For decades now, India has operated on a set of fundamental assumptions. These assumptions are wrong and yet the country has marched on to greater heights. Of course, the paradox is explained by the fact that the progress has been achieved when these assumptions were challenged and abandoned. The progress is disowned or minimised by the fundamentalists. Now, at last, we have a spectacle that the fundamentalists cannot shrug off.
The assumptions are, of course, that the private sector, or the market, if you like pompous expressions, cannot be trusted with the people?s welfare. Only the government, or the state, if you prefer, can achieve effective progress when it comes to the nation?s interests. The spectacle, of course, is the CWG preparation such as it is. Within less than 12 hours of having arrived back in London, I am aghast at how disparagingly all the newspapers and TV channels speak of India. The contempt with which newsreaders treat the latest episode of dirty toilets, use of child labour, falling ceilings and collapsing bridges is shocking.
Barack Obama not so long ago warned students in the US that they faced competition from Bangalore and Beijing. That may be but Delhi will invite nothing except for guffaws of laughter at its presumption to rival Beijing in staging the games. Indeed, the entire experience as exposed in the media is a perfect illustration of the kind of disaster Indians have to put up with from their public sector but cannot complain about. Bad construction, leakages, broken bridges, pools of water spreading diseases are not news to anyone subject to anything done by the public sector. Most of the time there is no publicity and no redress.
Now at last the masterpiece of Delhi bureaucracy is on public show for the world at large. The alphabet soup of governance institutions in charge of Delhi?NDMC, MCD, the government of Delhi, the various ministries of the Union government?all have had a hand in this disaster. The Prime Minister has been inveigled into this mess. He will regret this since this will dent India?s reputation harder than a military debacle.
Excuses will be made; the buck will be passed. There will be threats of dealing with the miscreants. Yet we all know nothing will happen. This is the team that has failed to punish those with blood on their hands in 1984. Ramalinga Raju has not even been dealt with to begin with. So, don?t have any hopes on that score. The smugness of Lalit Bhanot in face of the appalling hygienic fiasco or of the chief engineer of PWD speaking to the media after 27 workers had been injured (he would admit only two injured), the arrogance of the organisers tell you that the Delhi power structure is unfazed by such things. They are safe in their jobs and perks and patronage. The market may or may not work; the system works for them.
Some form of games may yet happen. Let us hope no one gets injured or falls ill, or, even worse, dies during the CWG. But I do hope that someone somewhere will draw the lesson that it is the private sector that has enhanced India?s international reputation by delivering faultless competitive performance. It is Nandan Nilekani we can trust to execute the national identity number system. It is Ratan Tata, Sunil Bharti Mittal and the Ranbaxys along with countless private sector entrepreneurs who put India on the global map.
The revenues that they generate have allowed the public policymakers to dream up even more wasteful schemes of intervention in the vital tasks of poverty removal. Moneys will be spent, but poverty will not be removed since the system is dysfunctional. It thrives on rising BPL numbers.
We should be grateful to the people in charge of CWG. They have shown to the whole world how badly dysfunctional government in India is. If only we could harness this humiliation to turn away from the habitual reliance on the public sector, we may yet have learnt a lesson.
Recall the idea of making Mumbai into Shanghai. I see no progress possible until someone gives over the whole task to a single entrepreneur, not from municipal or state bureaucracy but the private sector if that task has any hope of being done. Indeed, given the debacle of CWG, we may begin the task of rethinking urban governance in India. Big metros like Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore should be freed from the hydra-headed governance structures where many authorities collide. We should make them autonomous and be run by an elected mayor with an elected assembly. London?s governance has improved immensely since we have an elected mayor with an elected assembly. India has now the perfect chance to learn from the CWG debacle and follow suit.
The author is a prominent economist and Labour peer