Acche Din For The Private Sector?

Is PM seeking the private sector’s support to revive the Indian economy in the wake of an empty government treasury?

The popular perception/image about the BJP has been that of a rightist party, but that was not directly and openly spelled out by it. The PM in his first tenure attempted to sound rightist, but soon invited the sarcastic political jab of being called a ‘suit boot ki sarkar’ and after that he went into a shell, never to show his preference for the right in public domain again. With an empty treasury and a struggling economy needing the private sector’s help to revive and a comfortable majority in the Parliament, it was time for the PM to make his policy stand official.

During his reply in the Lok Sabha a couple of weeks ago, on the motion of thanks to the President’s address, the PM thus made some path-breaking remarks. He said that: If the public sector is important, the role of the private sector is also vital.

Wealth creators are a necessity for the country, because only if wealth is created, can it be redistributed to the poor. He wondered, what can be achieved by handing over the nation to the babus, questioning their ability to head PSUs like airlines, fertilizer plants etc.

The PM said that there should be faith in the abilities of India’s young population and everyone should get opportunities; further saying that if babus belong to our country, so do the youngsters.

He cited the examples of pharma and telecom, where the private sector’s robust presence has helped the nation.

He said that the culture of abusing the private sector for votes is not acceptable any longer and that we cannot keep insulting our youth like this.

This statement by the PM is a huge departure from the past, where the politicians made a villain of the private sector for votes, but in private sought currency notes from the industrialists. The FM and other ministers quickly echoed the PM’s statement eulogizing the private sector. The FM said that the recent budget shows that the government trusts the wealth creators. She said that socialism has failed to live through the Indian ethos, and she criticized the license quota raj as living through dirty times. She reiterated that the government trusts wealth creators and invites them in the development of the nation. She said that while the government should play the role of a facilitator, the private sector ought to be the growth driver of the economy.

There are a number of key takeaways from these statements of the PM and the FM, which suddenly shifts the policy direction and puts the private sector on a respectable pedestal. The fact that the PM made these statements on the floor of the Parliament and not in some private function, puts them on record as the official position of the government, going forward. The Prime Minister recognized the important role of the private sector in wealth creation and warned that it cannot be abused anymore, he underscored the youth to be the wealth creator reinforcing faith in the youth and he questioned the omnipresent role of the babus. While this statement of the PM comes at a time when the government’s surveillance/domination of our daily life has increased manifold, which belies the FM’s claim of the government trusting the private sector, it yet coincides with a growing political compulsion to reassure/assuage a disenchanted youth, denied the promised jobs and the ache din with it. Or is it the PM seeking the private sector’s support to revive the Indian economy in the wake of an empty government treasury?

It is easy for the FM to say that the private sector ought to be the driver of growth in the economy, for it to do so it will need to empower the private sector, to gain its trust, that the government means what it says. Decades of repressive policies and unwanted heavy regulations have built a distrust between the private sector and the government which will take time to go. The government is generally seen and experienced as a predator and not as a facilitator, and that’s been the situation for decades. If the PM means what he says then the private sector will have to be empowered through simplification of laws, reducing compliance, reduce red-tapism/corruption and the arbitrary/unchecked powers of the bureaucracy, reform the judiciary and make it accountable, stop frivolous penalty and prosecution and pay the promised dues on time whether it be subsidies, incentives or tax refunds.

The PM may have genuinely put the ball in the private sector’s court, but for that, the government has to walk the talk and if it doesn’t the private sector will not even be able to walk, being a driver is asking for the impossible.