The revivalist
Pranab Mukherjee has been dubbed by his critics as the worst finance minister India ever had. They accuse him of making one bad decision after another and presiding over the slowdown of growth, from 8per cent to 6per cent, when all he really had to do was leave things alone and watch the economy chug along nicely.
The India success story has turned sour in the past two years. The optimism has gone. Mukherjee's last budget was said by many to be the worst in years. Now he plans to contest the presidency and Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, the architect of liberalisation 20 years ago, has taken over the finance portfolio.
Many people are hoping that 'Manmohan Redux' can revive the economy by pushing through long-pending reforms to generate business confidence and stem the flight of foreign capital caused by Mukherjee's gross mismanagement.
India needs faster growth to pull millions out of indescribable poverty; it needs foreign capital and technology to build infrastructure; and it needs to create a more congenial atmosphere for business because big Indian firms are voting with their feet, choosing to expand in Africa rather than at home.
A sense of anticipation is mounting that Singh will 'fix' the problems. These include allaying foreign investors' fears over retrospective and aggressive tax policies, permitting foreign investment in aviation and in supermarkets - a long overdue measure that will help benighted farmers and stop 40per cent of the country's food produce from rotting because of a lack of cold-storage facilities - saving the sliding rupee, and curbing the fiscal deficit by cutting back on huge subsidies that benefit the middle class rather than the poor.
So far, Singh has given the impression that he means business. But the niggling doubt is that if he thinks these reforms are vital, why wasn't he able to compel Mukherjee to carry them out? Those in the know say Singh was reluctant to take on someone of Mukherjee's stature and will act now that he is out of the way. But if that's true, it's absurd. The country deserves better.
Singh has said he wants to revive investor sentiment and restore the 'animal spirits' of the economy. Those are strong words, and most welcome, but they come from a man who speaks like an introverted mouse. There is no energy in the man, no emotion, no urgency.
Moreover, even if Singh has the will to embark on a new phase of reforms, no one knows whether he has the backing of Congress party president Sonia Gandhi, who loves to launch expensive 'welfare' programmes that get the poor digging ditches, only to fill them up again.
Without her express support, Singh, whose humility borders on genuflection when he is in Gandhi's presence, will do nothing. The only hope is he will realise that, unless he revives the economy, the government may be booted out in the 2014 general election.
If he manages to be bold and embark on second-generation economic reforms, he will go down as the man who, having fathered India's new economy as finance minister, returned to steer his child through the turbulent teenage years to a stable and prosperous adulthood.
Amrit Dhillon is a freelance writer in India
