The Turn of the Tortoise: The Challenge and Promise of India’s Future
TN Ninan
Penguin
Pp 368
R699
TN NINAN’S book, The Turn of the Tortoise, is a well-documented, thoroughly-researched and extremely well-written book. One would not have expected less from him, given how he has entertained, and informed us all with his insightful and thought-provoking column, Weekend Ruminations, for more than a decade.
The back cover of the book states: “It is said of India that it is the country of the future— and will remain so”. My version of the description of India, one not very different, is that “many a man has been found six feet under because he bet on India doing the right thing”. The story of India is not much different than what sends voters and politicians into a tizzy—the onion. As you peel an onion, you cry. And as you turn another peel, you are getting closer to the core—and you cry some more. What Ninan does very well is to illustrate the folly, and follies, of Indian policy for the past 65 years. I agree with almost all that he documents and illustrates. But it would be a supreme bore if two economists (full disclosure: he is a very good friend) were to just agree with each other.
So I will venture out and illustrate what I missed in Ninan’s book, and perhaps what would justify a sequel!
The canvas that Ninan has chosen is very large. There is not a single important issue that is absent. Poverty reduction, industrial policy, climate control, economic growth, the middle class, crony capitalism… The list is long; the coverage comprehensive. So what is left for the sequel? A deeper coverage of the WHY.
In my opinion, the ideology of our political leaders is at the core of India’s disappointing performance. Let us not congratulate ourselves for having grown successfully and grown fast—average GDP growth rate higher than 6% for the last 35 years! However, taking solace from a higher growth rate is like the US (or Germany) congratulating themselves that they are growing faster than Greece. What matters is the distance between performance and potential—and there has been a yawning gap (six feet?)—which, hopefully, will not be a hallmark of the future.
What I missed the most: a detailed discussion of ideology and the related political economy. For example, what was (and continues to be) the ideology of the Nehru-Gandhi family, is continuing, and reaffirmed by Sonia Gandhi. Why was the ideology of two other non-dynasty Congressmen—Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh—so different? It would have been useful to demarcate how these two were different, and possibly why the Congress party, and India, broke free from the ideology stranglehold of the dynasty. Perhaps some discussion of the ideology of Sonia Gandhi (and the absence of the economic ideology of Manmohan Singh) during 2004-14 would help explain how the onion continued to grow in the destruction of India—now with the addition of very high inflation and even higher corruption.
The book discusses former environment minister Jairam Ramesh’s record in preventing projects and hints at his even-handedness in targeting both Congress and BJP politicians and their environment-unfriendly projects. Really? Some further documentation of this would have been very useful, and informative. But all one gets is that Congress MP Naveen Jindal’s project was not allowed to go through.
Ideology is a word that does not occur often in the book, but it should. For example, what was the thinking behind Nehru’s education policy of building temples of excellence rather than spreading education far and wide? Most developing countries (and certainly all the successful ones) first emphasised primary and secondary education before proceeding towards what a tiny elite found beneficial—free university education.
Or take agriculture—the only sector untouched by economic reforms. Indeed, like the onion, each succeeding government only made things worse, with Sonia Gandhi scaling the depths with her misguided policy of obtaining 273 seats via the buying of the rural vote with large increases in food procurement prices. For the eight years between 2006 and 2013, inflation in India averaged 8.6% after averaging 5.2% for the previous eight years. Ninan’s book would have been richer if the political economy, and folly, of this policy was discussed in some detail. What could possibly have been the thinking of Sonia Gandhi and her advisers? Did they ever envision that instead of 273 seats they would end up getting only 44? Would the turn of the tortoise have come sooner if the leadership of Sonia Gandhi was absent?
Ninan correctly observes near the end (p.289) that “a basic, underappreciated problem remains the unwillingness to let market forces determine prices in competitive fashion”. There are more than 7 billion people in the world, and more than a billion in India. Red blood flows through us all; but why did contaminated blue blood run in the veins of Indian policy makers for the overwhelming part of the past 68 years? That is the question that Ninan should address in a much-awaited sequel.
Surjit S Bhalla is Contributing Editor, Indian Express, and Senior India Analyst, The Observatory Group, a New York-based policy advisory group