In my view, Nobel laureate and World
renowned Philosopher-economist, Prof Amartya Sen was the intellectual godfather
(in the sense of “godfather to a parents children”) of the UPAs statist welfare-socialism. PM Manmohan Singh and his friends and Associates had profound respect for Prof
Sen’s intellectual capabilities. One could even go to the extent of saying that
the former were intellectual Chela’s of the latter. Therefore, Prof. Sen’s
admonitions relating to Social Welfare, Health, Education & Poverty, were
treated virtually as “Gospel” or as “Ten Commandments” by the good doctor, his friends
and associates. Based on global comparative
WDI data on Human Development Indicators and government expenditures, the
commandments were simple and unambiguous: “Raise expenditures” on Health, Education,
Child Development, Women’s development and other welfare programs.
My observation & analysis suggests the following process
thereafter: These recommendations were gladly and unquestioningly accepted by
the Left wing of the Congress party whose inspiration was the Congress
President, the Mother who gave birth to the UPA's Statist Welfare-Socialism (populism?). Once accepted by the PM these
issues therefore moved immediately to the Congress President led National
Advisory Council (NAC) (as all politically remunerative welfare activities had
to be attributed to 'the leader'). There, such programs, projects &
policies were invariably sought to be loaded with numerous related and
unrelated socialist objectives, statist-interventionist approaches and expenditure
increases. Not infrequently the original intention of the PM, became a small
part of an elaborate scheme of social engineering and business bashing. These NAC modified (dare I say mangled)
schemes, programs and laws returned to the government for execution (which then
had to work out how much it would cost, where the money would come from and how
they could actually be executed). The Mrs. Sonia Gandhi led NAC can therefore
rightly be called the Father/Mother of this approach and can claim full credit
for the programs, projects, laws, rules and regulations ordained by it.
Experience of administering, monitoring and analyzing
the numerous existing schemes was ignored or given short shrift. Experience
and analysis suggested that without an improvement in the governance of multiplicity of such programs, more money would not have the effect that welfare economists sitting in the Developed countries expected. One was convinced that without improvement in
administration and reduction in absenteeism and corruption, there would be
little impact of increased expenditure on health outcomes, educational
achievements, pace of poverty reduction, malnutrition etc.[i] It was
suggested that governance improvement should be given equal, if not greater weight
initially. The response to such doubts and suggestions was that governance
issues could perhaps be addressed at a later stage. Underlying this hint of future action on
governance issues was a conviction that these socialist, welfare schemes,
programs and laws would translate into a big electoral victory for the ruling
party led, in the next election, by Shri Rahul Gandhi.
My earlier work on economic growth and the
connection between economy and votes suggested otherwise:[ii] Unless growth was maintained through further policy reforms, a slowing growth rate would nullify any
marginal political gains from inefficient, corruption ridden and unproductive
welfare expenditures. Thus ineffective programs and slower growth would lose
votes, not win them.
Only
the potential extent of the loss was unclear till the BJP chose Shri Modi as its PM
candidate for the 2014 general election. Sadly, the lessons have still not been
learned by many politicians and their advisors.[iii]
[i] A Virmani, “Planning for Results: Public
Accountability Information System,” Working Paper No. 1/2007-PC, Planning
Commission, March 2007. http://planningcommission.nic.in/reports/wrkpapers/rpwpf.htm.
Arvind Virmani, “The Sudoku of
Growth, Poverty and Malnutrition: Lessons For Lagging States,” Working Paper
No. 2/2007-PC, Planning Commission, July 2007. http://planningcommission.nic.in/reports/wrkpapers/rpwpf.htm
.
[ii]
Series of papers on growth at, https://sites.google.com/site/drarvindvirmani/growth
& Arvind Virmani, “ Economic Growth, Governance And Voting Behaviour: An
Application to Indian Elections,” Working Paper No. 138, ICRIER, July 2004. http://www.icrier.org/page.asp?MenuID=24&SubCatId=175&SubSubCatId=233
.
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