2014 election will be battle of and for Youngistan

In the summer of 2014, world’s biggest election will take place in India with 814 million people voting to decide the next Prime Minister of world’s biggest democracy. Approximately, 529 million of these voters are below the age of 35. This is the first election in the history of India where the youth outnumbers the elder’s population by a ratio of almost 2:1. Thus, transcending beyond caste, class and religion, the youth is the biggest vote bank that all the political parties are trying to attract. How they have fared so far and what are the issues that the youth of India looks forward to in this election is an intriguing question.

After the economic liberalisation in the early 90’s, the youth, particularly my generation has seen a different India than previous generations. It was an India filled with hope, aspirations and a hunger for progress. Skill development, educational research, science and technological prowess were some of the major areas of growth that the youth of the country was looking forward to; that these would ultimately lead to job creation was the idea. India’s time to materialise this idea and assert itself to the world as a seat of power in South-Asia came after 2003, when the economy started to grow at 8 per cent. But sadly, we squandered the golden opportunity that came knocking at our doorstep and were sidetracked in our race for progress and development in the last decade.

In 2014, the Congress party’s vice-president and potential Prime Ministerial candidate Rahul Gandhi still talks about ‘empowering’ the youth and changing the system. However, for the last decade of his career in the Parliament, when his party had the ruling majority, he kept absolutely mum and not a single suggestion was given about how the youth should be ‘empowered’. The unemployment rate has swollen to almost 9 per cent and rising inflation coupled with lack of jobs has made the youth of the country restless. The 2009 election was touted as a huge change from the conventional politics and it was said that the Congress has been voted back as a result of economic growth and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA). This act, we were told, would create jobs for the rural youth and ensure rural development. Far from development, this act resulted in wastage of more than 1 lakh crore rupees.

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) is a law that was said to guarantee employment in rural areas. It does so by providing at least 100 days of guaranteed wages in a financial year to every household in which adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. The MNREGA was to provide jobs in sectors that had unemployment issues but was even implemented in places where there was a shortage of manual labor. This ill-conceived and faulty implementation resulted in an average worker refusing work while receiving MNREGA sops for being unemployed. As a result, the cost of labor in various fields such as agriculture shot up and became unsustainable for the owners.

Another issue that the Congress had promised to focus on was ‘skill development’. National Innovation Council was to be set up under Sam Pitroda. Tall claims of creating 15 million jobs every year were made but 5 years down the line, we are still to see the results.

In fact, the guaranteed income under MNREGA has ensured that even the skilled workers have abandoned their source of employment in favor of this largesse from the Government. There is ample evidence to suggest that the two schemes are working against each other. The MNREGA has no standardised policy for work implementation and cash allotment. The completion of work ranges from 8 per cent to 90 per cent. Also, lack of standardisation and excessive corruption is costing the economy heavily. The youth of this country does NOT want this kind of development.

The youth of this country is talented enough to progress without the sops of the Government. All it needs is an issue based policy. The issues of education, research and investments are the ones that need to be handled by the Government. The Government needs to develop high quality educational institutes with good research facilities to reduce the brain drain from India. The students those pass out of colleges need to be given an opportunity to expand their horizon; they need to be made aware of the possibilities that exist in the world. Skill development should be the first priority. Indian youth has an entrepreneurial spirit, has brilliant ideas but the process of starting a company is extremely complicated and riddled with corruption. The Government of India should encourage entrepreneurship by streamlining the process, and make policies that can let these small scale businesses grow. Who knows, we may have the idea for a next multi-national company in our backyard!

The Indian youth is battling with a lot of issues today. They are talented but their talent is not being harnessed. They are entrepreneurial but there are no policies that can help them take their ideas to the world. What has happened in the past decade is exactly the opposite of what should have been. The next Government has to ensure that the energy that the country has, is harnessed to its full potential. This will only happen with growth in various sectors, which will create jobs rather than the doles that the current Government is handing out to the youth. As many States of India have shown, ‘Dolenomics’ is not only bad economics but it is a bad precedent since it makes young people depend on the handouts from the Government. The youth should grow with the help of the Government rather than stumble because of it or merely survive in spite of it. The Government should act like a catalyst rather than an inhibitor.

Original link : http://www.niticentral.com/2014/03/25/2014-election-will-be-battle-of-and-for-youngistan-203463.html 

Thanedar Richard: Keeper of Indian morality

On March 10, 2014, I came across a rather interesting article by one Thane Richard about India crossing the moral line if it elected Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister of the country. I was bemused reading some of the assumptions that he made through the course of this article.

