Development: Must be removed from the shackles of Bad Economics

Election once again has started throwing data on the public forum, when the services of the economists are being used to measure the merits of the development. The key holed eyed economist are again judging using the time and variables which they only can define as the unit for the representation of their argument. The reinvention of the data takes place which even the original collectors of information like NSSO, RBI, WB, or others would have imagined to use. The deconstruction of the economy in the claim to be politically correct development jumps out of the economic boxes and does a shadow boxing for the political masters. The utility of the Nobel and ultra Nobel, elite economists thrown out of race of award often fight for the opposition whom this gentlemen represent. The representation of data in the favour of the parties who tries to disown the economic preferences of the ruling parties often treat the data from the government as farce and not to be quoted. In most of the cases they build the economic argument based on the political notion of the justification as if the data (if its so) can be manipulated to suit a political agenda.

In a way the political masters do not control the economic affairs as it is made to believe, they are not one who can feed the poor or even stop the down slide of the economy. They are no way responsible for the development status of the people, why the economists make us believe that what you are looking at is the outcome of the political gentlemen/women who tried very hard to save you from economic oblivion.

The international development forums have often rejected, economic indicators as true representative of the 'development' of the people and regions. What macro economy represents anyway..a state of health regarding the country. There are some who tries to overthrow the planning commission, who rather shall be strengthened for whatever they would have done in last 60 plus years. Is it so easy that for the sake of the political freedom the division of the nation should be accepted. Whether there is political nexus between a national and regional parties to weaken the development strategies from central organisation, for more federal power to the state in the name of financial autonomy. In the competition between the political parties, which in India is getting transformed into the state autonomy (which on the ground is not true) in the macro economic debates turns out to decentralization of power for the sake of political benefits. If at all the states transfers similar financial autonomy to the constituent districts.

Development in the election year have become a show game for the political parties often reflecting the feudal mindset with exclusive political strategies to corner maximum funds from the corporate. The deprived social class as always were granted little political mileage in the development  debate since they rather contribute little to the national and state domestic product. The growth charts cannot be filled while the poor are serviced by the state, the free education, land rights, rights to health, forest rights, creation of wealth at grassroots shows no insight from the popular economic theorists and thinkers who run after the political masters for the sake of intellectual acceptance. The realization of the development inputs cannot only be take if there is public-private participation where public means government and private means corporate. The sectors which were limited to the government departments mainly tribal, forest, irrigation, education, health etc were privatized by the government citing bad economics after the post liberalization. But these social change by installing the corporate partners did not help in improvement of social sectors. Most of the economically developed states are examples of giving not so good human development indicators. In fact HDI is common indicators where the economic development has lesser impact if the fundamental resources of the respective states remain intact.

In fact the economic principles practiced by many intellectual who often que before the political class are nurtured by desire to gain the power to have say in handling millions of rupees often at the cost of the common men. The idea of the projects and crores of rupees in the schemes gives immense satisfaction to such who are often not bothered to understand the outcome or forget about the social audit. Most the million rupee scheme are wasted on the lack of monitoring, where outcome is not the goal to which economists have worked rather they limit themselves to the funding.

Development Debate: Circus by the political class

'Everybody loves Good Draught' by P.Sainath, tries to explore the dimensions of developmental reality and fate of depressed class in the post independent India. The political class though estrainged with many criticism often look away from the reality. The national parties are claiming for the development models are far from the reality. The people who decide on the government programs, often forwarded by the political class do not belong to either of national parties. The programs are made to feel that people would get some doles from the government exchequer in turn to democratic favour of electing parties into the power. When would people in India understand the governance, and realise that the they need to come forward and participate in governance. The political class often take over the claims, unless privately they are in favour of few individuals, either from their friends, family and business. The unholy nexus is known and many state government particularly in western India, colluded with the corporate to the advantage of the business over the people.

The numerous promises made by the political class often is limited to corporate, the pledging of government land, providing cheap infrastructure and absolute guarantee of the cheap labour by the states encourages the corporate to exploit the land. The encouragement of the state capital by infusing the investment by the state to create companies under the Acts that suits the governments to divert the tax payers money to business ventures. These companies are no more labour intensive public sector units and babus paradise, but a corporate run company managed by the government employees as its managing director. Government becomes a share holders which keeps the money to fuel the state domestic product. Even the social institutions, para goverment institutions and organisations formed by the governments are often used to divert the functions and budget of the standard government to the run an exmarital affairs with the business world.

