MUMBAI -
Although a government employee, Jaspal Bhatti never
misses an opportunity to point out the foibles of the
powers-that-be. The Chandigarh, Punjab-based part-time
satirist recently launched his own "Feel Good" party.
His aim? "To grab power in New Delhi at any cost," he
said. Cashing in on the run-up to next month's general
elections in India, Bhatti said, "If the 'feel good'
factor is so popular as claimed by the [ruling] BJP
government, then we, the Feel Good party, hope to ride
on its back and somehow come to power at the center."
Bhatti, of course, was taking potshots at the
"feel good" catchphrase popularized by the BJP
government's "India Shining" advertising campaign. In
what must be the largest propaganda blitz undertaken by
a political party anywhere in the world, the Bharatiya
Janata Party is tom-tomming its achievements in 13
languages across the electronic and print media. Total
damages: a whopping Rs4 billion (US$90.66 million).
Included in the bill will be the printing and
distribution costs of 900,000 copies of a 70-page
booklet highlighting the achievements of the BJP
government. The ads themselves are a delight to public
relations managers, showing smiling faces and flashing
phrases like "build your dreams, spread the enthusiasm",
or "the future is inspiring" and "there's never been a
better time for optimism to bloom and flourish".
Successive Indian governments, both at the
center and in the states, have been notorious for using
the public exchequer to beef up their image. Usually
this takes the form of one of the numerous state
enterprises releasing print ads that lavish praise on
itself for a milestone achieved or a new project begun.
More often than not, the ad is weak on copy and focuses
more on genuflecting large-size photographs of the
minister concerned, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee
at present, and in some cases the chief minister of a
state.
When the initial trickle of the "India
Shining" ads started appearing in the mass media, most
political observers assumed they were just another
example of those self-congratulatory announcements. But
this is an election year, and the country has been
caught by poll-campaigning fever. The campaign therefore
has had some unlikely fallouts. Opposition parties have
pooh-poohed the government's efforts, the media are busy
taking sides, and some court cases have even been filed
against the campaign. The Indian National Congress, the
country's main opposition party, feels the media blitz
is a poor effort at glossing over the many shortcomings
of the ruling government. In reaction, it has released a
55-page booklet titled "Vajpayee Government: A Saga of
Sins, Scams and Shame". The copy includes this gem of a
riposte: "India will 'feel good' only when the Vajpayee
government is thrown out."
But the BJP insists
that the "India Shining" campaign it is not a party ad
but a national advertisement, meant to create
"confidence in the individual as a stakeholder in
national development". The crux of the campaign is this:
ever since coming to power five years ago, the BJP and
its 23 allies, who control the destiny of a billion
Indians under a "National Democratic Alliance" umbrella,
have succeeded in spurring economic growth within the
country. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) agrees,
having recently raised the gross domestic product (GDP)
growth projection in India to 7.6 percent for fiscal
2003-04. "The Indian government has a strong reason to
feel good about the economy," said IMF chief economist
Raghuram Rajan.
But, he also added that reforms
were needed to push the country's growth rate to the
desired 8-10 percent annually. These include more
aggressive infrastructure-sector spending, speeding up
of economic reforms, improvement of the investment
climate, introduction of strong bankruptcy laws, better
corporate governance and the initializing of
wide-ranging labor reforms.
Even Jim Rogers,
investment guru and co-founder of Quantum Funds (along
with George Soros), feels that a lot more needs to be
done. Only then will he start investing in India in a
big way. "Stock markets have gone up everywhere" around
the world, he said on a recent visit to Mumbai. "Among
the Asian markets, Pakistan's have moved up more than
the Indian equity markets. So do we say that Pakistan is
shining?" he asked. Similarly, Sharad Pawar, former
Indian defense minister and chief minister of
Maharashtra state, declared: "The 'feel good' factor is
aimed at pocketing votes from one class of society while
neglecting the homeless and the jobless."
In
addition to these criticisms, the unexpected, mass-scale
protests against the "India Shining" campaign received a
fillip when the Delhi High Court asked the central
government to furnish details of the funds spent on the
controversial campaign. The court also is seeking
knowledge of the guidelines under which the expenditure
was incurred. All this could land the government in
trouble and expose the ham-handed manner in which the
publicity blitzkrieg was conceived. According to
informed sources, the BJP government used money from
another campaign - one meant to promote the country
abroad - to fund the "Indian Shining" one. The result:
several promotional measures that have been taken up
abroad are now suddenly starved of funds.
India's chief election commissioner, T S Krishna
Murthy, also raised objections against the media
advertising campaign. But on the following day Prime
Minister Vajpayee told the national media: "Our
government is justified in launching the campaign and I
don't see anything wrong with it. It is the duty of the
government to inform people about its achievements. The
information should be carried to the people and it
should reach them. This practice has been followed by
other governments too, both at the center and in the
states."
