Hey! With the FDI in retail creating a huge controversy, I'd like all opposing the government's decision to consider this. PLEASE.
SOURCE: HINDUSTAN TIMES.
An amazingly well-written article lays bare all the facets of this decision and the counter effects of implementing it. go ahead and give it a reading.
ONLY THE UNPATRIOTIC WILL OPPOSE FDI IN RETAIL!
Short sighted! Self-seeking! Cynical! Even unpatriotic!
That’s the only way to describe the opposition of the BJP, the Left and sections of the UPA to the imminent entry of large global retailers into the country.
Consider this: almost everyone and his uncle opposed computers when they were introduced in a big way in the 1980s. And most politicians resisted economic liberalisation half a decade later.
Imagine what would have happened if they had had their way.
* We would not have been an IT superpower;
* Infosys Technologies, TCS and Wipro wouldn’t have been the blue-chip generators of millions of jobs they are today;
* Our economy would not have been the toast of the world; and
* We would have remained the Third World basket case we were in the first four-and-a-half decades of Independence.
Those of you who are 40-plus will remember what the (then strong) Left, the (still minuscule) Right and parts of the (Left-leaning) centre had said computers would do to the Indian job market when, in the mid-1980s, Rajiv Gandhi spoke of taking India into the 21st century.
I still remember one speech by Jyoti Basu, the chief minister of my native state, sometime in 1985 or 1986.
“The Left Front would never allow computers to be introduced in India,” he thundered at yet another half-a-million-strong rally that brought Kolkata to yet another grinding halt on a working day, “because one computer can do the job of four people. Computers will throw Indian workers out of jobs and fill the coffers of imperialism (IBM was then almost synonymous in India with the clunky monochrome desktops that were making waves around the world).”
Cut to 2006: Basu’s handpicked successor Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee won a landslide in the assembly elections promising to usher in, among other things, a computer revolution in the state.
“We made a mistake earlier by opposing computers,” the CPI(M) admitted.
Result: Millions of young boys and girls, as well as dozens of entrepreneurs, in Bengal who could have been at the cutting edge of India’s tech revolution, are today leading mediocre lives as lower division clerks, sales reps of companies based elsewhere or as part of a vast army of frustrated educated unemployed.
When Dr Manmohan Singh ushered in economic liberalisation in 1991, the same prophets of doom predicted that Indian industry would be swamped by MNCs.
What does the report card say after 20 years?
* The Tatas, Birlas, Reliance and other Indian business groups have become world-beating MNCs in their own right;
* The MNCs, which were supposed to take over India, are nowhere in sight;
* India is now the second-fastest growing big economy in the world and a toast of the world;
* 300 million Indians have pulled themselves out of socialist drudgery into the burgeoning middle class;
* The 2.5-3.5% (so-called) Hindu rate of growth that the socialist intellectual elite had condemned the country to is now a distant memory;
* Even worst-case scenarios predict a 7%+ rate of GDP growth.
The Left’s opposition to FDI in retail is understandable – albeit cynical. They will oppose anything that their dog-eared, and completely outdated, Holy Book disapproves of.
Then, the politics of aspiration – as opposed to the politics of grievance of earlier decades – as a result of rising income levels and greater exposure to the world, have driven away two key Left constituencies – the youth and the middle class.
The CPI(M), groping desperately for relevance and a constituency in 21st century India, realises that the raison d’etre for its existence will disappear if this new circle of prosperity expands to encompass the semi-urban middle-class and the rural poor.
Many old-school Congressmen and some UPA allies like Mamata Banerjee, too, have not been able to shed their instinctive ideological opposition to free markets – as well their fondness for the politics of patronage.
Hence, their strident opposition to the move!
But why on earth is the BJP, which has a stellar track record of pushing reforms when in power, opposing FDI in retail? Could it be because several leaders are jockeying for pole position in the “party with a difference” and all of them feel competitive populism over this emotive issue can take them over the finish line? Hopefully, better sense will prevail after the initial cacophony has subsided.