He starts by quoting a lady who expressed a certain point of view and “fears” that the same view will be shared by most people who vote for Modi. This is the most absurd assumption that I’ve seen in the recent past about the Indian voters. Does he mean to say that all the people in Gujarat that voted for Modi share that point of view and are immoral as he suggests. He then compares the debate over Modi’s guilt to the debate between Delhi and Mumbai. The frivolity of this argument lies in the fact that he disregards the SIT report, the lower courts verdict and indicates that he has come with a certain mindset that refuses to change. Will he have the same view on similar cases worldwide? Was the ‘moral line’ crossed when the US citizens voted for Obama in spite of his policy in Syria which resulted in a civil war-like situation that resulted in women and children dying? We are talking about a thrice elected Chief Minister of a State. The argument is reduced to accusations based on a preconceived point of view which is used as an excuse to pass erroneous judgments against Modi.

“It is also said that if Modi walked into a Press conference and confessed to all the crimes that he is guilty off then…” — What are the crimes that the author is talking about? He has never been chargesheeted and there is no prima facie evidence to file an FIR against him. There is not a shred of evidence that can prove his complicity, yet this stick is sought to be used to beat the riot issue.

When people supporting Modi say that they stand for development, it’s not development over riots, it is development in spite of riots. Gujarat has always been a communally sensitive State. The author blatantly ignores the history of riots in the State prior to 2002. Successive Congress Governments had failed to prevent riots in the state. More than 40 riots had taken place before 2002. Since the 1960s, the State has seen a slew of riots but not a single riot after 2002.

In 2002, the Army was called within 24 hours and help sought from the neighbouring states, which were congress rules, was repeatedly denied. This has been reported in the SIT report as well. Since 2002, the State has been calm and has seen prosperity and development of all communities. Growth has been universal throughout the State. The Jyotigram Yojna does not differentiate between religions when it provides electricity to the entire State. The women’s welfare schemes, e-governance models, and SWAGAT, are all examples of good governance where the entire State is taken along. But obviously facts mater zilch when the author has taken a certain position against the person concerned.

Next, the author goes on to compare Modi with Hitler not directly but by alluding to it. Nothing could be worse than that comparison. The author writes about Modi as if he was not anywhere on the national stage for 12 years and that the State of Gujarat was somewhere out of India. I agree that governing India is not exactly similar to governing Gujarat, a lot of challenges will lie ahead and a lot of troubles will be in store. But not once is Modi’s development record mentioned, not once is it mentioned that the all the communities in the State have seen development.

Gujarat is not a perfect State and neither is its development model perfect. But to disregard all the good work that has happened and evaluate the candidate based on perception is not acceptable. The author says that he is not willing to give Modi the learning curve. Modi is the only candidate for the Prime Minister’s post with a proven record. The other options lie between a clueless heir, an anarchist thriving on entertainment and regional leaders who have no vision except ambition. The author is willing to make allowances for all these candidates but his tolerance ends when a proven administrator is named as a candidate.

The process of reconciliation in Gujarat has been underway for some time now. The Chief Minister hasn’t demonstrated a single instance in the last 12 years where he stands for a particular community or against a particular community. In spite of this, vested interests continue to propagate half truths under the garb of ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’. Activists like Teesta Setalvad (whose associates have questioned her and who has court cases against her) along with officers like Sanjiv Bhatt (whose wife, contesting on a Congress ticket, is taken as fighters for truth and justice). When these activists make baseless allegations against Modi.

People who have voted for Narendra Modi have not crossed the moral line. Nor have the ones who will vote for Modi. As a Gujarati, my head hung in shame when those 59 people were burnt alive in Godhra as well as when Gujaratis died in the riots. I still consider them all Gujarati victims of tragedies as Gujaratis unlike the author who chooses to classify them by their respective communities. My faith in my country’s system remained strong when it sentenced the perpetrators of the riots to prison.

No moral line was crossed when these people were sentenced, nor was it crossed when Modi came back after winning a thumping majority. The supporters of Modi go by the mantra of ‘India First’ and will continue to do so because they believe he represents the hopes of 1.2 billion Indians. And if the author of the article believes that these Indians, after respecting the Indian judiciary’s verdict and choosing to come out and vote for Narendra Modi as PM, are crossing a ‘moral line’ then the author is wrong. One cannot disrespect the law of the land and believe in democracy at the same time.

Originally published at : http://www.niticentral.com/2014/03/12/thanedar-richard-keeper-of-indian-morality-199335.html