It is a Right turn, but with a small 'R'
There is something monotonously ritualistic about an Indian Budget and the reactions to it. The Opposition invariably attacks it for being ‘anti-people’, ‘inflationary’ and lacking originality; the government side gushes over the schemes the finance minister has commended; and the ever-cautious captains of industry are character-istically mealy-mouthed in their responses, underplaying the negative aspects and gushing over the positives.
The 2014 Union Budget presented by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley after barely 45 days in office evoked the familiar template reactions. However, there was one thing that was dramatically different. There was a substantial section of what the minister described as “studio pundits” comprising economists, political analysts and general busybodies who expressed disappointment with the Budget for not being a radical departure from the past. They felt that the first Budget of the Narendra Modi government should have set the political markers for India’s enthusiastic embrace of what, in shorthand, is called right-wing politics.
That there would be a body of opinion supportive of the new dispensation that calls a government’s judgement into question on account of not being adequately ‘right’ is itself a novelty in a country that remains, as per the Constitution, a ‘socialist’ republic. This mood change demands an examination.
About four years or so ago, when the then Congress minister Salman Khurshid had been asked by a reporter why a particular Budget presented by the UPA government hadn’t addressed ‘reforms’, he replied (and I am quoting from memory): “We weren’t elected to bring in economic reforms.” Khurshid implied that since equity and redistribution were the Congress’s priorities, the party should not be judged for a failure to undertake what it was never really committed to.
By the same logic, Modi will be judged by the popular expectation of the big change he brings to India in the next five years. In ideological terms, he will also be measured by the extent to which he can dismantle the Nehruvian consensus in both economic policy and political thinking. To the community of the faithful that backed him enthusiastically for the top job in the face of liberal derision, Modi will not be examined by the lax standards reserved for the genial and over-consensual Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Purely in terms of expectations, Modi will be juxtaposed with the iconic figures of the modern Right: Margaret Thatcher, Lee Kuan Yew, et al. British PM David Cameron put it in perspective when he said that no other democratically-elected leader in today’s world has secured more votes than PM Modi. In the informal global community of the Right, the famous victory of May 2014 has already given Modi an exceptional status.
The challenge seems exceptionally daunting on account of the jumble of ideological baggage that Modi brings to the table. Conventional wisdom has identified the Right in developing countries with authoritarianism and anti-democratic sentiment. The military coup against the romantic but thoroughly incompetent Left-wing government of Salvador Allende in Chile was organised by a Right alliance of the military and multinational corporations. Likewise, the junta that ran Greece briefly, and the regimes of President Salazar in Portugal and General Franco in Spain have been clearly identified as ‘right-wing’.
Our contemporary understanding of Right and Left evolved during the Cold War and the identification of the US and Soviet Union with democracy and one-party rule respectively. Yet, this line of distinction was continuously blurred and modified by realpolitik. The US unendingly supported military dictatorships that were avowedly anti-Communist and the erstwhile Soviet Union rarely hesitated to support national liberation movements—both democratic and authoritarian—that had an anti-West tilt.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union and China’s experiment with Communist Party-directed capitalism, the Left-Right lines have been further blurred. The US and the European Union have selectively embraced the cause of human rights and the so-called civil society movements have developed associations with the intellectual, post-Leninist Left.
Where does Modi, and, for that matter, the BJP, fit into this new polarisation?
The second feature of the Budget was to shore up entrepreneurship in India. What distinguishes the Right (in all political parties) from those wedded to the Nehru-Indira consensus is the conviction that rapid economic growth will only come about through a spurt in entrepreneurship. By focusing on the reform and simplification of procedures—the details of which leave most of the middle classes mystified—the government is talking of the ease of doing business in India. Modi is among the few Indian politicians who genuinely believe that India is over-administered and under-governed. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s attention to business details was in line with the larger desire to create an environment conducive to entrepreneurship. In the coming months, we are likely to see the government move more rapidly in the direction of the rationalisation and simplification of India’s business laws.
(This story appears in the 22 August, 2014 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)