The Economy- What ?????
By: Amit Bhushan Date: 28th Oct. 2019
The weak economics faculty amongst national political parties, is a stuff that remains unacknowledged. We continue to have rival claims of victory and/or moral victory in the state elections on the basis of stupid analysis. The fact is that the Netas in political parties have little ability to influence voters basis their analysis of the (prevailing) policy, public expectations and gaps/alternative policy measures. The expectation is that senior bureaucrats at the center and state would help evolve a policy with Netas mainly latching over it as its public face. The macro-economic policy is almost always expected to be a central subject with little debate in state. There is almost noting regards how is the state taking benefit from central policy measures or if the same is affecting the businesses/jobs in the state in a negative manner. The states have same or similar policy regards land, labour, education & skill development (which impacts labour or skilled labour), industry (impacting capital/investments), bureaucratic/administrative structure (impacting transaction costs), agriculture etc. The government is busy crowning new slogans and tom-tomming so called achievements in ‘foreign policy/action on borders’ and as a result just clobbers up a victory in the face of a decimated opposition. A domestic economic surge being neither part of vision or goal, since elections can be won via ‘slogan factory’ within political party and even the erstwhile ruling party which is now in opposition relying on the same; so all one needs to ensure is a little better slogans.
On the manufacturing side there has been noise around slowdown specifically in the automobile sector. This while the domestic electronics and especially the entertainment and consumer electronics has never kicked-off with heavy dependence on imports. The story of mass consumption (consumer) durables is nearly the same. One consistent theme of economy has been its trading mindset (in what’s called organized sector) where in domestic businesses try to merely market products available abroad rather than innovate products by themselves that are aligned to local needs and based on local eco-system for production/better alignment with domestic requirements. The fact is even if food habits of local populace differ with respect with other regions, however kitchen equipment available in markets are the same what’s available in other countries. It’s not that in the domestic markets, the home grown innovations/ solutions are not there or domestic markets is bereft of innovators. These are in fact ubiquitous manifested in form of ‘Jugaad’, that is used for rural transportation and motorcycle converts into tractors. However the domestic industrial manufacturers have stayed away from commercializing these innovations and would rather bank upon ‘tech innovators’ abroad. The domestic education/engineering institutions have almost always maintained a distance from such innovations and would continue to focus upon rote learning and certification business, rather than focus on ‘change’.
While we have a large part of population dependent on agriculture and government including armed forces its major and primary buyer, however almost nothing is done to promote farming of innovative and healthy foods and its processing. We do have agri research institutions wasting several crores into research which would never transcend into markets but remain a lab experiment due the either consumers not being interested or farmers being unable to adopt due to overall prevailing conditions. However, a three way collaboration is neither conceived nor thought to be feasible/practical by almost all the successive governments. The same is true for the industry/academia and customer collaborations as well and no wonder on research/innovation side the result is zilch. Our Netas try to ensure that the situation is maintained rather than ‘changed’, since they have a supportive media that would blame talent-less students for their not being able to get jobs while at the same time allow Netas to shout slogans in encouragement of job-creators from the common populace. The fact is though we have pollution in major cities and now claimed improve electric supply in rural areas, however the light production is still not moving to rural areas even with its advantage of labour as well as lack of unions. The newly reported 'ease of transportation' on account of new tax regime and improved flow of credit to rural areas and new entrepreneurs should have helped including the 'reported ease in doing business'. The media would however not report any ‘such phenomenon, which never happened’ even if this should have been a logical consequence and explore the reasons, with all its pundit’ry on economics. The result is continued flux in politics, but now with a political party as well as media in silence observatory mode. Let the ‘Game’ evolve….