In many cases the funds are diverted to run a pro government campaign often helps the party in power to play its role in getting the cheap funds for promoting the agenda more closer to the leader. Thus making the circus of the development efforts. Often the leader of the government becomes the ring master who drives the others to fall into the line or tame the opposition to be a quite puppy.  

People who talk about rights are often termed leftist and Maoist...

The loosely used terms in the present 'capitalist' based societies, for the people engaged in struggle for the rights are 'leftist', 'maoist', 'anarchist' and so on. The political class who is currently holding the development of nation, has rights over the resources often target the leaders belonging to particular group engaged in the fight for peoples rights. Recently even for those who wants to restore the constitutional rights in India often termed as 'maoist'. The leaders of the leading political parties during the election time often see a disturbing elements in normal course of political affairs. The urban uprising of the groups engaged in anti corruption activities are not looking for the straight political answers, and rather do not expect the parties to understand their political agenda. The regular parties are unable to understand the political motive, instead they also want the new group to have political ideologies in many cases similar to what they are offering. In no case they intend to deviate from the current political affairs. From national to regional parties no body expects the rights based group to succeed politically otherwise detrimental to current politics-corporate nexus.

The nature of protest against the establishment lead by a political group (established as an outcome of street struggle) emerges as talking point of not offering any political ideology. The establishment of constitutional guarantee and run up to protest does not qualify them to be people who can claim that they can run the country. People by themselves has to follow a political group to expect them to be desirous of being a representative in parliament is often opposed unless they follow the conventional political wisdom. The parties born out of street struggle would seldom be engaged in the running of the government, the clash of political groups in such a situation would bring instability. The case of Nepal is before us where such group after forming the governments also failed to get the constitution running unless they modified it.

The ideologies in such a situation rejects the oppression based social structure and political system, the poor and disadvantage groups in current political system are suppressed to take over the resources. The poor sharing of resources and state controlled by such political class often results in situation in which street protests are fueled. We in the due course would oversee the new loksabha election in India, 2014 would be landmark in the political history of India, when the street based people movement would get the political identity. This is going to destabalise the governance for some time or would force the main stream political parties to have socialistic agenda in the their political discourse.

Political parties and personalities taking over the government today...

The constitution of India a document people of India gave to themselves to decide the future of India and manner in which the stakeholders should be behaving has done well during last six decades by inching towards the progress. The progress so made now also have credit takers as well as those who demonize the development also give credit to political class. The 'government' so defined constituted the four estates, executive, legislative and judiciary. In addition 'media' as forth estate constitute what government was supposed to be in democracy. Some may also cite 'people' community or mob as a part of the fourth estate. But during these last 60 years India's democracy is now fully taken over the political class by claiming government as their own, the government's are now titles as 'congress government' 'Janta Government' or BJP Government, and more brazenly as Manmohan's Government, Modi's Government, Mulayams Governments, Vasundhara's Government etc. It so feels now that we are returning backing to feudal system of governance. The lordships have divided the country among themselves and trying to get control of more territories by claiming victory over the opposition territory. The political class conveniently run the government (as they claim), and asks the people to go to long sleep and slumber till before the next election.

Such is the desire of the political class, that they create the political lobbies in the other estates like in executive, judiciary and media. They are often used to target the opposition, and often purchased by using ill gotten monies from the political slung matches. The furious fight is for the people to believe that they are enemies but as true to their class they do not mind to come together for their own self, or political benefits. The same opposition parties becomes a part of the common minimum program to run the ill mandated governance. The fate of nation though not really being planned by either of the political parties they use the other estates for their own political benefit. The system so builds takes care of the orientation of common citizens towards the political debates and the interest of them takes back seat. It takes few more people to join the political bandwagon to claim government of their own. Democracy in such conditions often fails to address the needs to people (who are not aligned to the ruling parties). The societies across are polarized between the political camps often prevails to feed their political masters and class.

 The dance of democracy from the political claimant's continues till the upcoming election 2014 in India, the political rivalries on the street also tends to friendly affairs among the seasoned politicians. The country divided into the political views ultimately has to follow the constitution, its hard to believe how one can clean the system unless its changed often. 'Swaraj' or 'Self rule' by the people was the essence of the Indian democracy but political class or emerging political class stops short of addressing the people or they themselves have accepted the political masters. Let the parties divide the nations, societies and communities by polarizing the political lines and keep people divided to run their democratic governments. Whether the political class have taken over the governments? we need to be more cautious in understanding the manner in which India's democracy would mature.