After a long time, the UPA government seems to have overcome the paralysis that had set in and come out with a bold step to take the country forward.
SOURCE: HINDUSTAN TIMES.
An amazingly well-written article lays bare all the facets of this decision and the counter effects of implementing it. go ahead and give it a reading.
ONLY THE UNPATRIOTIC WILL OPPOSE FDI IN RETAIL!
Short sighted! Self-seeking! Cynical! Even unpatriotic!
That’s the only way to describe the opposition of the BJP, the Left and sections of the UPA to the imminent entry of large global retailers into the country.
Consider this: almost everyone and his uncle opposed computers when they were introduced in a big way in the 1980s. And most politicians resisted economic liberalisation half a decade later.
Imagine what would have happened if they had had their way.
* We would not have been an IT superpower;
* Infosys Technologies, TCS and Wipro wouldn’t have been the blue-chip generators of millions of jobs they are today;
* Our economy would not have been the toast of the world; and
* We would have remained the Third World basket case we were in the first four-and-a-half decades of Independence.
Those of you who are 40-plus will remember what the (then strong) Left, the (still minuscule) Right and parts of the (Left-leaning) centre had said computers would do to the Indian job market when, in the mid-1980s, Rajiv Gandhi spoke of taking India into the 21st century.
I still remember one speech by Jyoti Basu, the chief minister of my native state, sometime in 1985 or 1986.
“The Left Front would never allow computers to be introduced in India,” he thundered at yet another half-a-million-strong rally that brought Kolkata to yet another grinding halt on a working day, “because one computer can do the job of four people. Computers will throw Indian workers out of jobs and fill the coffers of imperialism (IBM was then almost synonymous in India with the clunky monochrome desktops that were making waves around the world).”
Cut to 2006: Basu’s handpicked successor Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee won a landslide in the assembly elections promising to usher in, among other things, a computer revolution in the state.
“We made a mistake earlier by opposing computers,” the CPI(M) admitted.
Result: Millions of young boys and girls, as well as dozens of entrepreneurs, in Bengal who could have been at the cutting edge of India’s tech revolution, are today leading mediocre lives as lower division clerks, sales reps of companies based elsewhere or as part of a vast army of frustrated educated unemployed.
When Dr Manmohan Singh ushered in economic liberalisation in 1991, the same prophets of doom predicted that Indian industry would be swamped by MNCs.
What does the report card say after 20 years?
* The Tatas, Birlas, Reliance and other Indian business groups have become world-beating MNCs in their own right;
* The MNCs, which were supposed to take over India, are nowhere in sight;
* India is now the second-fastest growing big economy in the world and a toast of the world;
* 300 million Indians have pulled themselves out of socialist drudgery into the burgeoning middle class;
* The 2.5-3.5% (so-called) Hindu rate of growth that the socialist intellectual elite had condemned the country to is now a distant memory;
* Even worst-case scenarios predict a 7%+ rate of GDP growth.
The Left’s opposition to FDI in retail is understandable – albeit cynical. They will oppose anything that their dog-eared, and completely outdated, Holy Book disapproves of.
Then, the politics of aspiration – as opposed to the politics of grievance of earlier decades – as a result of rising income levels and greater exposure to the world, have driven away two key Left constituencies – the youth and the middle class.
The CPI(M), groping desperately for relevance and a constituency in 21st century India, realises that the raison d’etre for its existence will disappear if this new circle of prosperity expands to encompass the semi-urban middle-class and the rural poor.
Many old-school Congressmen and some UPA allies like Mamata Banerjee, too, have not been able to shed their instinctive ideological opposition to free markets – as well their fondness for the politics of patronage.
Hence, their strident opposition to the move!
But why on earth is the BJP, which has a stellar track record of pushing reforms when in power, opposing FDI in retail? Could it be because several leaders are jockeying for pole position in the “party with a difference” and all of them feel competitive populism over this emotive issue can take them over the finish line? Hopefully, better sense will prevail after the initial cacophony has subsided.
After a long time, the UPA government seems to have overcome the paralysis that had set in and come out with a bold step to take the country forward.
