Political puerility that will compromise India?s future

If a Martian spaceship crash-landed in India, its occupants would be thoroughly confused about whether the greater threat to India?s security came from Pakistan, China, or from its Members of Parliament. It is now clear to the Indian electorate that decorum, dignity, discipline, self-restraint and maturity are no longer part of the culture of Indian public service, or of the culture of our elected representatives. For a few days every five years MPs grovel for our vote. For the other 1,825 days they become ?rulers?, content to dump on the same electorate from a great height, or from the passage of their Z-security convoys.

Attempts at imposing discipline over MPs (in or outside Parliament) are rendered impotent by the absence of the rules, penalties and automatic suspensions needed to curb such excesses. Indian Parliamentarians seem disinclined to uphold the fundamentals of democracy or respect its processes, structures and institutions. Their speciality lies in the egregious and innovative abuse of all these. They show utter contempt for their fellow citizens, from whom they insulate themselves in contrived VVIP bubbles.

Their example, followed increasingly by almost all other elements in society, is leading, inexorably and irreversibly, to social dissolution across the board. It may explain why standards of individual and collective behaviour in Indian society have fallen so dramatically over the years and why India?s fragile social fabric is unravelling so relentlessly. Sadly, our MPs and ministers are no longer people we can look up to but perforce must look down upon.

Over the last two years every Parliamentary session has begun with calls by Opposition MPs for the resignation of the PM, FM, LM and a number of other Ms on one pretext or other. These militant demands?legitimate though they might be (as seems the case prima facie in the 2G and Coalgate instances)?have become preconditions for Parliament to be allowed to function. They have not been made the subject of Parliamentary debate as they should be. Far more damage might be inflicted on the government if they were.

The Opposition?s frustrated cries for ministers to be held accountable for their failures (often criminal) are made in a way destined to fail. These are demands that no government can meet by being brow-beaten to do so without total loss of credibility. But why keep disrupting Parliament? What is achieved by that, except failure to pass critically needed legislation, thus abdicating the role for which MPs are elected and compensated (sadly, in more ways than one!)? The PM is partially right when he says: ?The world is laughing at us?. It is; but it is doing so in a manner tinged with pity and contempt for a country determined to squander its potential.

The government is equally to blame. It is a paradox wrapped in a puzzle boxed in a riddle. We have a PM who may be the most honest, modest, but wooden PM India has ever had. He reminds one of Churchill on Attlee. When told that Attlee was such a modest man, Churchill retorted, ?I am not surprised. He has much to be modest about?. Yet our honest, modest PM presides over what is allegedly the most corrupt, venal, incompetent Cabinet in memory. That is not as lost on the electorate as the Opposition seems to believe.

The Congress leadership campaigning in Karnataka pointing to the corruption of the thoroughly reprehensible BJP government in that state is laughable in the hypocrisy it displays. Each pot is as black as the other kettle when it comes to corruption. Yet each of them goes for the other on that issue, hammer and tongs. The same hypocrisy is displayed when the most obviously corrupt leaders of political parties criticise their lesser MPs for their extravagant expenditures for the weddings of their progeny. Does anyone bother to measure ?assets disproportionate to income? on these all-too-many occasions?

Since re-election in 2004 and 2009, UPA?s 1&2 have witnessed extreme kleptocratic looting of the nation?s patrimony and natural resources via crony capitalism?involving a cosy nexus between political and nouveau corporate leaders. The scams uncovered have been endless: from 2G spectrum to hydrocarbons, mining, forestry, dubious property deals involving the so-called first family, to Agusta-Westland and its connections with ?the family? (anyone?s guess which), to Coalgate, government interference in and misuse of the CBI, and now chit funds that seem to have the backing of several state governments with the Centre turning a blind eye.

A scam a day keeps this government at play. And yet, when called to account by an equally culpable Opposition, the government responds with the usual pathetic sequence: a litany of denials followed by obfuscation, disingenuousness about previous governments having done the same thing, arrogant posturing by ministers and JPC chairmen who seem utterly clueless about the difference between right and wrong; only to find itself being be excoriated by the SC.

So the Opposition is not wrong in attempting to beard this lion whenever, wherever, and however it can. But it is entirely wrong in the method it chooses. It does so ineffectually and inflicts unnecessary collateral damage by short-changing the electorate. It disrupts Parliament and holds up the passage of essential legislation. It has former, past their sell-by date FMs, side-lined by their own leaderships, take to the airwaves to denounce/oppose legislation?like the insurance and pensions Bill?that is critically needed to secure India?s economic future.

Failure to pass the long overdue amended insurance and pensions Bills lifting the FDI cap in these sectors before this Parliamentary session ends will risk turning off the global foreign investment community on which India is so dependent for financing its large current account deficit; in turn caused by the need to meet its energy and food security needs. Parliamentarians seem totally unaware how much we need foreign inflows because India has changed so fundamentally and profoundly.

In 1951, India?s economy was just R100 billion in size. Less than 17% of that accounted for its trade and capital flows. In 2013, India?s economy was over R100 trillion (or lakh crore) in size. About 140% of that is accounted for by gross two-way trade, capital and current account flows. These need to be externally financed. Those proportions indicate how much India has globalised (it is one of the most globally dependent large economies in the world) and how much it needs global markets to finance its growth, development and infrastructure needs.

Failure to pass the insurance and pension Bills will deprive India of much needed FDI and FII at a time when its economy is under acute duress and could tip into crisis by autumn if the confidence of foreign investors is dented. In that context I am reminded of a recent conversation with a respected global investment guru who observed: ?Look, six years ago global investors were talking about India and China in the same breath as the two economies to invest in. Now people talk about China and US in the same breath. But they are also talking about India and Africa as being in roughly the same category of risk, attractiveness and opportunity?. That comment reflects what Indian Parliamentarians have done to the image and prospects of the country. On its present trajectory India may well rank below Africa in the minds of foreign investors before too long. That dismal downward trajectory needs urgently to be reversed.

Failure to pass the food security Bill would disappoint UPA for loss of electoral opportunity in 2014. But it would not have as devastating an effect on India?s economy (it might have a beneficial impact on the budget and possibly even the current account deficits) and only a marginally worse impact on India?s poor. As with MGNREGA, whose benefits appear to be captured more by bureaucratic and political intermediaries, rather than by its intended beneficiaries, mass-scale food security programmes will suffer the same leakage impact even with the Aadhaar.

Failure to pass the land rehabilitation/acquisition Bill will certainly worsen supply-side constraints that are inhibiting output and capital efficiency and productivity. That, in turn, may push up inflation again as more money chases fewer goods.

For all these reasons it is imperative that Parliament and Parliamentarians deviate from self-destruction and dereliction of duty, come to their senses, and keep the legislature in session for as long as it takes until crucial reform Bills are passed and India?s future is secured.

The author is chairman, Oxford International Associates Ltd