A take on current affairs

The struggle going on in India these days is the attempt by citizens towards the preservation of the existing structure and form of living as against the unknown structure of the future. The past and its traditions have been overthrown by the generation born after independence. This generation has grown up without any baggage of rules and culture in a new country trying to find its feet and match steps with the rest of the world. Corruption has now come to be accepted as a national cancer; malice with no cure. The scams (2G telecom, Common wealth games, Coal blocks, etc.) that are being reported in the media these days do not strike any cord of a sense of national shame anymore, but rather has become a spectacle to laugh at those who were not smart enough to cover their steps properly and foolishly got caught. The current commercial philosophy is, ‘steal since you must but don’t get labeled as one’. Of course a fair proportion of the obnoxious remuneration doled to top corporate executives is meant to ensure that both the organisation and the individual escape entrapment. But when one looks at the country as a whole, to maintain material growth in the economy, which is also a so-called democracy, with multiple variation of population pulling in diverse directions, requires both blind faith and raw guts. The past decade has been spent in learning from mistakes and trying to placate political friends and foes with various arguments and theories as well as horse trading. Now once again the country charts ahead with bold moves concerning foreign direct investment and aiming to woo internationally floating capital funds which is expected to stimulate material growth and lift people out of poverty. These moves have once again raised the cacophony which forecast a bleak future and enslavement by some quarters. The central government is now however committed on moving into an unknown future because prolonged discussion and debate on this subject have yielded no single common perception.

My personal take on permitting FDI into retail trade is that it will benefit both the consumer and the producer and will wipe out the existing middlemen. These middlemen who are basically traders and hoarders and contribute mainly towards cost escalation and inflation will now have to search for new occupation. The ill effect would be that cheap foreign products will swamp the market place too. The consumers will have to decide judiciously on which product to buy that which will help the national cause.

On the side, the double talk of one of the political parties was also exposed in the past few weeks. The Lokpal bill of Anna Hazare was being opposed tooth and nail by the political party on the ground that the Parliament alone has the right to debate and decide, that the Parliament is supreme, and that after a proper debate on its pros and cons inside the Parliament the Lokpal Bill would be passed. Now all of a sudden there is a change in strategy and the political party thinks that a debate on the Coal blocks allocation scam inside the Parliament would only dilute the seriousness of the charges and the pages of newsprint is the appropriate place to fight this out. Politics is indeed a slippery path.