How would you describe a government which after having promised the moon
crash lands the dreams of millions into the pit where it becomes even
harder to get paid to own the basic needs leave alone owning the
inflation?, Capricious, inept, deceptive, Incompetent, whatever be the
word that one may choose to use it would be right in describing this new
government which is on a spree to fix the fiscal fallacies at the
expense of the gullible ordinary people of this country who are being
made to believe that spending more would result in the betterment of the
services provided by the government, while the fact remains that its
just an effort on the part of the government to make the people
acknowledge that the money that they have will buy less than what it
used to yesterday. In a slew of measures adopted to make the balance
sheet of The Indian Railways look good the newly elected government
instead of showing proclivities towards choosing to do away with
inefficiencies chose to raise the fares by 14 %, inefficiencies that
have been plaguing for a long time at every level, starting with
nonexistent efficient traffic flow analysis that could be translated
into efficient resource management to not doing away with the outdated
factious three tire structure on departmental lines which have been
weighing heavily on the performance of the state owned enterprise, the
government should have looked into the real issues to arrive at real
solution's. But Nope, it had promised the moon so it had to come up with
a brilliant idea to make people get used to the fares it will be
charging while it really starts sending them to the moon. This 14 % hike
in the fares might end up adding more or less 8,000 crore rupees to the
state enterprises kitty which on the whole generates an annual revenue
of 1,20,000 crore rupees, this meager addition to its kitty will have no
impact on its entire outlook if it chooses to ignore the anomalies or
inefficiencies and sticks to the established huge bureaucratic
structure.
Governments across
the world which have been elected democratically when forced to confront
the realities of the after math of major financial crisis's, whether it
be the 70's secondary banking crisis or the mid 90's Asian crisis or
the recent sub prime crisis which resulted in the undoing of the
hegemony of major financial institutions have all adopted a common
stance of fiscal prudence initially only to indulge in fiscal profligacy
during the latter part of their tenure's. And so now while this Newly
elected government keeps itself busy by raising import duty on
sugar, and prices of diesel, petrol, LPG cylinders and of various other
essential commodities adding to the burden of all ready thinly stretched
finances of ordinary house holds in this country, one wonders why this
government has not been proactive in taking any kind of concrete measure
to recover the illegal wrongful and irregular expenditure made by
Reliance industries limited to the tune of 1.8 billion $ ( more or less
9,000 crore rupees ) when it went about drilling for gas in the KG
basin. Further more Reliance industries limited has been very adamant in
not furnishing the records for these expenditures to the Comptroller of
Auditor General, in a country where an NGO could face cancellation of
its FCRA registration and could have its bank accounts frozen for not
furnishing records for a mere 2 lakh Rupees, this government seems to be
dillydallying with a huge smile on its face about what it should be
doing with a company that has openly flouted the Norms and the laws of
the land, even while being aware that Reliance industries limited is
sitting on a huge cash pile of 80,000 crore Rupees. How should one
construe this?, Should this be construed as the rap on the head of that
ordinary citizen who voted for this government in response to the
democratic right he was called to exercise, and as a mean conviviality to
oblige him in return with a government that has the kleptocratic and
oligarchic signature all over it which sure seems like would only aim to
legitimize the ill ways of crony capitalism.
Though the BSE index
has been gaining new ground since April and has almost soared 14 % the
Real inflation figures for the same period have been hovering
dangerously at around 10 %, clearly indicative of the fact that cheap
money is being herded into the speculative market's not based on the
underlying strong economic developments but rather based on the need to
boost the prices of certain assets as a way to hedge against the risky
ones that firms and companies hold in their books, and that's quite the
reason why Despite the euphoria in the financial markets there have been
very little investments made to add new productive capacity, almost all
the major firms are preferring to buy back their shares and are
engaging in mergers and acquisitions and continue to increase
their debt in spite of the lackluster short term prospects. This and the
recent fiscal deficit figure of 45.6 % of the budget only points in the
direction where there is going to be no respite from the inflation
anytime soon even though the government has been making it clear about
the step's that are being taken to cull the spiraling inflation. A lower inflation
figure would mean higher servicing cost of government debt, and the
other privately held debt, which in other words mean that government
might be proactive in trying to keep the prices of a basket of food
items a few notches down but wouldn't be as proactive as it should be in
curtailing the cost of commodities, industrial raw materials and farm
inputs, which goes on to say that people will eventually realize who
will be footing that bill ultimately and when they do they will curse their moon and stars. Dreams and promises can be sold
like a product but once they have been bought they don't behave like
one, for ideas and promises to become realities it would take more than
the efforts put in by the multi crore propaganda machinery to broadcast
those ideas and promises through every available medium, it would take more than the effort of using politics of resentment to further ones own political agenda, it would take
more than a mere effort of carpet bombing marketing exercise of an
unprecedented scale, it would take an enormous will to generate profits
not at the cost of the gullible people but by being at the mercy of expanding economic
activity, increased savings rate and median wage.
1 comment:
Your economic analysis of the Central Government is authoritative. Thanks for the insight you put in to the minds of the reader, for the realization you provide to keep them from ignorance. Are you by profession an economist?
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