Prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh’s advice to captains of Indian industry to exhibit some sensitivity towards the great majority of the population at the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid engaged in a grim struggle to make ends meet in these inflationary times, has come not a day too soon. Speaking at the annual convocation of the CII (Confederation of Indian Industry) staged in New Delhi on April 29, he once again called for a sobriety in corporate lifestyles echoing the forthright advice he delivered at the same venue last year to business leaders to “eschew conspicuous consumption” and become “role models of probity, moderation and charity”.
As the widely — although incorrectly — acknowledged author of India’s economic liberalisation and industry deregulation policy initiative of July 1991 which catapulted the then almost bankrupt Indian economy into the fast economic growth orbit — since then the country’s annual rate of GDP growth has almost tripled to 9 percent per year — Dr. Singh is somewhat embarrassed that the gains of liberalisation have been cornered almost entirely by Indian industry and the business community (and the country’s urban middle class in general). Even as an estimated 150,000 heavily indebted farmers have killed themselves during the decade 1996-2006 because the terms of trade between urban and neglected rural India have gone from bad to worse, boorish leaders of Indian industry and real estate sharks are making whoopee like never before.
Moreover with the Sixth Pay Commission having recommended a massive 30-35 percent pay hike for the Central government’s 4 million deadwood employees, it’s hardly surprising that the prime minister has been reduced to issuing pathetic pleas to industry leaders to reduce conspicuous consumption which continuously rubs the collective face of the poor, socially disadvantaged majority in the dirt.
However such pleas and exhortations are likely to prove futile because during the past half century, Indian-style socialism has mutated into raw capitalism defined by primitive capital accumulation. Unlike American capitalism which is characterised by widespread, intelligent philanthropy which nurtures and preserves the system, Indian capitalism — distinguished by the impenetrably hard consciences of the rich — seems to have developed a death wish. Consequently appeals to industry and business leaders to exercise restraint and curb in-your-face consumption are likely to fall on deaf ears. Instead it might be a better idea for the prime minister to lead by example and cut the pomp and show of the unsustainable Delhi durbar presided over by the 342-room Rashtrapati Bhavan spread over 16 acres in the heart of the national capital, and of government characterised by sprawling ministerial bungalows, motorised cavalcades, VIP airlines and unlimited perquisites of office. All of which have lumbered the economy with a runaway, unbridgeable revenue deficit.
Emerging Indian capitalism needs to be saved from government as much as it needs to be rescued from the new generation of me-first capitalists giving it a bad name.