Not everyone is impressed with the
timing of the campaign, either. "It is not proper since
it involves taxpayers' money. It should be immediately
withdrawn," said former chief election commissioner J M
Lyngdoh - a nemesis of politicians, having once publicly
described them as a "bunch of crooks". But instead of
toning down the rhetoric, the government announced that
it was all set to pump in another Rs2.5 billion into the
second phase of the campaign.
Much of the "feel
good" factor around the country's economic growth can be
partially traced back to the economic reforms launched
by the then-ruling Congress party in June 1991. But the
present campaign unabashedly takes credit with all that
is good about India, giving the impression that things
have started to look up only in the last five years that
the BJP has been in power.
The ads talk about
the increase in foreign exchange reserves to Rs110
billion, the fact that India is the world's
fourth-largest economy (in terms of purchasing-power
parity), a strengthening rupee (touching a 46-month high
of 44.46 to the US dollar on March 26), housing loans
available at 6 percent, the telecom revolution, the
manufacturing sector's growing ability to compete with
the best of the West, and the booming business process
outsourcing (BPO) sector, expected to rake in about $4
billion this year. The campaign also stresses the fact
that low prices, the availability of a wider range of
goods, and an explosion in consumer finance have led to
a boom in the consumer-durables market.
And yet
a closer look reveals that all is not hunky-dory with
the economic performance that the BJP is feeling so good
about. Warns the Business Standard's editor T N Ninan in
his regular weekly column: "While the many pluses that
will push us along are now a happily familiar list, the
minuses that will drag us down haven't gone away just
because we are all celebrating, and remain to be
tackled." These include an increasing fiscal deficit,
continued subsidies for farmers, and a privatization
program gone haywire. "The fact remains that the
government's 120-odd loss-making public-sector
enterprises have trebled their losses in the past
decade," notes Ninan.
All this, of course, is
lost on the rank and file of the BJP, who, spellbound by
the hypnotic spells of the party's spin doctors, are
only too willing to spread the good word around.
"Teachers in foreign universities are proclaiming that
India is tomorrow's superpower. According to investment
bank Goldman Sachs, India will overtake Japan
economically in just 30 years. We have been proactive in
taking India on the globalization path, and this has
resulted in a contented state of mind for the common
Indian," said steel trader and BJP activist Praful
Thakker.
But if Thakker thinks everybody will
agree with him, he is mistaken. For there are many
around who feel that the ongoing campaign is merely
eyewash aimed at harvesting rich gains in the
forthcoming elections.
"Sure, India is shining.
Where else can somebody walk off with the only Nobel
Prize for Literature that an Indian has won?"
Mumbai-based architecture student Maya Dhanoa
sarcastically asked. She is, of course, referring to the
theft of India's first Nobel Prize, won by poet
Rabindranath Tagore in 1913, from a museum in the
eastern Indian state of West Bengal last week. The gold
medal, its accompanying citation and some personal
belongings of Tagore were stolen from the safety vault
of the museum at Viswa Bharati University in
Santiniketan. Tagore had set the university up with the
Nobel Prize money.
The theft has created a
furor, but is only one instance of crime taking place
across the country. The ruling government in fact is
often hauled up for the deteriorating law-and-order
situation in India and its laxity in following up on
financial scams. Here are a few recent examples:
Fruit vendor turned forger Abdul Karim Telgi prints
and sells fake stamp paper (an outdated mode of
government taxation in the form of stamps printed on
paper) across half a dozen states. When he eventually is
caught, the financial scam reveals a loss of Rs390
billion to the state exchequer and the involvement of
leading policemen and politicians.
Mayawati, president of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)
and chief minister of the northern state of Uttar
Pradesh (UP), loses her job when it is revealed that she
gave the green light for an illegal shopping complex to
be built around Agra's famed Taj Mahal monument, a world
heritage site.
A young poetess, Madhumita Shukla, is murdered,
allegedly by killers hired by her paramour, Amarmani
Tripathi, a minister in Mayawati's cabinet. When the BSP
government falls in Uttar Pradesh, he promptly switches
loyalty to the Samajwadi Party, which has formed a new
ministry in the state.
Manish Mishra, the nephew of the Indian prime
minister, is thrown out of a running train and killed
because he dares to stop three youths harassing female
passengers.
Film star Salman Khan, in an inebriated state after
a late-night party, crushes a Mumbai pedestrian to death
under his Land Rover and injures three others. He is
promptly released on bail.
Engineer and whistle-blower Satyendra Dubey is
murdered in the northern state of Bihar for revealing
corrupt practices in the much-hyped Golden Quadrilateral
Highway Project (see India's grand highways going nowhere
fast, September 18, 2003). He is shot and killed
after his identity is casually disclosed by the Prime
Minister's Office.
