[What do people expect from him? Asked which party would do a better job helping the poor, 54 per cent had faith in the BJP, with only 21 per cent selecting Congress. That is surprising given that Congress has funded a food-guarantee programme covering almost two-thirds of the population and a rural employment guarantee scheme ensuring 100 days of subsidised work per household. Similarly, asked which party would be better at controlling price rises, another crucial concern for poor people, the tally was 55 per cent in favour of Mr Modi’s BJP against 17 per cent for Congress.]
The election frontrunner
is more about making the economic pie bigger than slicing it up fairly
By
David Pilling
China’s
ability to get things done has long caused many Indians to marvel. Whether the
planners in Beijing are overseeing the biggest rural-urban migration in human
history or building the world’s longest high-speed rail network faster than you
can say “tickets please”, there is a sense of purpose to everything they do.
India – democratic, federal, chaotic – has never been able to pull off anything
like that speed of execution.
For
years, Indians have hoped that their virtues will win out in the end. Their country
may plod, goes the narrative, but it plods in the right direction. China’s
authoritarian system, which operates without the constraints of electors,
independent courts or a free press, can dash off in any direction. It is
capable of engineering 10 per cent growth year after year (though even that
miracle has recently run out of road). Equally, it can produce the disaster of
the cultural revolution and may yet conjure an economic catastrophe – say an
explosion of the property sector or an implosion of shadow banking. China has
only a gas pedal.
But
what if Indians voted to become more like China? That is one plausible
interpretation of the seemingly decisive swing in electoral support towards
Narendra Modi, Gujarat’s chief minister and a prime ministerial candidate with
Chinese characteristics. If nothing else, Mr Modi, whose leadership style
brooks little opposition, has a reputation for getting things done. His
supporters, including most of the country’s business leaders, who have flocked
to Gujarat to pay homage, praise his decisiveness and hatred of red tape. In
2008 Ratan Tata, whose plan to build the Nano mini-car in West Bengal fell foul
of local politics, came to him with a proposal to switch the factory to
Gujarat. Mr Modi nodded – and it was done. Modinomics is the triumph of
implementation over prevarication.
The
parallels with a Chinese-style leadership should not be overdone. But there is
at least one other way in which a Modi administration might resemble a
Chinese-style approach. Like Deng Xiaoping, who departed from Communist
ideology with his pragmatic entreaty to “let some people get rich first”, Mr
Modi is more about making the economic pie bigger than slicing it up
fairly.Critics of Manmohan Singh’s Congress administration, which in its second
five-year term has watched helplessly as the growth rate has slid below 5 per
cent, say it has prioritised redistribution over expansion. Its profligacy on
subsidies and social programmes, charge detractors, has obliged the central
bank to tighten monetary policy, thereby choking growth.
Sadly
for Congress, its redistributive policies are seen to have failed even by those
who are supposed to have benefited. A recent Pew Research Center survey, which
polled almost 2,500 people across the country, found that rich and poor
Indians, educated and non-educated, urban and rural, want a switch to Mr Modi’s
Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party by a hefty majority. Fully seven in 10
are dissatisfied with the way things are going, and 63 per cent favour a BJP
administration over a Congress one. No fewer than 78 per cent have a favourable
view of Mr Modi, with just 16 per cent disapproving.
What
do people expect from him? Asked which party would do a better job helping the
poor, 54 per cent had faith in the BJP, with only 21 per cent selecting
Congress. That is surprising given that Congress has funded a food-guarantee
programme covering almost two-thirds of the population and a rural employment
guarantee scheme ensuring 100 days of subsidised work per household. Similarly,
asked which party would be better at controlling price rises, another crucial
concern for poor people, the tally was 55 per cent in favour of Mr Modi’s BJP
against 17 per cent for Congress.
Since
faster growth was unleashed with the reforms of 1991, which dismantled the
red-tape restrictions of the licence Raj, hundreds of millions of Indians have
done better. But hundreds of millions more have been left behind. The crucial
point, though, says Jagdish Bhagwati, a prominent Indian economist at Columbia
University, is that those 20 years have demonstrated poverty to be a “removable
condition”. Indians have undergone what he calls a “revolution of perceived
possibilities”.
Increasingly,
according to this theory, they may be attracted not to promises of
Nehruvian-style equality but rather to the prospect of Deng-style growth. Part
of Mr Modi’s attraction is that, by sheer force of will, he may be able to
override some of the checks and balances of Indian democracy and introduce some
of the clearheadness of growth-driven China. Under a Modi administration, the
hope is, land will be cleared, permissions will be granted, and roads and other
infrastructure will be built. In this cheerful scenario – far too optimistic,
according to his many detractors – he will do for India in its entirety what he
has been able to achieve for Gujarat.
Of
course, India will never really be like China. Mr Modi is a fiery orator who
can rouse a crowd – a quality that, at least since Mao Zedong, has hardly been
required by unelected Chinese leaders. Nor can India, fractious and with
significant power devolved to the states, ever emulate an authoritarian China
in which power is concentrated in the centre. And even if, after the general
election in May, Mr Modi is crowned prime minister and goes on to wield power
more single-mindedly than his predecessors, there will always be one crucial
difference with China. If Indians decide that they do not like him, they can
always kick him out.
Email: <david.pilling@ft.com>
Twitter:
@davidpilling
