Reflections: (Re)Vision 2020

There was much about the late Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam I didn’t understand. But the India Vision 2020 document he and Yagnaswami Sundara Rajan published in 1998 went to the heart of an agony that is exacerbated because in seeking to glorify India, planners and policymakers ignore the simple needs of Indians.

Vision 2020 was prepared under a Prime Minister who was too much an old-style huckster to be comfortable with the glitzy new globalised world whose contours were already visible in the early nineties. Truth to tell, P.V. Narasimha Rao wasn’t enamoured of foreign direct investment either. But he and his finance minister, Manmohan Singh, knew India couldn’t mobilise enough domestic capital to develop the infrastructure for industry to generate the jobs needed to maintain a minimum level of prosperity.

FDI alone could free India’s own resources for investment in social welfare. “There will be blood on the streets otherwise!” Narasimha Rao warned during one of the relaxed conversations we used to have during my periodic visits from Singapore. I learnt on another visit — this time chatting with Dr Singh — that Vision 2020 was probably the closest this country has come to what Americans call bipartisan government, i.e. Democrats and Republicans endorsing a common programme. The blueprint was published two years after Narasimha Rao lost power. But Atal Behari Vajpayee, who inherited it, announced in Parliament and on Independence Day that India would become economically developed by the target date. Dr Singh confirmed his commitment to the same ideals at a governors’ conference.

Kalam was the human link. What really ensured continuity was the conviction that the basic needs of the Indian people were too important to be abandoned to the mercy of party polemics. So, Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh discussed their proposed reforms with Lal Krishna Advani, then regarded by many as Prime Minister-in-waiting. Fearing alarmist newspaper headlines, uproar in Parliament and rebellion in the ranks, the Prime Minister and finance minister did not discuss liberalisation in Cabinet. As a result, many Congressmen were taken aback when Dr Singh announced in Parliament, “Let the world hear it loud and clear, India is now awake!”

But not Mr Advani, who had already privately given his blessings to the reform programme. According to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s general secretary, Govindacharya, Narasimha Rao and Dr Singh took “more radical steps in one month than past governments in 43 years.” As investment funds poured in and proposals that had been hanging fire for as long as five years were cleared, John Hunter, Coca-Cola international’s president, declared in New Delhi, “Don’t blink. You may miss something!”

If, nevertheless, there was little lasting change, it was largely because politics took over. I recently moderated a panel discussion on the theme “Is the economy reviving for the common man?” organised in Kolkata by the Association of Corporate Advisers and Executives. Listening to the robust speeches of the BJP and Congress spokesmen about the achievements of their governments, I was reminded of the story that if you counted the number of enemy aircraft India and Pakistan claimed to have shot down during the 1965 war, neither country would have had an Air Force left.

Their boasting showed no awareness of the American Pew Research Centre’s finding that 95 per cent of Indians are abysmally poor according to global standards. Pew estimates a mere two per cent as middle class. Other surveys show that 48 per cent of our children under five are stunted while 50 per cent suffer from chronic malnutrition. C. Subramaniam, regarded as a father of the Green Revolution, once told an Australian audience that India was self-sufficient in food. Gone were those unhappy days when Lyndon Johnson pored over train timetables and shipping schedules to supervise wheat movement from Kansas or Oklahoma to starving villagers in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. India was awash with foodgrain.

When an Australian asked, why, in that case, did millions of Indians go hungry, Subramaniam explained there was food for all but not everybody could afford to buy it. Here’s another paradox. India grows 250 million tonnes of grain. Consumption is estimated at between 220 and 225 million tonnes. So there should be a surplus. Yet, there is a shortage. Why?

One reason is wastage. It’s been estimated that 30 per cent of all the fruit and vegetables grown goes to waste. Two years ago, the annual overall wastage of food was valued at a colossal Rs 75,000 crore. The Saumitra Chaudhuri Committee, which the Planning Commission set up in 2012, reduced this figure to Rs 44,000 crore. It also warned that the country needs 61.3 million tonnes of cold storage. The available capacity of around 29 million tonnes had to be more than doubled.

But when a newspaper published an article on the inexpensive metal silos that wheat-growing American states use, it was accused of promoting American manufactures. “We don’t need to import Western silos” patriots boasted. “We can make our own.” American silos would have fed Indians but dented India’s image! We have been content all these years to celebrate theoretical self-sufficiency even if the rains sweep away the food or it fattens rats. The need in any caring society is to come to grips with the dire conditions that make a mockery of self-sufficiency. As a result, millions of people in the world’s largest democracy are worse off than in sub-Saharan dictatorships.

Slogans like Garibi Hatao, India Shining, Mera Bharat Mahan, Acche Din Aane Wale Hain and Swachchh Bharat only continue the servitude while ruling party and Opposition politicians squabble endlessly. Kalam, I would like to think, would have demanded meaningful action irrespective of political loyalty instead of heady but empty words.

The writer is a senior journalist, columnist and author