India's capital, New Delhi, earns the dubious
distinction of the "rape capital" of the country when
within a short span of 40 days between September 4 and
October 14, 2003, seven brutal cases of the crime are
reported. These include the abduction and rape of a
Swiss diplomat and the gang rape of a college girl by
four of Indian President Abdul Kalam's bodyguards.
Dr S P Trivedi, a reputed nephrologist attached to
Bombay Hospital for more than two decades, is discovered
to be the kingpin of a racket involving the sale of poor
people's kidneys to rich patients who urgently needed
them. While each donor was paid Rs50,000, recipients
paid up to Rs500,000 for a kidney.
Mumbai Police Commissioner P S Pasricha is posted
elsewhere after just 75 days in office for not listening
to politicians seeking a ban on the transfer of 120
corrupt police officers.
In a blatant effort to control the functioning of
the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), a
semi-autonomous body, Human Resources Development (HRD)
Minister Murli Manohar Joshi orders the well-known
organization to reduce its annual fee from Rs150,000 to
Rs30,000. The matter is now before the Supreme Court of
India.
Dr Shashikant Karnik, former chairman of the
Maharashtra Public Service Commission, is accused of
accepting millions of rupees for substituting answer
papers from candidates aspiring to be police inspectors
in Maharashtra, India's most industrialized state.
High-raking officials of the Bombay Municipal Corp
(BMC) are hauled up for abetting underworld don Dawood
Ibrahim's minions to construct the Sara Shopping Complex
illegally on government land close to the BMC
headquarters.
More than these specific examples,
what irks detractors of the "India Shining" campaign
most is the sheer callousness the government has shown
toward pressing issues even as it tries to project
temporary triumphs as major achievements. At this very
moment, secessionist movements are under way in 14 of
the 29 Indian states. The intensity of these agitations
varies from mild (as in the case of the Tamil Nadu
Liberation Army seeking to "free" Tamil-speaking people
from the Indian Union) to severe (the bloody activities
of the United Liberation Front of Asom in the
northeastern part of the country). But nowhere do these
burning issues figure into the BJP's agenda.
Also of concern are damning social indicators,
which again are never addressed. According to the 2003
United Nations Development Project (UNDP) Human
Development Report, India ranks 103 among 144 countries
on the Gender Development Index. On the Human Poverty
Index, its rank is 53 (out of 94 countries). India's
position is no better on the Human Development Index,
where, out of 175 countries, it weighs in at 127.
According to the UNDP, India remains a "high-priority"
area with progress too slow to meet developmental goals
in literacy, the removal of hunger, gender equality and
sanitation.
"Our public debt has more than
doubled during the last five years, much of it owed to
foreign institutions," said Prashant Bhushan, a
public-interest lawyer practicing in the Supreme Court
in New Delhi. "Whatever be the claims of the government
regarding poverty reduction, the fact is that between
1997-98 and 2003-04, the per capita consumption of food
grains has actually declined from 174 kilograms per
annum to 151kg per annum."
Social scientists
point out that India is definitely not shining in such
areas as infant mortality, homelessness, health, poverty
and education. The upper middle class is enjoying the
fruits of an economic upturn, but the bottom 80 percent
is worse off than before. Employment in the organized
sector grew by only 1 percent last year. Inflation has
risen to 5.8 percent, and much of the increase is due to
galloping food prices.
About 45 percent of
Indians live in absolute poverty. Some 400 million don't
know how to read and write; 95 out of every 1,000
children born in India die before the age of five; and
more than a third of India's 200 million school-age
children are not in school. According to a Word Bank
report, "Many drinking-water supply facilities in India
are defunct due to poor maintenance and are not
sustainable."
So is India really shining? The
answer lies in where you are located.
India is
shining if you are an urban or semi-urban resident and
all around you see brand-new shopping malls complete
with multi-screen cinema halls and multi-cuisine
restaurants, smooth flyovers, glass and chrome office
complexes and residential towers soaring higher and
higher into the stratosphere. If you fit in this
demographic, it is a probability that you wear designer
clothes, make a killing at every upturn of the stock
market and can treat the wife and kids to a cruise
vacation every summer.
But if, like Suhasini
Jadhav, an arts graduate from Mumbai, you get a chance
to interact with the real India, you suddenly realize
that the only people who benefit from ad campaigns of
any kind are advertising agencies with their assured 15
percent commissions. Jadhav, bitten by the
bleeding-heart syndrome, relocated as a schoolteacher to
a small tribal village in southeastern Maharashtra two
years ago.
One afternoon, a student invited her
home for lunch. "The people there are so poor that
normally lunch for them is just onion slices with a
sprinkling of salt," said Jadhav, 23. But as an honored
guest, her student's parents treated her to the only
delicacy they could rustle up - rat meat.
"I
reflected on the poverty of Indian villagers and cried
bitterly that night," said Jadhav. "And they say that my
India is shining!"
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