Is "India Shining" over...?

I feel India is now again standing at cross-roads and few important policy decisions will decide India's future in years to come. Now the time has come to introspect and decide our future course of action. We can no more sit on laurels of key economic reforms decisions which were taken way back in 1991.

Now the biggest question is who will lead this change? Who will act as a patron and visionary leader in this hour of crisis? Can we again have a team, which can match the pragmatic approach of PV Narsimha Rao and Manmohan Singh? I really find it tough to answer. So lets compare the political, socio economic, social demography or print/electronic media between India 2012 and India 1991. Hopefully this can help withdraw some conclusions here.

Society: One remarkable difference here is the growth of urban middle class in terms of income, knowledge, exposure to various sources of information, education etc. So this class has really reaped the harvest of globalization and will favor growth and policy decisions which can take India to next level. Now if I compare the rural India with urban India then I feel that reality is little harsh than we think. I can easily sense few changes i.e. less farm land, income gap has risen, disparity in regional growth etc. Here we find less positives than negatives. The Farm land has surely shrunk because of uncontrolled, unplanned urban growth. More farmers have lost their farm lands and thus become more dependent on non agriculture based unskilled jobs. With no drastic improvement in farm yield, farmers have now less land to cultivate and thus less resources to support his growing family demands in high inflation over 20 years. There is no drastic increase in irrigation reach and India still is dependent on Rain God for agriculture. This surely doesn't augur well for a country where majority of people are still dependent on agro based professions. This section of society is getting poorer every passing day and they need to be paid heed to at the earliest. This is high time that second set of reforms should take care of India's villages, which are surely left behind and so far remain neglected. Education and health care have surely not improved much in last 20 years particularly in rural India. With high inflation, falling Rupee, India just can't afford the import of food grain. With rising food bill, this seems inevitable that in times to come, majority of India will sleep hungry every night. So paying heed to agriculture based reforms or second green revolution is not only important but it is the need of the hour.

Politics: If I compare the political India of 1991 to 2012, then I feel things have turned bad to worse. At that time we surely had an experienced, learned PM at helm. People might argue that PV Narsimha Rao was also corrupt because he bribed JMM MPs to save the government, so let me tell you one thing bribery in Indian political system is no new thing. It is in place ever since Congress political or election campaigns were financed by then USSR. Narsimha Rao will always remain as the unsung hero of our key policy decisions. He did face political resistance both within the government and opposition against globalization. But it was his sheer political acumen that India could take a tough call. It was him, who gave Manmohan a free hand to bring India out of her financial woes. It was him, who lobbied hard to get the reforms through India's political and beurocratic jungle. We surely need another PV Narsimha Rao badly. The other important contrast we see is in opposition. In 1991 we had a strong and rising opposition in BJP. I am not talking about ideology here but BJP surely gave millions of Indians a hope of better future and it is very much important for any country's political system. But now we have a dying opposition in BJP and it is getting weaker day by day because of its own internal rifts. The so called third front is nothing but a bunch of selfish parties, where national interests stand no where. So the political scenario is surely grim and we do need a miracle and a messiah to guide us.

Media: This is one section, where we see a sea change. In 1991, we just had two Electronic media, Doordarshan and News Track. Doordarshan had the wide coverage but it was government's puppet. News Track was only limited to metro cities or some big cities. Now we have tons of media houses in almost all the official languages in India. But the reality is that most of these channels are about everything but constructive and investigative journalism. These channels are making a difference but their number is few and limited. Media can play a vital role in educating people on reforms, current economic state of the country. This will make sure people don't fall prey to self proclaimed socialist politicians, who play hindrance in taking some important policy decisions in the name of pseudo nationalism.

Though the situation is grim but we still have hope in our policy makers that they will take India to the next level. The change may take longer than expected but hopefully it will see the light of the day. People of India may take some time to understand politicians and their vested interests but they will learn it sooner or later.