States and Macro-Economy
By: Amit Bhushan Date: 2nd Jan 2019
The states in India are responsible to regulate factors like Land, its usage and taxation on the same. They also have decisive say over agriculture and water-bodies, education, sanitation & public health, mines and minerals etc. The political India has seldom focused on innovation and value addition aspect while handling these Macro-aspects which are now reflected as lack of jobs in almost ‘all’ states. The result is a ‘political flux’ with ‘incumbents’ being ‘changed’ at high-speed though the ‘winners’ don’t have any incentive in realizing and recognizing this, but would instead pitch this as some new ‘political wave’. The political parties and Netas always focused to distract public to ‘other issues’ too don’t want to ‘understand’ these aspect and focus on ‘right things’, but would rather continue pitching ‘the same old cocktails’ and cite the ‘opposition’ interests in combating and countering the same with its own gimmicks. Then of course, the state Netas also have handle on Labour related issues which is part of the concurrent list and a rather touchy issue. A section of industry like made-ups etc. would blame the laws for not being able to expand properly at a single place due to political pressures related to labour issues. Environment/ pollution control is also another aspect where state pollution inspectors hold sway and this again impacts the industrial units.
The Netas in government have usually relied on mulching upon such resources and organization structures and political noise is spread around ‘other issues’ like casteism and religion. The roost has come home in the guise of ‘lack of jobs’ for which not a tear has been shed for quite some time but the same is now a cause of high-speed political flux with alternating parties (to power) claiming this as wave in favour of their Netas. In specific sectors like Agriculture, it has taken epic proportion mainly on account of suicides on account of financial distress. Much of distress is because people are unable to find alternative employment in seamless manner where these hard-working men and women could have been absorbed. The sectors like construction whether private or public works, food processing and distribution, basic mass education and mass healthcare, local tourism etc. While we have too much focus on the Center which is likely to remain and would be followed up by the commercial news media with gusto, it is important to focus on the results in States as well. In 2018, only one state has returned the party in power back to the helm viz. Telangana. With low profile leadership, the state seems to have lost some of its previous limelight that the Capital afforded. Note that some of the other low profile leaders did not receive the same treatment and were shown the door by the electorate which didn’t buy the delivery claims or promises from such leaders. While the media has gone out to denounce the losers in all elections, not much light has been thrown on the politico-economic factors that were at play in the state which returned an incumbent back. This may not be of immediate interest consider state elections aren’t scheduled for now, however many of the state leaders who are under duress now considering role becoming critically important even for national perspective.
To be cont…