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This story is from September 14, 2013

Back to the future

The last few months in India have been eerily reminiscent of the late 1980s, economically, socially and politically. We seem to be heading back to the future.
Back to the future
The last few months in India have been eerily reminiscent of the late 1980s, economically, socially and politically. We seem to be heading back to the future. The waning years of that decade was a disastrous period, which we thought we had left well behind. In fact, we are perilously close to disaster once more.
Economically, in the late 1980s, we faced national bankruptcy with almost no hard currency reserves with which to pay for vital imports.
It took foreign help, some astute policies and a fair degree of courage on the part of Narasimha Rao, the canniest prime minister India has ever had, to rescue us from financial collapse. Rao followed his emergency interventions with the first generation of economic reforms, which gave us the high growth rates that we lived complacently with for the next 20 years.
Today, India is in a shambles economically. We are not bankrupt, but everything else that could be wrong is wrong: inflation, stagnant employment, capital flight, a burgeoning deficit, tightening controls, stalled reforms, declining investor confidence, primitive infrastructure and shameful levels of human development that make Bangladesh and Nepal look good. And then there are the growth rates. Two years ago, a wise commentator on the economy assured me that any talk of falling below 5 or even 6% was nonsense and a delusion harboured primarily by inveterate pessimists who lived outside the country.
Socially, the late 1980s and early 1990s were the most polarised years in the country`s history after Partition. They are often called the Mandal years and are associated with V P Singh who really only had one idea in his short tenure as prime minister: reservations for the other backward classes. Those who opposed him were not particularly flexible or farsighted either. The bitterness of that confrontation has never quite dissipated. Even more vicious and violent was the dispute over the Babri masjid and the campaign for Ramjanmabhoomi led by the man who it seems will never be prime minister, Lal Krishna Advani. Wherever Advani`s rath yatra went in those days, riots followed.
Socially, we are scarcely better than we were then. Caste rules the social imagination. Political parties are built around caste solidarity and antagonism and elections are fought on the basis of caste loyalties. Who you can marry, what you can wear and when (and if) you can use a cellphone are sanctioned by the self-appointed guardians of morality otherwise known as the khap panchayats. In Jaisalmer, where you are cremated depends on caste, thanks to something laughably called the
Urban Improvement Trust!
Religious distrust and dislike, too, stalk the land. If you are a middle-class Muslim in any major Indian city, the chances of your being able to rent a place of your choosing are slim. The riots in Muzaffarnagar over the past week are a reminder that our goons and politicians will never lose an opportunity to lose an opportunity. And ever since Narendra Modi set his sights on Uttar Pradesh electorally, the talk has once again turned to Ramjanmabhoomi.
Our politics too seem scarily reminiscent of the late 1980s. Then too the Congress was doing its best to squander a strong mandate to rule, leaving the field open to the political right. As Bofors ruled the airwaves then, so corruption is central to political discourse today. In the late 1980s, we were edging our way towards electoral and post-electoral coalitions. In 2013, we are well into the era of coalition politics.
The result has not been greater democracy. It has been chaos and paralysis at the central government level and authoritarian politics in the states. The Centre is becoming increasingly immobile; and the states are ruled by a succession of bizarre leaders who intimidate opponents and the media, who build a personality cult around themselves and who are populist in dangerous ways. Narendra Modi is only the most successful of these state leaders.
Perhaps the elections of 2014 will "lead us out of our tribulations into a quiet land", to quote a school prayer from my childhood. Judging by 1989, that is unlikely. What lies ahead resembles a sea of troubles.
End of Article
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