Responding Against Economic Crisis

If we go by our response against economic crisis, historically, it has almost always been perfunctory. Indians do not take financial crisis seriously. We respond to wars, we respond to famines, we respond to earthquakes and floods. Economic crisis, we don’t care for much.
Nehru responded to China’s attack not US capitalism. Indira responded to Pakistan’s attack not to China’s liberalization of its economy. We began responding once we landed into serious trouble in 1990s and we had to put negotiate our gold reserve. It’s a sad comparison when compared to the way geopolitics has worked in the post industrialization era. The power holds today with those who keep a tab on economic factors.
In India the British were successful and not French most importantly because the financial powerhouse of Bengal was with the British. Why British were able to rule India was because they decided to exploit India economically and not interfere with the lifestyle of the populace. The response of 1857 was more due to violent suppression by the British of the intermittent unrests than the economic misery they brought to the Indians.

Albeit it’s true not only for India; our response has been more sluggish when compared to others.

In the global meltdown of 2008-09 the response has been quite unhurried. While the CRR and repo rates were election adjusted, export led sectors were allowed to fall making thousands jobless. We brought loan waiver scheme when we should have made micro credit easily available for farmers. We implemented 6th pay commission reports when we should have worried about fiscal deficit. We have allocated higher subsidy for fertilizers when we should have gone all out for organic farming. But we just don’t care for all this in an election year. And alas when was it last when there was no election for one whole year?
Today we are safe because our economy has been on the roll courtesy individual enterprise of the Tantis, the Ambanis, the Mittals etc. The government focus has been to punish the wealth creators and not award the deserving. But that is how India always responds. We don’t vote out a party for dabbling with our financial security. We are happy with a government that does creative accounting to hide financial deficit. We are satisfied with a government that puts fiscal responsibility on the back burner, which believes in allocation and not implementation, which has damaged autonomous institutions like the AIIMS and the IIMs by threatening their annual allocation. It’s all shocking and disappointing.
…to be continued.