  and social –economic infrastructure to include the large majority of the poor and marginalised sections( including rural farmers, dalits , Adivasies and minorities), India will not be able to increase the human development index or reduce the alarming level of social and economic inequality in this country. The question remains whether the rhetoric are for the masses and the larger policy framework is meant for the ‘shining India’ class of articulate urban class of India.  The chances are that the present budget is merely a curtain raiser to a three –tier approach of combining pro-‘shining India’ class neo-liberal economic policy along with comforting the soft-Hindu Nationalist aspiring ‘mock-liberal’ middle class and actually serving the core Sangh Parviar agenda through political and policy subversion. The mock-liberal veneer could be a sign of the ‘good days’ to come to make the ‘Shining India’ class happy, though the poor and marginalised will be put under the carpet of high rhetoric on ‘development’ and ‘good governance’